Chapter 194: Dinner Table: The Phei Games

Phei took a deliberate bite of his steak.

Perfectly cooked—medium-rare, seared to a crust that gave way to tender, bloody warmth beneath. The Maxtons had always possessed impeccable taste in personal chefs; one of the few things he could still admire about this

mausoleum of a family without irony.

He chewed slowly, savouring the flavour, allowing the silence to stretch across the mahogany table like a tightening garrote while Harold settled into his throne at the head and the others arranged themselves with the wary precision of chess pieces awaiting the first sacrilegious move.

Delilah was watching him.

He could feel it—the heat of her gaze stroking his skin like a physical caress, equal parts hunger, confusion, and raw, aching desperation. Poor darling was wound so tight she might snap if he so much as breathed in her direction. He would unwind her later, slowly, exquisitely, until she was a

trembling

puddle of gratitude and ruined innocence.

For now, he had a different toy to play with.

"Danton."

His voice was mild, almost affectionate—the sort one might use to inquire about the

vintage

of the

Bordeaux

or

ask someone to pass the truffle butter.

Danton’s head jerked up as though yanked by invisible strings. His eyes were bloodshot, rimmed red with the evidence of either tears or rage or both, and the muscle in his jaw ticked with the promise of imminent violence.

Good.

"What?"

Danton spat, the word dripping venom.

"I was merely wondering." Phei set down his fork with delicate precision, tilting his head in a portrait of innocent curiosity. "Did you know about your two

closest companions?

Brett and Anderson?"

The table froze.

Even the candles seemed to gutter in collective suspense.

"What about them?"

"Apparently,"

Phei continued, voice light as champagne, "they’re rather

passionately in love

with each other. The rumours have been positively rampant all day. I’m

astonished

you haven’t heard."

Danton’s eyes narrowed—dangerous now, calculating, the look of a cornered animal realising the trap has already sprung.

"Why would I know about that? It’s none of my concern. Too disgusting for my attention."

"Disgusting?"

Phei echoed, widening his eyes in perfectly feigned shock.

"Whatever do you mean?"

"It means exactly what it means," Danton hissed, volume rising, defences bristling. "I know nothing about it and I don’t give a

single fuck."

The

profanity

landed like a gunshot.

Melissa’s fork paused mid-air.

Sienna actually lowered her phone—an event roughly as rare as a solar eclipse.

Harold’s gaze lifted from his plate, cold and reptilian.

And Phei—

sweet, innocent Phei

—allowed his jaw to drop in

theatrical horror.

"Oh my God."

He leaned forward conspiratorially, voice pitched just loud enough to carry to every corner of the cavernous room. "You truly don’t know, do you?"

"Don’t know what?" Danton’s fists were white-knuckled around his cutlery.

"Danton..."

Phei glanced theatrically around the table, then returned his gaze to his stepbrother, lowering his voice to a stage whisper that somehow every soul present heard with crystal clarity. "There’s a rather

persistent rumour. About you. And Brett. And Anderson."

Absolute silence.

"Apparently there exists a video," Phei continued, brow furrowed in earnest concern, "of the three of you...

kissing.

At some exclusive club downtown? I’m not certain the footage is authentic, of course, but multiple witnesses have sworn to its veracity."

Danton’s face cycled through a spectrum no painter had yet named: corpse-white, arterial-red, apoplectic purple.

"That’s—that’s fucking—"

BANG.

Harold’s fist struck the table with force enough to make crystal sing and wine slosh over the rims of goblets.

"What," he enunciated, voice low and arctic, "exactly is Phei referring to?"

The question was aimed squarely at Danton.

But Danton could not speak.

His mouth worked soundlessly, a grotesque parody of a landed fish, while panic flooded his features in a most gratifying tide.

Phei watched it all with the serene detachment of a connoisseur appreciating a particularly fine vintage of suffering.

"I’m so terribly sorry,

Uncle Harold,"

Phei murmured, contrition dripping from every syllable like honeyed poison. "I never intended to disrupt dinner. I merely assumed—given how the rumours have saturated the school—that Danton would already be aware and could confirm or deny them.

I meant no harm."

Harold was not looking at Phei.

He was looking at Danton.

And in those pale, patrician eyes burned something ancient and merciless—the disgust of a man whose entire identity rested on the altar of traditional

masculinity,

who had bankrolled "family values" initiatives with the same hand he used to sign cheques for private militias.

The kind of man who would sooner disinherit his own blood than tolerate the whisper of deviation.

"Danton."

Harold’s voice had dropped to a whisper, which was infinitely more terrifying than any shout. "Is there something you wish to confess?"

"No! Father, I—it’s lies. Vicious, fabricated lies. I would never—"

"But that’s the thing,"

Phei interrupted, his tone so disarmingly helpful, so achingly reasonable, like a dutiful nephew merely trying to untangle a trifling misunderstanding. "I’m certain it’s only a rumour, isn’t it,

Danton?

I mean—if something did happen, if there truly were a video—it was surely Brett

blackmailing

you, wasn’t it?"

Danton’s face drained of blood so swiftly Phei half-expected him to topple sideways into the soup tureen.

"Blackmailing?" Harold’s voice cracked across the table like a bullwhip. "What in God’s name are you talking about?"

"Oh, you know,"

Phei said airily, gesturing with his wine glass as though discussing a mildly disappointing vintage. "That

unfortunate

thing that happened at the club. Brett’s always carried rather an obvious

"crush"

for Danton—everyone’s known it for years,

poor lamb

—and he likely exploited whatever occurred to... pressure our poor Danton here. It’s positively predatory when one thinks about it.

Using a friend’s momentary lapse against him?

"Even the devil might blush."

He shook his head with theatrical sorrow.

"Friends. Can you imagine?"

"What club thing?" Delilah’s voice cut in, sharp and sudden, her eyes flicking between them like a blade seeking flesh. "What are you talking about?"

"What club?" Sienna echoed, and for once her flat affect cracked into genuine curiosity.

Phei affected not to hear, turning instead to Harold with the earnest solicitude of a favourite nephew.

"Fortunately, Uncle Harold and Aunt Melissa handled the entire affair so

discreetly,"

he continued, reaching for his water glass with elegant nonchalance. "Otherwise who knows what might have—"

"Handled what affair?"

Harold’s roar rattled the crystal.

Phei flinched—exquisitely timed, exquisitely performed—dropping his gaze to his plate like a chastened schoolboy.

"I... forgive me, Uncle. I assumed you were aware. I thought that was why nothing ever came to light."

"Aware of

WHAT?"

Harold was on his feet now, palms planted on the table, veins corded in his neck like bridge cables. "What in the hell happened at what club?

DANTON!"

Danton was trembling.

Actually trembling.

His mouth opened and closed in silent, fish-like desperation; no silver-tongued deflection, no charming lie emerged. He looked, for the first time in his gilded life, like a man watching his carefully constructed empire collapse into smoking rubble.

"Oh my God,"

Phei breathed, pressing a hand to his mouth in perfectly calibrated horror.

"Oh my God, you truly don’t know. None of you know about the club."

He turned to Danton.

Met his eyes.

And for one crystalline fraction of a second the mask slipped—just long enough for something ancient and glacial to surface in those amethyst purple depths. Something that said, with exquisite politeness:

This is for every bruise, every humiliation, every year you thought you could break me and walk away unscathed. And darling, we’re only getting started.

Danton saw it.

Understood it.

Paled to the colour of old bone.

Phei knew everything.

Not merely the fabricated rumours, not merely the club incident that Harold had buried with money and threats. Everything. Every petty cruelty, every covered-up assault, every bribe and intimidation and disappeared witness that Danton had orchestrated in the shadows while wearing his golden-boy smile.

Harold had swept perhaps thirty percent under the rug.

Danton had buried the rest himself and Harold knew no shit.

But Phei had watched.

And now Danton

teetered

on the edge of an abyss, with Phei holding the only rope—and

deciding, with angelic patience, whether to let him dangle or simply cut it.

This was not a threat.

This was a masterclass.

A gentle reminder that at any moment Phei could open his mouth and end him—have him

disowned,

exiled, fed to the tabloids as the degenerate son Harold Maxton was forced to disavow to preserve the sacred family name.

Because Harold would do it.

Danton knew his father better than anyone. Image was scripture. Legacy was oxygen. A tainted heir was a cancer to be excised without anaesthesia.

"I..."

Danton’s voice emerged a cracked whisper. "Father, I can explain—"

"WHAT HAPPENED AT THE FUCKING CLUB?"

Harold’s bellow shook the chandelier; crystal pendants chimed like frightened bells.

Melissa had gone the colour of old parchment.

Sienna watched with the rapt attention usually reserved for particularly gruesome

true-crime

documentaries.

And Delilah—

Delilah stared at Phei.

At the boy who had just detonated a tactical nuke beneath their family dinner and now sat with his hands folded in his lap, expression the very picture of wide-eyed innocence.

Phei caught her gaze.

Smiled.

Just a little.

Just enough.

Later, that smile promised. I’ll explain everything later, darling. But for now—enjoy the show.

"DANTON!"

Harold’s hand shot across the table, seizing his son’s collar in a white-knuckled fist, hauling him half out of his chair.

"You have five seconds to tell me what the fuck is going on,

or so help me God—"