Hi, baby

Rome’s POV

The Calloway mansion looked the same. Pretentious as hell, like it was trying too hard to convince the world that it housed a functioning family. It didn’t. Just ghosts in suits and bloodlines that meant nothing once the doors closed.

I pulled the car into the driveway, and immediately, I knew something was off.

Too many cars. Too many unfamiliar people everywhere, well-dressed, laughing like they had every reason to celebrate. I watched them from behind the wheel, a cigarette resting between my fingers, half-burned and bitter in my mouth.

My jaw clenched as I realized the Calloways are hosting a party, whatever event that might be and I definitely wasn’t here for this.

I wasn’t here to make peace, shake hands or pretend to be part of the family. I came to collect my mother’s things—what was left of her after years of silence and a forgotten grave.

But clearly, the Calloways had other plans. Because of course, they’d throw a goddamn cocktail party the same day they asked me to play undertaker.

I killed the engine, stepped out, boots hitting the paved stones beneath me. A gust of wind brushed past me as if to remind me I was unwelcome here. I shoved one hand in my coat pocket, took a long drag from the cigarette with the other.

Many of the guests turned their gazes toward me as I stepped down. I wasn’t dressed for a party, I was just in dark jeans, a plain tee under my coat, no smile, no bullshit. I wasn’t here for the show.

I was about to turn back and leave, because fuck this circus, when I heard my name.

“Rome?”

The voice was curved with smugness, and the tone used burned my skin. I need not be told who it was.

I turned. The only thing warm about that greeting was the smirk stitched across his mouth like he was about to spit gold. My half-brother. Same blood, different womb, and the kind of man who wore suits like armor and his family name like a goddamn sword.

He didn’t come to shake hands.

He stepped closer, drink in hand, eyes dragging across me like he was measuring how low the bastard blood had sunk.

“I almost didn’t recognize you,” he said. “Didn’t think trash still came wrapped in leather.”

I flicked ash off my cigarette, my mouth flat. “Didn’t think skeletons were invited to family events.”

He laughed. Loud, fake. Just enough to get heads turning.

Cassiel Calloway. The legitimate son. The golden boy. Everyone’s favorite. Polished, well-behaved, and perfectly molded to fit the image of the Calloway name. The kind of person people trusted with keys to the precious inheritance.

To me, he was a nightmare in human form. My childhood shadow, the one always one step ahead because he was born to be adored while I was a mistake no one wanted to remember.

My mother, she was my father’s first love, or so I’ve been told. But love didn’t mean much in a house where the name mattered more than the person. His family hated her. They hated me. Even after she gave birth to me, they made sure she felt like dirt beneath their shoes. And when pressure mounted, my father folded.

He married Cassiel’s mother two years after I was born. The family clapped. The press smiled. My mother was cast aside, dressed up in silence and made to live as the hidden woman. A mistress. Disposable.

And my father, he let it happen. He let them use her, hurt her, ignore her, until there was nothing left of her but bitterness and hospital sheets.

He claimed to love her, but he never lifted a finger for her. And when she died, she died nameless to them. No honor. No apology. Nothing.

Yet somehow, he still expects me to stand in that house and answer to the name Calloway.

“Still angry about the bloodline thing?” Cassiel mused. “It’s not my fault you came from a quick fuck behind a bar.”

He leaned closer, whispered it like gossip. “And now you’re fucking men. Guess bastards like you stay desperate for daddy’s attention.”

The cigarette cracked between my fingers. I dropped it, crushed it under my boot with my fists clenched.

And the whispers started. First in murmurs, then louder with my name rippling through the crowd like filth spilled on silk.

That’s the illegitimate one, right?

The gay one.

He looks just like—

Why would they let him in here?

Cassiel leaned back, his arms open, like he was proud of the audience. “Guess we know who’s ruining the Calloway image now.”

I was in his face before the next breath. My hand twisted in his collar, yanked him close enough he could feel every bit of the fury radiating off me.

“I will put you through a fucking wall,” I growled.

He grinned, but his pupils flickered, he hadn’t expected me to actually snap. “Do it,” he hissed. “Right here. In front of everyone.”

I didn’t. I shoved him off. Hard.

I turned, stepping straight into the party, the room opening up with startled gasps and glances like I’d dragged blood in on my boots. Silk gowns, champagne flutes, fake people with fake smiles.

I didn’t stop walking. Didn’t look left or right. Let the whispers stick to my back like spit.

I found him near the fireplace.

The man.

The monster.

My father.

Talking to some stiff old man about stocks or politics or how to buy his way into heaven. I didn’t wait, not even for a second. I walked up, and when he turned to see me, his smile curdled like sour milk.

“What the hell are you doing here like this?” he snapped. “Are you drunk?”

“No,” I said, dead calm. “But I’m two seconds away from dragging your spine across the floor if you don’t give me what I came for.”

Before he could respond, a slap cracked against my face. A searing heat bloomed across my skin, my vision going white for a split second. The pain didn’t register immediately, only the rush of blood pounding in my ears.

My jaw clenched hard, trying to keep the storm inside, but my breath trembled against my control. It was a struggle to keep from turning into something I wouldn’t be able to come back from.

His hand was already rising again ready to strike me again.

And then, everything froze. Someone had caught his wrist.

The pressure was strong, but not in a way that suggested weakness.

“Mr. Calloway,” the voice was low, calm, but lethal. Like it could bend time if it wanted to. “It wasn’t part of our deal to lay your hands on him.”

The room tensed, a collective intake of breath. But it wasn’t for me.

It was the voice that shattered everything inside of me. The sound of it made my stomach turn, dragging me down into the pit of something I’d been trying to bury.

No.

No. Fucking. Way.

I turned. Slowly. Every movement felt like it was happening in slow motion, my neck tight with anticipation, a cold wave of dread sweeping down my spine.

And there he stood.

Like he had materialized out of the shadows, like he had been a ghost haunting me for far too long.

Zayn Smith, no, it's Zayn Sanchez now.

I had to blink twice to make sure I wasn’t imagining this, wasn’t dreaming. But no, he was there. Real. Standing just beside me. That black suit he wore seemed to make him blend into the night like a predator in its prime.

It wasn’t the fabric that caught my attention, though. It was how he stood there, like nothing, not even my father’s pathetic attempt at a slap, could make him flinch.

His hand was still gripping my father’s wrist, like the touch of a man who had absolutely no problem with bending another’s reality to his will. There was no repulsion in his eyes, no disgust.

Just a chilling sense of control, like the room around us was nothing more than a background to whatever hell he had just walked in from.

Then, he turned those eyes on me, those goddamn eyes.

Cold and all too familiar. Like the depths of a storm I could never escape.

He smirked, and I felt that sickening twist in my chest, like I was drowning in it.

“Hi, baby.”