Irene snapped out of her shock and jabbed a finger in my face, shrieking.
"Where is that ungrateful little animal? We spent twenty years searching for him! We fed him, clothed him, and now that we ask him to repay even a fraction of what this family gave him, he plays dead!"
"Nobody takes him out of here until we've gotten every last drop of marrow we need!"
I looked at this shameless family and laughed. The kind of laugh that comes when fury circles all the way back around to amusement.
"Repay you?"
I stepped forward and raised my hand.
CRACK.
The slap connected flush across Vivian's two-faced mouth. I put everything I had behind it.
Vivian launched off his feet, sailed a good six feet, and slammed into the hospital bed. His lip split on impact, blood streaming down his chin.
"Ahhh! My face!" He clutched his cheek and screamed.
Dead silence.
Quinton's eyes went wide, as if his brain couldn't process that someone had just struck a man on his turf.
"You're dead, Reginald!" Quinton roared and lunged at me.
I raised one foot and drove it straight into his kneecap.
The crack of bone was crisp and clean. The mighty firstborn of the Harding dynasty dropped to his knees in front of me.