Someone instantly chuckled and buttered up, “Of course, now Fritz sits highest in Rosalie’s heart.”
I stood beyond the doorway, a chilly smile slowly rising on my mouth.
No revenge?
Then I would not live up to the Porter name.
I got into the vehicle and pulled out my phone.
“Tonight at twelve.”
“Bring Fritz to me.”
“And get skin repair tools and a medical crew ready.”
A bit after eleven, my phone display lit up.
My sister sent a note. “I had guards take Fritz. He’ll reach the old house in twenty minutes.”
I was just about to answer when my friend sent a video.
I opened it, and Fritz was grinning widely at the camera.
“Today I drew a special piece for an old guy.”
He waved the tattoo tool before the lens.
“Guess what I inked on him? ‘Nashville No.1 Bootlicker’!”
“You didn’t see, he’s already thirty and still dares to show his chest. His skin’s so slack the needle barely stayed. I pressed hard on purpose three times, no matter what, it won’t fade.”
The comments flooded in wildly, “Main lead energy."
“Nice work.”
“Hahahahaha.”
Fritz grew more excited as he talked, pride glowing in his eyes.
“I’ve met plenty like him. Living off family cash, buying purses, sipping tea, chasing women all day. Not like me, I opened a shop at twenty using my own craft.”
He let out an exaggerated sigh, “What a shame. No matter how an old guy struggles, he’s still the same, long hated by his wife.”
“Next time I’ll stream something even crazier, just wait and see me teach this kind of kept pretty-boy how to act.”
The video stopped.
I actually laughed from anger.
Fritz Porter.
A name I gave him myself.
Five years earlier, during a charity school visit to the hills, I found him inside a leaking mud hut.
A sixteen-year-old boy curled on straw bedding, skin bruised deep purple from beatings.
Face sallow and thin, eyes packed with shame and despair, he couldn’t hide.
Back then, he didn’t even have a name.
He grabbed my sleeve and said, “Brother, I want to learn.”
I took him back to Nashville and named him Fritz, meaning “proud under the wide sky.”
I sent him to the finest art school and opened his tattoo shop with a ribbon cut when he finished.
Now he used the skill paid for by my money to carve these words into my skin, shame me online, and even set his sights on my woman.
But what stunned me the most was that Rosalie truly stood up for him.
Heavy steps snapped my thoughts apart.
Rows of guards in black stood straight.
Two of them hauled Fritz in and slammed him onto the floor like waste.
He fought to raise his head, eyes red.
“Keagan! Other than using your family’s strength to crush people, what else can you do?”
His face shifted fast, a smug smile sliding onto his mouth.
“If you treat me this way, Rosalie will never forgive you!”
“When she gets sick of you one day, do you think your family will want someone tossed aside by hers? You’ll be nothing!”
I looked down at him, smiling faintly.
“When Rosalie chased after me back then, she knew nothing about my family.”
The smile locked on his face.
I looked down at him from above, tilting his jaw up with the tip of my shoe.
“True, you’re twenty now, still young.”
“Your face skin is smooth and soft, just right to swap in for the marked patch on my chest.”
His pupils tightened fast.
“As for using power to press others down…”
