The Price Of Love

Chapter 1

Jay's POV

I stare at him, and he stares right back.

Silence continues to fill the room as I wait for him to speak. Dad values patience, I learned that early on. I have to sit here and wait for whatever power move he's trying to make to be over before he will explain to me why I'm here.

"I'll keep it quick" He finally says, dropping his attention to some papers on his desk. He picks the bundle of them up and straightens them into a need pile, before setting them back down.

I glance at the clock on his bookshelf.

Five minutes.

He already wasted five minutes.

"Stop babying your brothers," Dad tells me, and I fight the urge to roll my eyes. 'Attitude' pisses him off. And he has training with the triplets right after this meeting. I have to keep him happy.

It a near impossible task, yet I try anyways.

"In what way am I babying them?" I ask calmly, and he rolls his eyes. "You smother them with affection. It's disgusting and unnecessary" He scoffs. "I spend valuable time training them to be strong men. All your caring is undoing a hard-days works- turning them back into weak, unindependent kids" He spits, and my jaw clenches while I bite my tongue to the point of blood.

"They are kids" I mutter, and he rolls his eyes again. The triplets are only sixteen. He constantly seems to forget that.

"And I'm not babying them. I simply stitch up the wounds you cause so they don't bleed out" I spit, unable to stop the annoyance from seeping into my tone.

I regret it instantly.

I'm good at staying calm. I was raised to keep my emotions under tight wrap.

Yet with him, staying calm is impossible. This man is a master at irritating the fuck out of everyone- and it pisses me off beyond belief that I can never simply stay calm, even for my brother's sake.

Instead, I somehow manage to piss him off. And then, I have to suck up to him for the next few minutes to calm him down again.

"But I can see where you're coming from" I force myself to say, glaring at the wooden chip in his desk instead of him. "I knew you would" Dad sighs, sounding uninterested, like this conversation is boring him.

"Now get out," He says, and I'm walking out the door a second later, fighting everything in me not to slam it closed.

I take a deep breath and force myself calm, before checking my watch.

Six forty-eight am.

I swear to god if they are not up already.

I walk down the hall, before heading to the stairs. The house is oddly quiet.

It should be normal for a house to be quiet at six in the morning. It's not for us.

I reach Alex's door first. I knock on it, before opening the door. I see him sitting at the edge of his bed, up and dressed, leaning down to tie his shoelace.

"I'm up, don't worry" He sighs, not sparing me a glance. I take a step back and close his door wordlessly. Alex is usually up on time. As is Sage.

It's Leo who's a pain in my ass.

I knock on his door, before opening it.

Unsurprisingly, Leo lies asleep in his bed, his hair a complete mess, his limbs sprawled out with one arm falling off the bed, and his phone resting on his chest.