Page 72 of Regal Queen

"Son?” I interrupted his tirade about how I owed it to the family, the company, to come home.

"You're still my son," he grumbled. "I still love you."

Now I was truly shocked.

"You've never said that to me. Not once."

"Doesn't mean I don't feel it."

"Feelings are for weak mean," I parroted back to him the words he'd told me a thousand times.

"Cut the shit,” he ground out. “I raised you to be a man. How to protect yourself. There’s no room for weakness in our world. Showing someone else that you care for them makes you vulnerable. The slightest sign of it and our enemies will slit your throat."

Rose was warm at my chest, her fingers tracing over me lightly a reminder that she was real. She was here, with me, in my arms, the woman who'd walked away from me not to hurt me, but to protect me.

The woman who was asking this sacrifice of me to save her sister.

It was true. Loving her made me vulnerable to my enemies.

But loving her also made me stronger than I'd ever been in my life.

It gave me the strength to face my father, to take on a million of my enemies just to protect her.

Loving her was the best thing that had ever happened to me, because I became alive. Human.

My heart pounding in my chest because it ached for her was the most vibrant thing I'd felt in my entire life, and I was going to embrace the everloving hell out of it. If loving Rose made me weak, then I wanted to be the weakest man in the world.

"It's true, Nero. You did teach me that."

"Exactly," he growled. "Now come home. If you come home immediately, all will be forgiven."

"Tell me about my mother."

The sudden change of topic was surprising, even to me, and for a full five seconds, Nero was stunned into silence.

"What did you do to her?" Suddenly, it was the only thing I needed from my father. Lily was the past, but Rose was the future. My future.

My whole life, I was driven by two things in my life.

To protect those I loved.

And to make my father proud.

But right now, in this moment, with Rose in my arms and Coulter at my back, I didn't even need to know if Nero had ever loved me, or if he'd ever been proud of me.

It didn't matter.

Not anymore.

When he didn't answer me, I growled out. "Tell me what the hell you did to my mom."

"She was going to leave me.” His voice was just as vicious. "And I couldn't let that happen. No one escapes me."

"Is that it, then?" I didn't hide the disbelief in my voice. "You couldn't stand the thought of her leaving, so you killed her?"

"I had to. Nobody, and I mean, no one, leaves me."

Deep down, I'd always known the truth, but hearing the confirmation was crushing. Air caught in my lungs. I couldn't breathe.

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