Page 106 of Seizing Control: Part One

It almost killed me.

“I didn’t know,” I admit in a tone laced with misery. “About the ritual. About the baby clause. None of it.” My imagination supplies a killer blow, showing me a glimpse of a future where Lily’s belly is round with a baby—Slash’s child. Not mine. Never mine. The purple tulip tattoo on my inner forearm burns like a beacon of our loss. “Far as I knew, my deal with Gabriel was all the payment they demanded. Turns out, they’ve pulled a good ol’ bait and switch on us.”

“Crystal has to take on an official role. Slash is being shoehorned into a Trinity soldier. The Shamrocks are now basically an arm of the Trinity. I’m just a broodmare. Probably got off the lightest of us all.” When Lily tries to play off her role in this fiasco, I squeeze her to show that I know what she’s doing. “Better than twenty-five to life in prison for a crime I didn’t commit—which is obviously part of your deal with them?”

“No. That is part of somethin’ different all together.”

“Why won’t you tell me what’s really going on?”

“It’s easier this way.” Resting my chin on top of her head, I try to get her to understand why I can’t elaborate. “Would rather keep things from you than lie to you.” I feel her reluctant submission to our circumstances when she empties her lungs in a prolonged sigh. “I’m sorry, sweet thing.”

My apology feels like a slap in the face.

I will die for her.

But she can’t know that.

“Me, too,” Lily tells me. “None of this is right—but you can’t hate me for doing my best to keep you alive.”

“You love him.” Keeping her on my lap when she tries to put space between us, I continue. “I’m not judgin’, I’m just sayin’.”

“It’s different but equal.” Another sigh. “If you hadn’t left me after the baby, none of this would’ve happened. I’d still be blissfully unaware of Slash’s feelings for me… and mine for him.”

The consequence of my actions is a bitter pill to swallow.

I did this.

I opened Pandora’s box and unleashed this curse on us.

“Figured as much.”

The silence that dawns in the wake of my admission brings me an uncomfortable sense of peace and longing.

I want to keep her.

I want her gone.

I want to live.

I want to die.

I’m a mess.

Wasting her time when I should set her free.

“So, what happens now?” Lily asks, almost like she can read my mind.

“Now?” I nuzzle her cheek with my nose, basking in our final moments together. “Now you let me apologise for the shitty things I said?—”

Lily turns to press her finger to my lips. “And after that?”

“After that, you go home to your husband and you do your best to make a baby with him.”

The truth is stark in the brightly lit back room.

It blooms under the intensity.

Taunts me with its victory.

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