Page 48 of Unleash Hades
So why did you still love him? Why did you beg, plead and wish for him to be your prince?
My inner bitch voice was always there to fill me with shame.
It had taken a long time for me to know the answer. It was because I had no one else. Because if he turned around and decided to be decent to me, then I would have gotten my sister back, the Company would have been safe. The legacy my father died for. The one he sold me in marriage for… it would have all been safe!
Maybe not a happy ending, but it would have been happy enough.
A tentative knock on the door pulled me from my spiraling misery. I wiped a tear I didn’t know I had cried from my lip. I coughed and put a smile on my face before I answered, “Come in!”
Romulus looked through the door.
“What is it, darling? You can’t be hungry already.”
Teenage boys could eat a whale in one sitting, I swear. They cost a fortune to feed.
“No, Mummy,” he said, his hands in his pockets. “You have a visitor.”
Was it Hugo? Surely he wouldn’t come here.
“It’s Lucien Bellamy.” My son had hearts in his eyes. “He looks even better than he does on television.”
“He’s a first-class twat,” I said, pinching the bridge of my nose as I stood up and approached my boy.
“Mummy!” My son looked offended, placing a hand on his chest like his heart would leap out from behind his ribs.
“You’re about to go to uni,” I said with a slight chuckle. “It’s time you started tolerating more colorful language.”
“Not fromyou, Mum.” He pouted, slightly… or at least as much as a teenage boy could. “From father, maybe…”
My sons had never called Richard anything but “father”. There was a formality and distance there that had never registered for me. The separation between me and Richard was so vast that I never realized that the same may exist between him and the boys.
They were made in his image, but the boys had Adelia’s heart, through and through.
“I love you, son,” I said, holding his face in my hands - a motherly indulgence that Romulus had learned to tolerate, even as Remus pulled away. They were far too grown up at seventeen.
Even now, when Romulus was taller than me, he could still look at me like I was bigger and stronger than he was.
Romulus had striking green eyes, and rust-colored hair that grew in waves that perfectly tucked behind his prominent, graceful ears. He’d make a handsome man, when teenage gangliness left his features. I already knew he’d inherit chiseled jawline from his father. I just hoped he wouldn’t weaponize them as their progenitor had.
I wanted my Romulus to stay sweet.
“Show Mr. Bellamy in,” I said, tapping his nose with my index finger. “And give us some privacy, alright?”
“Are you having an affair?”
I almost flinched.
“Why would you say that?” My heart thumped in my chest. I swallowed the growing lump in my throat.
“Mum… I…” He scratched at the back of his neck, tugging at the little hairs on his nape. “Nevermind.”
He turned around, and I grabbed his arm to spin him back to me.
“Why would you say that?”
Romulus looked sad. He wouldn’t look at me.
“I wouldn’t blame you, Mummy.” I watched as his Adam’s apple bobbed with a loud swallow. “We know what Father’s like.”
