Page 31 of Judgment Day

I left the cucumber in place as I walked to the door, removing my gloves and tossing them into the wastebasket. “If you hadn’t, it would’ve been the bottle.”

NINETEEN

In the hallwayoutside the library at my estate, there was a family portrait in a gold frame. In this portrait, I was standing between my parents. My father had one hand on my shoulder and the other around my mother’s waist. We were smiling. We were happy.

I stared at that portrait. My body was tired from lack of sleep, all the driving, and the flying. My mind was spent. My heart: somewhere on the floor at a palace in Ayelswick.

I was on my way to the Knoydart ferry when I looked in the mirror and saw the dark circles under my eyes, the sunken cheeks, the rumpled clothes and tousled hair. This was not the first impression I wanted my son to have of his father. I needed sleep, a hot shower, and a fresh mind. Tomorrow was a few hours away. I’d hired someone to keep an eye on the palace. If Sadie left, I would know. If she found our son before I got to him, I would know that, too. I knew every move she made.

“I miss him too,” Mrs. McTavish said from beside me.

I’d been too lost in thought to hear her walk up.

I kept staring, amazed at the way my father demanded respect, even in a photo. “He always knew exactly what to say, exactly what to do.”

A faint smile tugged at her lips. “Your father was a good man.”

Maybe not by the normal world’s definition ofgood, but inourworld, he was one of the best.

Her husband had been hired as a groundskeeper at the Sanctuary before I was born. The Tribunal performed intense background checks on anyone from the outside and everyone signed an NDA. Any employee caught violating that contract paid with their life. It was in the contract.

Mr. McTavish was caught taking photos of a Brotherhood meeting. He’d said one of the other men in the society had asked him to. The man denied it. As punishment, Caspian’s grandfather—head of the Tribunal—publicly shamed Mr. McTavish, blacklisted him from ever finding another job, and threatened to do the same to his entire family. And then, he killed him. Soon after that, I was born. My father, always defiant, took Mrs. McTavish on as a housekeeper, despite what Donahue had said. For some unexplainable reason, my father took pity on her, and my mother—now the lady of the manor with a newborn—needed the help. He’d spared Mrs. McTavish’s life. She’d been a light in mine ever since.

“Do you think I’ll make a good father?” I asked her.

“I think you learned from the best.” She rubbed her hand along my bicep in the comforting way mothers do. “I think you have a lot of love to give and no one to give it to.”

I think she’d been drinking.

“Do you think this is any place for a child?” I glanced up and down the long hallway. “It doesn’t exactly screamjoy and laughter.”

She grinned, and her eyes sparkled. “Oh, there’s been plenty of laughter here. You just weren’t around to hear it.” She inhaled. “Lady Lauren breathed life into these walls.” She looked toward the library, where Lyric used to spend her days. “It’s quiet without her.”

Lauren.Lyric never got used to that name. I didn’t know which she hated more, the name or being called a lady.

“Hopefully not for long.”

She looked back at me, her eyes wide and bright with that hopeful look she always seemed to have. “Is she coming back?”

“No.” I fucked that up when I let her go. As far as I was concerned, Mrs. McTavish was the lady of this house, now and always. I left behind any hopes of that changing when I walked out of the palace and left Sadie with Chandler.

I considered how to tell her everything that had happened the last few days. I trusted Mrs. McTavish. Five years ago, I’d told her I was leaving for a meeting and bringing home a wife, and she didn’t even blink. She’d accepted Lyric as though it were a normal, everyday thing.

“I have a son.”

I’d never sugarcoated anything for anyone. Why start now?

Her breath hitched, then she swallowed. I saw a thousand possibilities pass across her soft brown eyes. I’d never dated. I’d brought no one here other than Lyric.

“Lady Lauren?” she asked after long seconds of silence.

The math worked. Lyric had been gone almost a year now. But the biology didn’t. You had to have sex to have a baby. I fucked Lyric, once, five years ago, but I didn’t come, out of some twisted sense of obligation to Sadie.

“Sadie. After she was taken, and I was sent to prison, she found out she was pregnant.” Saying it out loud to another person felt like ripping the stitches out of an unhealed wound. Five seconds ago, I was remembering how I’d worked so hard not to betray her, and now I was speaking her betrayal out loud. “We have a twelve-year-old son.”

Her gaze softened. “Have you seen him?”

I shake my head slowly. “I don’t even know his name.”

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