Page 27 of Vicious Heir

He waved me off. “It makes me dull,” he said. “That’s not what I wanted to speak with you about.” It was a warning to stop pushing, and I nodded in understanding. “You’re too soft with your wife. She insulted me today, and there were no repercussions for it.” His tone was clear: he expected me to handle her if she made such an error again…or he would handle her discipline himself. The thought made my stomach turn itself into knots.

“She apologized, Padre; she made a genuine error.”

“Since when has that mattered?” he demanded. “You cannot allow yourself to be too indulgent of her weaknesses…you remember what happened to your mother because I was too lenient.”

Lenient wasn’t the word I would use to describe my parents’ relationship. My father was right in that he didn’t punish her; he would never lay his hands on her. But they were cold to one another. Everything between them had been perfunctory, at best. “Emma is strong, Padre,” I assured him.

He shrugged it off. “Strong or not,” he said. “She needs to be kept in line, and you don’t need to lose your head over her. Do you understand?”

My father was a firm believer that love was for fools. It was a lesson that he’d instilled in all of his children…not that I believed for a moment that he ever loved my mother. He just didn’t think that anything that might be perceived as a weakness was worth it. “I understand, Padre. I would never lose my head over a woman.”

It was true. It was easy to shut off different parts of myself; it always had been. “Go,” my father said after studying me for a long while. “I’m going to take a pain pill, so I’ll be leaving things to you for the evening.”

“Si,” I said. “Buenas tardes, Padre.”

Emma was lying on our bed with a book in her hands. From the half-naked man on the cover, I guessed that it was some kind of romance. Her eyes were swollen from crying, but her cheeks were dry. “Are you reading anything interesting?” I asked.

She looked up from her book. “Not even remotely,” she said and tossed it onto the nightstand beside her. “Your sister let me borrow it, but the plot is keeping me from getting invested.” Emma pushed herself into a seated position. “Was your father upset about something?”

I shook my head. “He had a business matter to discuss with me,” I lied. She didn’t need to know about my father threatening her; it wouldn’t make things easier for her to know that. “Nothing for you to worry about.”

“He threw a knife into your cousin’s hand,” she pointed out. “He wasn’t upset about that?”

“Not at all.” That wasn’t a lie. My father probably didn’t think about Stefan or his hand a second longer than when it happened.

“That’s…normal for family meals?”

I scoffed. “Family meals aren’t normal for us,mi esposa,” I said. “We haven’t sat around a table like that, without a formal reason, since I was a child.”

“Oh.” She blinked a handful of times. “Was your father upset about that? I didn’t mean to overstep or —”

I climbed onto the bed, and her words cut off into nothingness. She stared at me, partly apprehensive and partly interested in where this might lead, and I noticed that she’d set her teeth into her bottom lip. I reached out and pried that bit of flesh out gently with my thumb. “You did exactly what I wanted you to do,” I praised her. “You brought everyone together in a way that we haven’t in a long time. It’s the mark of a good matriarch.”

“But I messed up with your dad. I served other people before him, and he’s the big boss.”

“You’re learning,” I said. “That earns you some Grace.” I went to the dresser and opened the top drawer. Nestled among my socks was a jewelry box. “In fact, I have a reward for you for doing so well.” I took the box out of the drawer and carried it back to the bed to hand to her.

Emma opened the lid to reveal a silver St. Christopher’s medal. Her eyes shone. She touched the silver medal with the pad of her finger. “It’s beautiful,” she said and glanced up at me, a touch shy.

I smiled; I liked her soft like this. I lifted the delicate chain out of the box and indicated that she turn around for me. Emma lifted her sweet-smelling hair out of the way, and I clasped the chain around her neck. When she turned back around, the medal shone against the gray of her t-shirt. “The medal was my mother’s,” I said softly.

Her breath caught in her throat, and her hand came up to touch the medal. “Angel,” she breathed. “You didn’t have to give me this. It has to mean so much to you.”

It did. It was one of the few things that I had of my mother’s. “The chain isn’t the original; I had to replace it because it was damaged, but the medal meant a lot to her. It was meant to protect her. I’d like you to wear it.”

Her face glowed with happiness. “Of course, I will —”

“Nevertake it off,” I said, reaching out to stroke the medal. Emma shivered as if I had touched her. “Promise me that you won’t.”

“I promise that I won’t ever take it off,” she said.

I leaned in and pressed a kiss to the hollow of her throat, delighting in the way she shivered beneath my lips. “Aren’t you going to thank me,mi esposa, for such a lovely present?” I nipped at her flesh, and she stretched her neck out in invitation, gasping as I made a path along all of the most sensitive places that I’d found thus far.

“What did you have in mind?” she asked, breathless.

My hands found their way beneath her shirt. Her skin was so soft and warm beneath my palms. “I’m sure you can figure it out,” I said. “You’re very clever, after all.”

She caught one of my hands and brought it to her breast. “Am I getting warm?” she asked, and I could feel her nipple pebble against my palm.

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