Page 25 of Violent Reign (Violent Kingdom)

Filming me. Filming Tyler fucking me.

I scream. I forget about Tyler - not easy, since he’s still thrusting inside me, rough and frenzied now - and I manage to launch the top part of my body far enough to grab the iphone from Nathan’s grip, throwing it as hard as I can against the wall, feeling a small measure of vindication as I hear it shatter.

Nathan’s smile is gone. “You’re going to wish you hadn’t done that,” he says darkly.

Whatever, I want to scream at him. Fucking kill me, rape me, take everything I love. I’m fucking beyond exhausted, and too angry to process that I’m in real danger anymore.

I fight. I fight until he has to hold me down, until both of them have to hold me down.

Tyler can’t look at me anymore. He finishes with a dull groan, his thrusting frenzied and then slowing as he slows to a stop. He pulls out of me, his eyes everywhere but meeting my gaze, his movements jerky as he rips the condom off his softening dick and tosses it on the bed beside my head.

“You’re a fucking coward,” I scream angrily, before I can stop myself.

Tyler grimaces, his hands suddenly around my throat as he yanks me up to a sitting position and squeezes, cutting off my air supply. “No bruises,” Nathan chides, but he sounds far away. Tyler loosens his grip, but he still holds my neck with both hands as if to make sure I don’t suddenly go anywhere. He wants to show his dominance over me, but Nathan didn’t even let him finish inside me. The guy had to wear a condom. Hardly a rape fantasy over a decade in the making, is it?

I stare into Tyler’s dark green eyes, a stormy ocean in the depths of winter, his fury cold, his shame palpable. In that moment, the mask falls briefly, and I see him for what he really is. He knows he’s a piece of shit. A fucking trash human. He sees what he’s doing is wrong. He knows he deserves to rot for his sins. But the hunger in him is like a dirty snake, an endless black hole that demands to be fed. Where Nathan is guiltless and methodical, Tyler is polluted and ashamed of who he is.

“Was it worth it?” I ask quietly, rasping my words against his insistent grip around my throat.

“Worth what?” Tyler grunts. He’s a study in contradictions. He wants me to like him, doesn’t he? He wants to be a part of something. That’s no doubt as to why he’s latched on to Nathan, a man who’ll let him do whatever he wants, as long as it’s his dirty work.

“Was it worth the last piece of your soul?” I ask. “Because for me, it was pretty average.”

Anger flashes in Tyler’s eyes. He wants to kill me. I wonder how many girls Nathan has let him kill. How many he has had to use only after Nathan left their dead carcasses for Tyler to play with, like a vulture feasting on dead roadkill. It’s very obvious who runs the show here, and who is just along for whatever scraps his master sees fit to toss to him. Tyler is under Nathan’s psychotic spell, and I’m not sure he even knows it.

Nathan laughs. “Souls,” he says, stepping up next to Tyler and removing his hands from my neck as if he’s a naughty schoolboy gripping a forbidden toy. He pushes Tyler aside insistently. “Come on, Avery. We’re Capulets. We might pray to God to save our souls, but heaven knows, none of us actually possess one.”

Chapter Fifteen

AVERY

We movefrom one prison to another. From Nathan’s penthouse apartment in the city, we’re swiftly transplanted back into my childhood home. The Capulet mansion, as he calls it. The ghost of my father still haunts this place, but for now, it’s just Nathan and I. Tyler doesn’t visit again. I don’t know whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing.

Nathan spends the first week of our marriage in and out of the office at Capulet Tower. He doesn’t say anything aboutmyoffice. My guess is that my office will be neatly transferred to him as the head of our fucked-up household and I’ll never hear anything about it again. Or at least, until he dies. And I rattle around the mansion. I spend an hour each afternoon out on the sunny pool deck, staring at the water and thinking about drowning myself, but I never do. There’s a baby to think of. And Rome. Though thinking of Rome gets harder by the day. If I dwell on the stormy-sea blue of his eyes too long then I eventually find myself curled up under the covers in bed, pining for him in between bouts of morning sickness that I manage to hide from Nathan.

Nathan doesn’t like that I’m so depressed. It makes him angry. When he arrives home and I’m in bed, he looks like he wants to murder me. He can’t though, can he? So instead, after four days of him finding me unwashed and in my pajamas, staring into space, he drags me to the bathroom by my hair, throws me into the spa bath he’s pre-filled, and holds my head underwater until I promise to try harder to be a happy wife. When he’s not punishing me, I’m constantly filled with his cock, constantly dripping his cum, no opportunity torape a baby into me, as he so eloquently put it, wasted.

On the eighth day, he arranges for the Verona Times to come and report on our new life. They bring a camera crew and a makeup artist and a rack of clothes like this is Vanity Fair. Two hours in front of a mirror and I look as well as I ever have, cheeks shining, eyes bright. The Victoria Beckham sheath looks incredible on me. Even Nathan’s eyes light up when he sees it, though I know he’s not excited about me, per se. Just the image. Just the fact that he owns me now. He’s got his own new suit and has even managed to successfully wash away the last hint of the weed smell that used to cling to him constantly.

He’s disturbingly good at playing the part.

We sit for a photo shoot and an interview about how incredibly exciting it is to be the new faces of the Capulet empire. I give scripted responses about how I’m looking forward to “getting my hands dirty” with new philanthropic projects. I say things like close to my heart and starting a family. I smile and I smile and I smile. Two days later, the article runs on the front page. The Verona Times wants everybody to know who’s in charge in this city and there I am, in my pretty dress, holding Nathan’s hand and beaming at the camera.

He’s been home from the office for a single hour on the tenth day when someone buzzes at the front gate—Elliot and Isobel. Nathan knocks my hand away from the intercom before I can speak and it makes me gasp—I didn’t know he was so close by.

“Stop coming here,” he growls into the speaker. “You’re not going to speak with her.”

Then he turns on me, backing me up until I’ve gone all the way into the kitchen and hit the island with my ass. Nathan leans in to take a deep breath of my skin, but when he pulls back he’s glowering. “You are not going to have contact with those people.” He runs a hand down my arm and squeezes, ever so lightly.

I meet his eyes and raise my eyebrows. “I didn’t. They came here. I didn’t ask them.”

I didn’t do anything that would raise alarms. I woke up, wretched into the toilet, and forced down some toast. I spent time on Zoom calls doing my new job, which is apparently to sit on the boards of philanthropic organizations and never actually appear at meetings. Funny how Nathan’s leaning so hard into PR for the Capulet family, but then again, it’s not my decision, is it? I’m not the head of the household.

Above all, I did not think of Rome, and I didn’t think of escaping, and I did not keep a sharp eye out for any unattended weapons. Of course not.

And because Nathan is still staring at me, still trying to figure out if I mean anything I say, I deploy the only weapon at hand.

I let my eyes fill with tears. “I didn’t ask anybody to come, Nate. How would I? I’ve got no phone, no device to communicate with. I’m your fucking prisoner in here. I fucking hate you.”

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