Page 26 of Violent Reign (Violent Kingdom)

His breath catches, but he says nothing. His fingertips play at the flesh of my arm, stroking down in an imitation of comfort. Or a warning. With Nathan, I can’t pin anything down. It could be both or it could be nothing, just an idle play at my skin because he can.

“Let me see my father.” I put a bit of steel in my voice as if my father really is the only person I want to see.

Nathan drops my arm. “No.”

“I need to see him, Nathan. Now that I might be—” I run a hand over my still-flat stomach. “I need to see him. It’s important that he knows. It’s important that people see me visit him. It would give him something to hold on to. And if I get stressed enough...” I let a sob escape, then another, and then I lean back against the wall and slide down until I’m a weeping puddle on the floor. “The stress won’t be good for a baby,” I explain. “I’m trying to protect our child.”

My child. Rome’s child.

Nathan rolls his eyes, but I can tell I’ve got a hook in him. “Fine. Get your shit. We’ll go right now.”

I wipe my tears away and grab my purse, and within an hour we’re walking down the quiet hallway of the ICU to my father’s room. Inside I drop into a chair at his bedside and collapse part way onto the bed, my forehead against my dad’s limp hand.

“Sorry,” Nathan says, and it’s not to me. I pick my head up and find my favorite priest waiting in a chair by the wide bay window, the sun caught in his hair and a bible in his lap. Father Mateo doesn’t take his gaze from the book.

“I’m here for a daily prayer session,” says the priest easily. “I can go, if you’d prefer privacy.”

I can feel Nathan weighing his options behind me. “No. Stay. It’s all right.”

I drop my head back down and pretend to pray, too. After a minute it becomes a real prayer—as real as I’ve prayed in the last few months, anyway. Most of the prayers are not about my father, but the ones that are get confused quickly. Is it better for him to wake up and see that everything’s come to ruin? Or will he see the ray of hope in my pregnancy, too? I want to fight with him—how much did he know about his brother? How much did he agree to? Did he ever fight for me? But obviously you can’t argue with a person in the ICU, even if they are awake.

Nathan’s phone rings. It must be important information because he lifts it to his ear. “Hello?” His footsteps retreat. The door opens with a whoosh, then closes with an identical sound. I gather my father’s hand in mine and look into his face.

“Everything all right, Avery?”

Father Mateo keeps his eyes on the Bible. If anyone is watching on a security camera we can both claim that he was praying and I was murmuring to my father.

No. It’s not all right. It’s inconceivably fucking terrible. And though I open my mouth to tell him that, I can’t go through with it.

I can’t trust him.

Nathan’s proof of that. I thought I could trust Nathan, of all people, and now I’m locked in a death match with him. Those wedding vows were serious. Death is the only thing that’s going to part us. I just hope it’s his death that frees me from this hellish life, and not mine. My heart aches with wanting to tell the priest all this. To confess.

But what if he’s one of them?

I can’t think of a single person, other than Rome, that I can trust right now.

“Of course,” I say.

A beat of silence passes, a sun-filled beat that gives me time to notice the dust specks floating in the air and the slow turn of the page in the priest’s bible.

“Our father is always here for you, Avery,” he intones. It sounds like another prayer. A promise. “And so am I. You can contact me any time of the day or night and I will help you in your hour of need. On earth as it is in heaven.”

Tears rush to my eyes and tighten my throat. God, I want to tell him. The priest is perhaps the only person on earth who might be able to help me. Nobody would suspect him. He’s invisible to the Capulet family—another part of the church. But that means he was invisible to me, too. I wasn’t keeping watch for signs of corruption.

“Thank you,” I tell him thickly, and bring my father’s hand to my lips to kiss his knuckles. “That means a lot.” And then I lean in to my father’s ear. I don’t have long before Nathan comes back. “Wake up, you stubborn old bastard. I’m pregnant.”

Chapter Sixteen

AVERY

“Avery?”

Nathan’s call finds me in the office of the Capulet mansion, staring out the window. I’ve been big on staring out the window in the two weeks since our wedding night. It’s a pretty fantasy, out there. The sun rises and sets and things actually change.

Nothing changes in here. Every day and night, Nathan fucks me and makes me sleep beside him. He says it’s to make sure we catch the day when I actually ovulate. I shuffle the papers on the desk as if it’ll make any difference.

“I’m in the office,” I answer. It feels like tripping a mousetrap. Not that he couldn’t have found me before. He could find me anywhere, thanks to the damn tracker.

---