Page 29 of Violent Reign (Violent Kingdom)

Inside the atrium, Isobel gets close, then closer, until she’s finally pushing me behind one of the huge support pillars. “What are you doing? His office isn’t here.”

“Yeah, but he is.” She inclines her head toward the cafe on the other side of the atrium. I’ll be damned. There’s Nathan Capulet, sipping a fucking latte out of a real cup and saucer. He’s got no urgency about him. This isn’t a guy who’s late for a meeting. This is a guy who’s riding out his new position with minimal effort. He is no Avery Capulet, that’s for sure.

Where is she? All reports we have about her say that she spent plenty of time in Capulet Tower before everything went down. She was a rising star, with only her former fiancé, Joshua Grayson, in her way. Avery was her father’s protégé. With her uncle—Nathan’s adoptive father—out of the picture, she should be running meetings left and right. But when I called the office on the way over, her assistant told me she wasn’t in for the foreseeable future, and refused to schedule a time to meet with her.

Nathan lingers over the latte for way longer than is necessary, then gets up and straightens his jacket. Isobel watches the cup, muttering something under her breath, and I track him to the elevators.

“And...he’s on. Doors shutting. It went up.”

She’s moving by the time I say up, striding confidently toward the cafe with an evidence bag pulled partway out of her purse. The two of us drop into seats at the table Nathan just left. It’s conveniently close to a garbage station with a tray to put the dishes in.

“So then I said, I don’t care what you want for dinner, Mike. This is what we’re having.”

“How’d he take that, huh?” I lean in. “Let me take care of this for you.”

“Oh, no, I got it.” Isobel sweeps up the cup and saucer and leans out like she’s going to tip it into the tray, but then it all falls neatly into her evidence bag, which then disappears into her oversized purse. My pulse is fast, fluttery. I have the creeping sensation that if we don’t get out of here soon, Nathan will reappear in some impossible way. Like directly behind me. Fuck that.

One of the café employees comes over, her concealer not quite covering the bags under her eyes. “Can I get you guys anything else?”

Isobel purses her lips, pretending to think about it. “I think we’re good, actually. Thank you.” The barista goes away, and Isobel drops a ten-dollar bill on the table. “You’re right. Something’s up with that guy. Asshole didn’t even leave a tip.”

* * *

Running the DNA through the database takes the better part of the next day. There are more pressing investigations than ours. Isobel works through her stack of paperwork, we take our new assignments, and I can’t stop scrolling through wedding photos from the Capulet nuptials. It’s all creepy as fuck.

“Got it,” Isobel says, and she comes over to perch on my desk while we read the DNA report together. I read it once, then read it again.

It doesn’t make any sense.

What the fuck!?

“Uh...are you seeing this?” I ask Isobel, blinking to make sure I’m seeing the words in front of me correctly.

“I can read even better than you, thank you Elliot,” she says, but her brow is furrowed. “That says that they’re a family match, not close enough for siblings, but definitely close enough to rule them cousins by blood.”

“But Nathan is adopted.”

“He was‘adopted’.” She uses her fingers to make air quotes. “That’s the official story. “But obviously, things are a little more complicated. They could be real cousins.”

I lean back in my seat, mind scrambling to make sense of this latest development. “But why would his parents pretend they didn’t have a real son if they actually did? There are no other uncles in the family, right?”

“None. He has to be Enzo and Eliza’s. That’s the most logical explanation.”

I shake my head. “No. It says Capulet, right? It means he has to be Enzo’s son. It doesn’t mean he has to be Eliza’s son.”

We look at each other for a long, silent moment. “Told you something wasn’t right,” Isobel says. “We need those adoption records.”

Chapter Eighteen

AVERY

Nathan sitsbeside me in the waiting room for Verona’s most preeminent OB, flipping through pamphlets on postpartum depression and caring for your baby like I imagine a lot of fathers-to-be do. But he’s got one thing wrong about his performance. He doesn’t look nervous at all. He frowns down at the pamphlets, reading them over and over without a spark of real interest. He does not jiggle his foot impatiently. He does not reach for my hand.

“I want to go back to work.”

He drops the pamphlets on the table. “Are you sure you’re ready for that?”

I’ll go crazy without it—if all I ever do is make calls and attend OB appointments. “I need to go back to work, Nate. People will start to wonder why I’m not there.”

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