Page 34 of Violent Reign (Violent Kingdom)

“None. Not by Avery and not by any of Adeline’s close friends. They thought she was single. Shit, she was promised to that Grayson guy. They were about to be married.”

“Then whose baby was that? ” I want the answer to appear on the page. I have a feeling it would clarify at least the last several years of Montague/Capulet feuding. “It wasn’t Grayson’s. They’d have a shotgun wedding and fudge the dates if it were his. No. It had to be someone else’s. Someone the Capulets didn’t want to mix blood with. But who?”

“That’s the million-dollar question,” says Isobel. “I’m sure I won’t like the answer, either.”

Chapter Twenty-One

AVERY

After workI shut myself into the bedroom that was mine for my entire childhood and flip the lock on the door. It won’t keep Nathan out—nothing would keep him out—but I just need a minute. I might get an hour, if he stays at the office late enough. He usually does, now that I’m knocked up. I guess his burning desire to impregnate me has been satisfied, so he can focus on ruling the criminal underworld and the financial world while I gestate a baby he believes is his.

Blood related. Nathan and I are blood related.

Why did they keep that a secret?

My mind reels, and all I can think to do is move around the room, touching all the things that used to be mine. The trinkets and artwork were packed up weeks ago, but the full-sized bed is still here, complete with the lilac bedding set I’ve been sleeping on for years

I sink down in the blessed silence and lay my head on a stack of pillows. If I close my eyes and put everything out of my mind, I can almost imagine being sixteen again. Before any of this happened. When Rome was just the boy next door, the one who lived by himself in his condemned, burnt-out mansion. The boy who drove a hearse around the neighborhood just to fuck with people, the boy who visited me behind the horse stables and in the hallowed halls at our exclusive prep school. The boy I fell in love with. My first kiss. My first love.

Before Tyler. Before Nathan.

Before Adeline died.

I slip one hand beneath the pillow, underneath my head. I’ll have to get up soon so that Nathan doesn’t come home and come looking for me. He’d think I was “hiding out.” My stomach twists with nausea, reminding me that I am indeed pregnant.Rome, where are you? How do I get back to you? How do we get out of this nightmare?

How did this room get so old in such a short time? It feels like my surroundings have aged a hundred years since I was last in here. It could be that I feel a hundred years old. A thousand.

I turn over onto my back and open my eyes. All I can hear is Elliot’s voice. ‘Nathan’s a Capulet by blood.’Think, Avery. What does it mean?

Nathan came to the family when he was twelve. So either Eliza and Enzo hid him for eleven years… or he was somewhere else. Living as somebody else’s son. Whatever happened might explain why he’s become...himself. File that away for another time—find out what the hell happened to Nathan during those eleven years.

Another shard of understanding wedges itself into my mind. If Nathan was the father of those embryos and not Joshua Grayson, that explains the weird subterfuge and stealing my eggs. If we’re blood related,first cousinsrelated, it would make sense that Enzo would want to test the embryos for abnormalities before implanting one. The whole scheme with embryos made from Joshua’s sperm and my stolen eggs never made sense to me—why not just trap me in a situation like this one and force me to get pregnant the old-fashioned way? This is some weird, medieval royal family shit. Keeping it in the family, literally. I would puke, but I’ve already done that several times today, and my teeth hurt from all the acid bile that they’ve been subjected to over the past several weeks.

The Capulets are fucking insane. Except… wait… I’m technically a Capulet, and not just any Capulet. For all intents and purposes, I’m queen of this motherfucking castle, even if only in name.But I’m not really a Capulet anymore, am I?

That thought shakes me out of this bizarre, hazy terror I’ve been trapped in. I’m married to Nathan, but I’m not thinking of myself as a Capulet. A surprised laugh bursts out of me and hits the ceiling. I’m a Montague now, in spirit if not legally. Or is it legal? Rome’s father could have sent in paperwork, but...no, I saw the taped-together shards of the marriage certificate Nathan showed me before he burned it in front of me. The only proof that we were married. And even if there had been a second piece of paperwork to legally show our marriage, someone would have come across that when Nathan applied for our marriage license.

The tiny bubble of hope inside me deflates. Whatever. Paperwork doesn’t make a person who they are. The world might believe I’m a Capulet, by birth and now by marriage to my fucking cousin, but I know what’s real. I’m a Montague, baby. And I’m having a baby Montague.

Movement in the doorway of my walk-in closet jerks me upright, my heart pounding. Nathan has stood in that closet a thousand times. We’ve hung out there for hours. I clap my hands over my mouth to stifle a scream.

But it’s nothing. Nathan hasn’t come home from work early to hide out in my former walk-in closet. He’s not standing there, waiting to take out all the stresses of the workday on me. It’s just a closet, with a sunbeam falling across the open door. A cloud went across the sun.

I lower my sweaty palms and wipe them over the fabric of my skirt. I thought this room would be a comfort, but it’s too haunted by all my previous run-ins with Nathan. It’s making me sick.

Back out in the hallway the pressure on my chest releases. There’s still time to figure all of this out as long as I stay alive. As long as I’m a dutiful little wife and keep Rome alive.

Far below, I feel the rumble of the garage door opening. That will be Nathan, home from work. He’ll expect me to sit with him for dinner, prepared by the chef. He’ll expect me to make polite conversation. He’ll expect me to bear each moment, and the next, and the next, without doing what I really want to do, which is to kill him.

Stay alive.

At least for today, I will.

Chapter Twenty-Two

AVERY

One fun partof pregnancy that nobody has ever talked about—at least in front of me—is the goddamn, unrelenting insomnia.

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