Page 38 of Violent Reign (Violent Kingdom)

Eight weeks.

Ten weeks.

Twelve weeks.

The doctor congratulates me on reaching the second trimester and I smile, god, I smile so hard. Because I’ve made it this many weeks without dying and the baby has survived. Some nights I lie awake next to Nathan and think that if anything happened to the baby—it’s a one in four chance, the Internet reminds me, a one in four chance that I could miscarry—then I might not live through this.

Fourteen weeks. We travel on the Capulet jet to a private conference in Greece. Those of us ostensibly at the top of the Capulet enterprise meet with leaders of other powerful families. There’s always an uneasy truce. We hammer out territory deals under the guise of business. I wear couture maternity clothes that have been designed for me by the same woman who does clothes for the royal family in England. There are skirt suits and dinner dresses and it’s way too early to be wearing maternity clothes, but Nathan orders them anyway. It’s like he wants everyone to know.

Sixteen weeks. I feel the baby kick for the first time and imagine how Rome’s face would look if I could tell him about it. It’s the lightest feeling, a flutter. Almost nothing, but it’s there. I feel it.

Eighteen weeks. I wake up in the middle of the night to find Nathan standing at the window in the master bedroom, his face slashed by moonlight, staring at me. A full-body chill moves through me. Does he know I’m watching? The expression on his face doesn’t change. His eyes are too bright, too focused. I let my eyes flutter shut like I’m still sleeping. When I open them again, he’s gone, and the bed is empty.

Twenty weeks. Nathan doesn’t attend the ultrasound but he wants to keep the sex a secret from me. When the envelope comes in the mail he waves it in front of my face, then burns it with a lighter until it’s nothing but ash.

Twenty-two weeks. When I go to the bathroom, there is a gush of blood. It’s enough to make me freak the fuck out. I’m home alone, and in my panic, I call an ambulance, consequences be damned. By the time Nathan gets into the hospital room, I’ve already had the shock of my fucking life.

Because what he doesn’t know is that the midwife’s face went wide-open and shocked as she drew the wand over my belly. What he doesn’t know is that she gasped a little. “Avery,” she said. “There are two babies in here.”

He doesn’t know that the tips of my fingers went numb and I couldn’t take my eyes off the ultrasound. It took some maneuvering to see them both. The girl was hidden behind the boy. They are a pair, sharing the only space they have. Nathan has been keeping it from me. I don’t know why. Maybe he thinks the less I know, the more control he has over me. I’ll never forget the look in his eyes when the doctor explained the probable reason for my bleeding.Cervical trauma.Pulling somebody’s IUD out will do that. Raping somebody will do that. Nathan hates himself, I can tell. The irony that he might have put his unborn children in danger because of what he did to their mother doesn’t escape me. The doctor wheels me down to surgery to put in something called a cerclage. A stitch that will keep my cervix closed until the babies are ready to be born.

Twenty-four weeks. People openly congratulate me in the office. No meeting starts without making sure Avery Capulet has a glass of water and a snack. The employees at Capulet Tower are sucking up in a big way. I’m sure it helps that I’m Nathan’s wife. Nathan, who has fired eight people this week. He promoted six of those people last week. Once per day, someone comes up to me to tell me how well my husband is running the company. Every other day, someone asks me if I’m ready to pop. I am not remotely ready to pop. I’m just huge.

Twenty-six weeks. The splashing. Again. This time I stand at the French doors and watch Nathan tip himself into the pool over and over and over. Each time, I hope that he won’t break the surface again. Each time, he does.

Twenty-eight weeks. We fly to Paris on the Capulet jet so the European press can take pictures of my baby bump. Nathan makes me sit in the same seat I used when Enzo tried to kill me. He keeps his hand gripped tight around the back of my neck most of the flight, gently whispering threats in my ear every now and then, lest I step out of line or try to escape. The babies turn and kick. They have no idea anything is wrong.

“Does that help with morning sickness?” Our personal flight attendant beams down at Nathan. “I’ve heard that different pressure points can help with the nausea.” I don’t have morning sickness anymore, but I can’t meet her eyes. My only choice is to jump upright and say that I have to pee. This buys me three minutes in the bathroom by myself. When I get back to my seat, food is waiting—pasta and vegetables with heavy spices that make my stomach turn.

“You need to eat,” growls Nathan. “You’re not taking care of yourself. You should have gained more weight by now.” I sit down and pick up a fork, though the thought of putting any of it in my mouth makes me gag. “If you can’t do it yourself, I’ll feed it to you.”

I know he will, so I choke it down, bite after torturous bite.

We dine at a steakhouse in downtown San Francisco the night we fly back in from the conference. All I want is to go home, but Nathan insists. He orders all of my favorite side dishes: mac and cheese, green beans, mashed potatoes. He also insists on fork-feeding me, as if we’re a couple of loved-up newlyweds. I sit through the torture patiently, but inside, I am in flames. The rage and the hormones, man. I want to kill my fucking husband, all the fucking time.

We get home and I ask to see Rome. He’s on the iPad screen, same as always. But it’s not enough. My tears drip onto the glass screen as I hold my swollen belly and Nathan pulls the screen away. “Getting upset isn’t good for the babies,” he chides. I panic. I’ve only had the screen for a few moments. It’s not enough. Nothing is ever enough.

“Please,” I beg, reaching for the screen in his hand. “Just let me see him. Just let me talk to him on the phone.” Something about growing Rome’s babies makes me pine for him that much more urgently. My need for him has reached fever pitch. I’m afraid one or both of us will die before he even knows he has two children. A boy and a girl. Our babies, made with love, made with urgency. I have become obsessed with somehow convincing Nathan to give me a morsel of Rome Montague.

“If you be a good girl, maybe, I’ll think about it.” He unbuttons his fly and tosses a throw pillow from the sofa onto the floor. How considerate. My husband wants me to be comfortable while I suck his cock.

I do what I’m told and I get down on my knees, not that easy in my condition. I open my mouth and I give the performance of a lifetime, so much so that Nathan’s knees almost buckle when he comes down my throat and demands I swallow. When he’s done, he pulls me back to my feet.

“You suck dick like a whore,” he compliments me.

I roll my eyes, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand. “I want to see Rome. You said maybe.”

“I’ve decided no,” Nathan says, with a casual shrug. Red, crushing rage mists over my vision and I go at him, fists flying. Nathan parries my blows easily, catching me in a bearhug and letting me fight against his vice-like grip until I’ve got no energy left. He puts his fingers against my neck and frowns. “Don’t have a meltdown,” he says. His fingers travel down my clavicle, across one nipple, then further south. I’m wearing a dress that ruches at my belly and falls to my knees, and Nathan wastes no time in flipping me around so my back is to him, pushing me against the kitchen counter as he slides my panties across with his fingers and pushes into me slowly. “So wet,” he teases. “This will make you feel better.”

I moan involuntarily when he enters me, and the worst part is that it feelsso good. Especially when I can’t see him. My uterus is the size of a fucking bus, and all it takes to make me come at the moment is a few minutes of slow, languid strokes while he teases my nipples through the thin fabric of my dress. I start to cry as I feel the first orgasm approach, a tsunami I can’t run from as it crashes over me. A sob rips from my throat as my pussy clamps down on Nathan’s cock, as I push my hips back to meet him instead of fighting his grip. He finishes again, his cum sliding down my thighs as they shake.

“Tell me you love me,” Nathan says softly, his breath hot in my ear as his hips pin me to the counter. “You don’t have to mean it.”

My mind flashes back to the basement, to Rome and I, to the moments after we took those fatal heart-shaped pills and waited for death to pull us under. How I had uttered those exact words to Rome.

Tell me you love me. You don’t have to mean it.

“I’ll kill you one day,” I vow, through gritted teeth, tugging my dress back down so it covers me. “I will. I’ll kill you in your sleep. I’ll poison your fucking food. Whatever it takes. I’ll fucking kill you one day.”

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