Page 49 of Violent Reign (Violent Kingdom)

Eliza nods. “They are cousins,” she says. “By blood, not just by name.”

Great. Avery is married to her actual cousin by blood. I push away thoughts of how fucking wrong that is, and try to maintain focus on the present situation.

My stomach twists painfully as another thought occurs to me. “Nobody saw Nathan until he was twelve.”

Eliza sits straighter, shame written across her features. “We kept him hidden. We bought a house in Oakland that had wooden floors and a soundproof basement, and we kept him there.”

Oh, Jesus. I know that house. I lived my worst horrors inside that house with Avery.

I thought I was monstrous for killing four people to get myself to safety. But now I know that I’m looking at a real monster. “You left him there alone? A toddler? A little boy?”

Eliza falters. “We couldn’t let anybody see him.”

I want to kill her. “The two of you put your heads together and you couldn’t think of a better idea than abandoning him in an empty house?”

“It wasn’t empty all the time.” Eliza seems mildly offended. “We went to visit when we could. But it got less as he got older. He didn’t seem to want us there.”

“He was covered in scars when I met him,” I whisper.

“Burns from the fire,” Eliza says, lying through her teeth.

My father shakes his head. He’s trembling, rage and pain consuming his features. I swallow a sharp lump in my throat. My father is just hearing, for the first time, that not only is his dead child not biologically his - but that he’s not dead at all. That he’s spent his childhood being tortured and deprived of any kind of joy at the hands of two psychopaths. My father is a kind man, but right now, he looks like he’s about to burn the whole world down, starting with this very house we’re in.

I think of the first time I saw Nathan without a shirt on, in the locker room at the school we all attended. The scars that he tried to hide, the ones that criss-crossed his back like a giant map of pain.

“They weren’t burns,” I snap. “They were cuts. They were remnants of torture.”

“You don’t know what it was like to try and contain him,” Eliza protests. “He was so hard to keep under control. He cried for his mother for fucking years.” Bitterness flashes across her features. “I told him, as soon as he behaved - as soon as he calledmemommy - he could come home with us. And he just wouldn’t do it.”

“You’re animals,” my father whispers to Eliza. “My boy. My Sebastian. You broke him.”

The knowledge gnaws at my mind relentlessly.

Sebastian. Nathan. The baby.

Sebastian. Nathan. My brother.

Nathan, who grew up alone, who was constantly locked behind heavy doors, who cried for our mother and endured endless torture until hebehaved. Enzo and Eliza turned him into another monster, a far more fatal monster.

Nathan only knows how to survive. I doubt he can even feel emotions.

“We brought him home eventually,” says Eliza, like it absolves her of what she had done. “And he had a good life. And that’s what happened to Nathan.” A strange light shines in her eyes. “He had a good life.”

My father has moved quickly, a gun in his hand, his finger already depressing the trigger as he holds the muzzle snug against Eliza’s temple. “No!” I scream, leaping to my feet, but it’s too late. A shot rings out, echoing in the cavernous mansion. Eliza falls to the side, blood exploding across her face as the bullet enters her skull.Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck.

“She wanted to be absolved of her sins,” my father says blankly. “I guess she got her wish.”

Chapter Thirty-Two

AVERY

Nathan has relaxedin the last weeks of my pregnancy. It’s weird… for some reason, I thought he’d get even more paranoid, more protective. But it’s as if he thinks he’s already won. In a way, I suppose he has. He believes I’m carrying his heirs in my belly. He has Rome tucked away in some godforsaken corner of the world where I can’t find him. And he has my father clinging to life in the hospital.

I guess he thinks I won’t be able to run anywhere in a hurry, and he’d be right. He’s stopped coming to appointments with me. He’s spending more hours at the office, catching up on things before the babies come,in his words. I guess he thinks the tracker he implanted inside me and the fact he has Rome hidden away somewhere are enough deterrents to stop me from trying to escape.

It’s a Tuesday morning when my existence implodes. It starts with a cryptic call from Doctor Hollis. Something about my last blood test results being a little off, and him wanting to double check my hemoglobin or something. He assures me it isn’t serious enough to panic, but that it does need to be looked at immediately. Nathan is still home when I get the call, and I put it on speaker while he listens in. I don’t offer a suggestion. I just wait for him to decide what he’s going to do, my feet still in my slippers, my hand resting on my enormous belly as I sip the decaf coffee the chef brewed for me. I’m a mess, my hair everywhere, nightgown stretched tight over my massive bump. I haven’t showered, I look like shit, and leaving the house is the farthest thing from my mind when Nathan suddenly takes the coffee from me.

“Ten minutes,” he says, shooing me upstairs. “Put on something that fits. I’ll drop you off at the hospital on my way into the office.”

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