Page 57 of Violent Reign (Violent Kingdom)

What I want is for Nathan to be dead. I look down into my daughter’s face, her tiny cheeks working as she nurses, and I feel that old determination gather in my gut. I want him to be dead, and I want to do it myself.

Obviously, I can’t say that to Elliot. I’m not even in any shape to go down and—and what? Bribe the guards? Press a pillow to his face? I breathe in my daughter’s scent and remind myself that I have time.

“We’d like the guard,” Rome says, in such a strong voice it makes me jump. “We want someone here all the time. Don’t we, Avery?”

“Yeah.” I look into Elliot’s face and put on my best new-mom smile. It’s almost real, that smile. “We want someone here all the time. Whoever you can spare. Just in case.”

Chapter Forty

AVERY

EIGHT WEEKS LATER

No more Capulet mansion.

That’s the first decision Rome and I made when we drove away from the hospital after three days of recovery with the twins in the back of a brand-new SUV in a bright and shiny canary yellow that I fucking love. I chose the car because it looks nothing like the dull, black cars I’ve been riding in my entire life. I paid extra for them to install the best baby car seats on the market. The whole package was waiting for us in the lot when we checked out of the hospital.

I sank into the passenger seat and Rome drove us across town in the swaying stop-and-go of traffic, both babies sleeping in their seats, all the the way to the Capulet mansion. Everything was fine until the driveway. I’d hired all-new security staff while we were in the hospital, thanks to Elliot’s suggestion, and one man in a tight black polo shirt and covered in tattoos waited on the front porch.

Rome put the car in park.

“Here’s the thing.” I looked at that muscled guy and he looked good enough to protect us. “I don’t want to go in there.”

Rome craned his neck to look past me. “Because of the guy?”

“It’s a haunted house, and I don’t want to go in there.”

“Okay.” He put the car in drive, which made me laugh.

“Where are you going to go?”

“I’m just going to drive until I find a place you want to go into.”

And that was how we ended up taking the babies to the penthouse suite at the Four Seasons. For the first ten days of their new life, we did nothing but cuddle them and order room service. I got the new security team to stand outside our door in shifts, twenty-four hours a day. Absolutely nothing happened to anyone. It was lovely.

At the end of ten days the four of us moved into another home on the other side of town. Brand-new, built only the year before, with everything gleaming and fresh. Nobody had lived in it after it was finished.

There are no ghosts here, and when I wake up in the king-size bed in the master suite, my only complaint is that it seems a little too big. Rome sleeps on his side, his hair rumpled. I go back and forth on the night nanny. Sometimes I want her here, but other times I can’t stand it. Last night I couldn’t stand it, so it was up to us to get up a million times.

I crawl over to him and walk my fingers from his shoulder to his wrist. My husband—he’s officially my husband now, thanks to a few signed papers and a trip to the courthouse—turns onto his back and takes my face in his hands just as I wriggle myself up above his hips.

“Avery, you can’t,” he says sleepily, even as his hips rock up to meet mine. “You’re going to hurt yourself. You just had twins.”

“It’s been eight weeks.” I plant kisses down the side of his neck, turning them into nibbles when I reach his chest. “I’m fine. And I want you. Here, feel.” He lets me tug his hand down between my legs, and then Rome is awake—very awake. And hard. He pushes his boxers off and pushes inside me and yes, yes, I needed this.

Rome fucks me with only slightly less abandon than usual, his hands on my hips, and I fall into it the way I’ve fallen into his eyes a thousand times before. Pleasure knots itself low in my belly, winding and winding until I’m rewarded for my early-morning efforts with the sweetest orgasm of my life. Rome finishes close behind me, his eyes closed and his body all mine. Mine. Mine.

I want to lay on his chest and cuddle with him for the rest of the day, but a cry breaks the silence of the house. Followed by another cry. Rome’s eyes fly open. “I’m going to beat you to the nursery,” he says.

“You should probably put your pants on first.”

“That’s not fair. That gives you a head—”

By the time he saysstartI’m flying for the door, pulling it open and running down the hall. The nursery is nothing like the one I planned out at the Capulet mansion. I paid a designer a rush fee to make it as whimsical as fucking possible. Half the room is painted a cloudy blue and the other half is cotton-candy pink, with two white cribs and coordinating everything. Lola gurgles at me from her crib and I lean over to her first, scooping up her snug, swaddled body. God, the smell of her—so fresh and new and clean. It’s intoxicating. And her fuzzy head against my cheek is the best thing I’ve ever felt.

Rome has somehow managed to get his pants on and come in here before I can get to Jasper . The four of us go downstairs and Rome makes a bottle for Jasper while I breastfeed Lola on the new couch in the living room. It’s only clean in here because I had Elliot and his security team vet a full staff. Everybody was background-checked to within an inch of their lives. I know, I know. It sounds fucked up to trust people after everything. But I can’t live the rest of my life locked in paranoia.

I won’t.

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