Page 51 of Cruel Heir

“I did. A very interesting one.”

“Oh?” Lucia sets her book down. “Did you come up here to talk to me about it?” The tone of her voice suggests how very unlikely she thinks that is.

“As a matter of fact, I did.” I reach into my pocket as the confusion spreads across her face, and I toss the packet of pills onto the bed between us.

I thought I would relish the feeling when I saw her realize that she’s been discovered—how utterly fucked she is. But instead, as I see the comprehension dawn on her face and I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that Don Gaeta and his wife weren’t lying, all I feel is the crushing weight of how much I had begun to hope things might change between us.

Lucia staresat the pills for a long moment, and I can see the expression on her face flickering between fear and defiance. She hadto have known what my reaction would be if she were caught, how utterly furious I would be. And yet, I can see that a part of her wants to argue thatsheis in the right to have done this.

Finally, both emotions fade, and she looks up at me, her expression utterly hopeless.

“What did you think I was going to do?” she asks softly. “Let you force me into giving you a child, when you’re hell-bent on destroying everything I love?”

My jaw clenches hard enough that I can hear my teeth grinding together. “Your father took mine from me,” I snarl. “He killed him before my very eyes. You have lived a pampered and spoiled existence your entire life, and when I ask you to do the thing you havealwaysbeen raised to do, you lie and sneak andtrickme—”

“Howdareyou!” Lucia flies off of the bed, her hands fisting at her sides as she glares at me, all of her fear gone in a sudden show of defiance to match my anger. “Howdareyou talk abouttrickingsomeone, when you dragged me here against my will and forced me to marry you!”

“You were always going to marry someone you didn’t want. It’s the way things are.” I narrow my eyes at her. “Even as sheltered as you were, you can’t tell me that you believed that you were going to fall inlove, that you were going to choose your husband for yourself.”

Even as I say it, looking at her, I feel a tight knot in my gut that feels utterly unfamiliar to me. I should be punishing her, ordering her to bend over the bed for my belt, demanding her submission and her penitence for what she’s done. But I find that I don’t want to hurt her. Worse still, theideaof hurting her feels appalling, as if I’d be doing something terrible.

I want to understandwhyshe did this. And I know I’m losing control—not only of her, but of myself.

“I never thought that,” Lucia whispers, her eyes bright with unshed tears. “I knew my husband would be chosen for me. But Itrustedmy father to choose someone decent. Someone who wouldn’t hurt me. Someone who would at least respect me—”

A laugh bursts out of me at that, dark and sarcastic, and I can’thelp it even as I see the hurt confusion twisting its way across her face. “You thought your father would have chosen a man for you out of consideration of whether or not he wouldrespectyou? Bekindto you? The same man who is— possibly at this very moment—holding meetings to decide whether or not it makes sense to come and rescue you, or if your value is too diminished to chance the loss of men?”

“I don’t believe you.” Lucia’s voice is shaking. “Iwon’t.”

“If you believe one thing, Lucia, believe that. Your father didn’t come to control the Family by making decisions based on his emotions. Truly, I doubt that he thinks of things in those terms at all.”

As I say it, I feel that twist in my gut again. I’m doing exactly that at this moment. When I first brought Lucia here, I would have flown into a rage at the discovery I’ve just made. I would have wanted to kill her over it. To strangle the defiance out of her. But now—

All I feel is that I’ve lost something. A possibility, perhaps, of a future that I’d started to imagine for us. And I know that my hesitance to exert my power over her, to show her who is in control with violence, if necessary, is a symptom of making decisions with emotions that can only weaken me.

“If that’s true—” her lips are quivering. “Then I’m all alone.”

I can’t stop myself. I take a step forward, then another, until I’m standing right in front of her. She flinches back, as if she expects violence, and the part of my mind that’s been devising all of this at the start shouts at me that violence is how Ishouldbe handling this. But instead, I reach out, cupping her face in my palm, looking down at her. If she tried to read my expression, I know she would see how much I ache to change the way things are.

“You don’t have to be alone, Lucia,” I murmur, brushing my thumb over her cheekbone. “Wedon’t have to be this way.”

Tears hang on her lower lashes, and for a moment, I think I feel her lean into my touch. I think I can feel her nearly give in to what I think we both crave.

She looks at me, and then at the pills on the bed.

“I won’t do it.” Her lips press together thinly, her chin tilting up with whatever last defiance is in her. “I’ll throw myself off of thebalcony before I give you a child. If I truly have no one, and even my father doesn’t care enough to save me, then what purpose do I have to keep trying? The only thing I can do is deny you the chance to make this into some—someempireof your own.”

She nearly spits the last word, wrenching away from me as tears spill over her cheeks. I feel my control thinning, my muscles tensing with renewed anger at the thought of her denying me not only a child, butherself—and a terrible, unexpected, and wrenching sense of loss at the thought of losing her, too. Of losing her so permanently.

I grab her wrist, and Lucia jerks backward. “I don’t want to hurt you,” I murmur, but she twists in my grasp, her eyes going wide with something approaching panic. Frustration washes over me as I scoop her up into my arms, carrying her towards the door. I see her twist her head around, looking at the pills on the bed with one last desperate glance before I carry her out of the bedroom and down the stairs to the second floor. I take her all the way to one of the smaller guest rooms in the hall, shoving the door open and depositing her in the middle of the rug next to the bed.

“There.” I glare at her. “A room with no balcony, and no ensuite tub either, so no ideas about drowning yourself. I’ll make sure that there’s not a damn thing available to you, if you’re going to make those kinds of threats, do you understand me? I’ll make sure there’s someone watching over you during every damn thing you do. You won’t be able to bathe or eat or so much as pee without a pair of trusted eyes on you, if I can’t believe that you won’t take some drastic measure out of this.”

The words come out cold with rage, tight and ground through my teeth, but the truth is that beneath the anger, I feel a heavy, pounding fear. I’ve known loss—I watched my father die in front of me, for fuck’s sake—but I’ve never known the loss of someone who I knew so intimately, someone who I truly—

God, I can’t love her. If I love her—

I look down at her crumpled, tearful shape on the rug in front of me, and I have the sudden urge to kneel down and gather her into myarms. No one has ever made me feel anything like this before. If I allow myself to believe that I feel it, it undoes so much.

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