Their Reign (The Rite Trilogy 3)

9

JUDGE

Betrayed. That is the single word I come to at the end of the day every single day.

She is pregnant. And she has kept it from me knowingly from the beginning. From the moment she didn’t swallow the pill she put into her mouth right before my eyes.

I tap Kentucky Lightning and click my tongue. She takes off, galloping toward the jump I barely stopped Mercedes from taking that day so long ago that it feels like another lifetime.

She lives in her room now and I in my study. I go upstairs to my bedroom to shower and change. As much as I don’t want to, I often catch myself slowing at her door. And sometimes when I do, I hear her cry quietly. I allow myself to place my forehead against the door. I’ve even closed my hand over the doorknob. But I’ve stopped short of opening it. And as I stand there, I let myself feel the agony of it all wash through me. The impossibility. Because there’s only one way this can go. And we will both lose.

What the hell did she expect to happen? What did she want out of this? Marriage? I won’t. I can’t. I swore it to myself a long time ago. Only I know my reasons. She thinks she does, but she only understands the very surface of it all.

But time is running out. I need to talk to Santiago and soon.

After my ride, I hand the horse off to Paolo, who takes him with a quiet nod. The staff knows to stay away from me. My mood is so dark it’s as though a pall has settled over the entire house. I go into my study. I should shower first, but I don’t. Because I need to make the call. Tell him we need to talk. There’s no hiding the pregnancy anymore.

Even though it’s before noon, I pour myself a scotch once the door is closed and drink it all. I don’t allow her to put the salve on my back anymore. Not since the incident before the christening. Not since I bent her over the table and had her again. There was no pleasure in it though, not for me. Certainly not for her. But there was one thing I said that wasn’t quite right. This is my fault. Not hers. I was the one in control. I bedded her. Not coming inside her is an idiotic form of birth control. It’s pathetic I ever thought that would work. Because even if the method was foolproof, the draw to come inside her was too strong. And I gave in to it again and again and again.

It just proves my point about marriage. About what I am. Why I can’t take a wife or be a father. I am more beast than man. I have not mastered the animal inside me. It’s been there all along, quiet, slumbering, one eye open as it patiently lies in wait.

Pouring a second scotch, I swallow it down. I pick up my phone to call my friend, knowing he will probably never speak to me again. I deserve no less. My finger hesitates over the call button. It takes me a long minute to push it.

But before I can even put the phone to my ear, my study door crashes open, and I spin to find a madman at my door. Because that’s the only way to describe the expression on Santiago’s face. The tension in every muscle in his body. The rage emanating from him is a palpable thing, a thing that swallows up the air in the room and roils as I see what he’s holding. The glass box with the once-white sheet inside it. A trophy for Sovereign Sons. The sheet stained with the virgin blood of their wives.

With a roar more animal than man, he sends it crashing against the portrait of Carlisle over the mantel. The box shatters into a thousand pieces, glass and brass and the shame of what I did, what I took, at our feet. My grandfather’s face is damaged from the impact, his mouth made to look as though he is grinning.

“How. Dare. You!” Santiago stalks to me.

I stand still. Arms at my sides. Hands fisted. The phone is still inside one. He draws his arm back and delivers a blow so fierce that it momentarily blinds me, sending my head jerking backward.

“I trusted you!” I’ve barely turned back to him when he does it again, this one catching my temple, making the room spin before I can straighten to take the next one. And the one after that. And the one after that.

“I trusted you, and what did you do? What the hell did you do but betray me!”

My ears ring, and I taste the copper of blood when the next blow to my gut has me doubling over.

“Nothing to say for yourself, you fucking bastard?”

The phone falls to the floor, and I clutch the desk to straighten and face him again.

“Say. Something!”

What can I say?

“Fucking talk, you goddamn bastard!”

“You’re right.” It’s all I can muster because what else is there? I deserve his wrath. I deserve to be punished. That lashing I took in Mercedes’s place, it was all a part of this. If I ever believed otherwise, I was a fool. A liar.

He looks at me for a long, long minute, and I see the betrayal in his eyes behind the rage. The pain of learning the truth about someone you thought was better than he is.

I swallow the bile in my throat and open my arms to take more.

And he delivers.

Gripping my collar and hurling me toward the wall, we send a lamp crashing to the floor, the table toppling. He strikes again, the other side of my face this time.

“Fight. Fight you fucking bastard.”

“No.” The sound is garbled, bloody. “I won’t fight you.”

He strikes again and again and again, sweat dripping down his face. He’s out of breath when he finally stops and stumbles backward. His knuckles are red and raw, and my blood is splattered across his shirt. He wipes the sweat from his forehead with his arm.

“How could you?” His voice is broken too. It’s pain I hear now.

“You’re right.” It takes all I have to look him in the eyes. “I betrayed you.”

That seems to send a wave of fresh energy through him, and he begins his attack anew. I don’t know if either of us hears the screams for us to stop. I don’t know when either of us realizes Mercedes is in the room.

“What are you doing?” She’s screaming, wild, her eyes wide, face streaked with tears. “Stop! You’re going to kill him.”

I look at her. She’s behind Santiago, trying to pull him away. He has one hand on my shoulder to keep me up against the wall as he pounds my middle. My ears ring from the earlier hits, and I’m not sure my hearing isn’t delayed.

“You’re going to fucking kill him!”

“He deserves no less!” He shoves Mercedes back, and she stumbles over the toppled table, falling into the broken glass, screaming as it cuts into her palms.

Santiago stops when he hears her. He turns. And it’s when he takes a step toward her that I grab him by his shirt collar and haul him back.

“Not her. You don’t touch her!” I throw him sideways, but my desk breaks his fall, and his rage is back. He hurls himself at me, and this time, I do fight him.