Page 30 of Goldrage
Good. She should be afraid. Because when the doctor calls with the results, when her lie crumbles, she’ll understand exactly what she’s lost. No more games. No more manipulation. Just the cold reality of what happens to people who betray Julian Harrow.
“Julian.” My mother’s voice cuts through my blind rage and I blink. She’s near the fireplace, one finger beckoning me toward the far corner. “We need to talk.”
Sighing, I push myself off the window. Responding to her is automatic at this point, but something’s different. The mindless obedience that usually propels me toward her has gone sluggish, weighed down by the memory of her lies.
Aurelia’s dead. Burned to ash.
No, Mother. She fucking wasn’t. Why the goddamn lie?
We tuck ourselves into a corner and she launches into a speech. “This changes everything,” she whispers. Her fingers grip my elbow, nails digging through my shirt, like I’m still her willing confidant. “You can’t possibly believe her story. She’s not pregnant. It’s too convenient, too perfectly timed?—”
“Why did you lie to me?” The question erupts from somewhere I’ve been trying not to look. My voice stays low but there’s venom in it, the kind that makes grown men step back. “You told me she was dead. You said you burned her body. You looked me in the eye and fucking lied.”
Her lips part in a light gasp and she releases my elbow. Her eyes flash wide for a split second before she frowns like I’m in the wrong. That second of fear on my mother’s face may be more unsettling than this possible pregnancy. My mother never slips. She never falters. Yet here she stands, composure cracking like old paint.
“I was protecting you.” The words tumble out too fast and rehearsed. “She escaped, and I knew how it would affect you if?—”
“You thought I couldn’t handle it?” My voice climbs despite my efforts to contain it. I catch myself, glancing back at Adrian and Aurelia, but they’re locked in their own silent war. “You thought I was too fuckingweakto deal with one woman?”
Her voice wavers. “O-of course not, darling. I only—” Her hand reaches for my arm again, those fingers that used to smooth my hair after nightmares, that held ice to my bruises when Father’s lessons got too enthusiastic. Ijerk away before she can make contact, and something in her eyes dims. ”Julian, I?—”
“What else have you lied about?”
My words are a guillotine over her neck. I watch her pupils dilate, watch the subtle shift of her weight that means she’s calculating and deciding what pieces of truth to feed me.
Fuck.There are other lies. Other secrets she’s been spooning into my mouth like medicine.
What are they?
Her phone’s melody pierces the silence and we both freeze. The entire room goes still as she pulls it from her pocket, the name on the screen making my pulse hammer against my ribs.
She answers. “Dr. Reynolds. What did you find?” Her voice shifts to that polished tone she uses for business, all traces of our confrontation erased.
I study her face as she listens, reading the story in the tightening of her jaw, the way her free hand clenches against her thigh. Her eyebrows pull together first. Then her skin loses color, draining until she looks ill.
“I see.” The words come out clipped. “And the paternity?”
My heart stops. Just stops, suspended between beats while I wait for the answer that will either damn us all or?—
“What do you mean?” Her lips press into a line so thin they almost disappear. “Yes. Yes, of course. In a month, then.”
The call ends with a soft beep that might as well be a gunshot for how it echoes through the room. Everyone’swatching us now—Adrian straightening in his wheelchair, Aurelia’s hands twisted together in her lap, white-knuckled and trembling. Valentine glances from the corner of his eyes and Bianca is on the verge of tears.
Fuck, Bianca is annoying. How could Adrian marry such a weak woman?
I return my focus to Mother. “Well?” I demand, though her expression has already given me the answer.
“She’s pregnant. Approximately seven weeks along.”
Seven weeks.
The number blazes through my mind, and I’m already tracing backwards through the calendar. Seven weeks puts us right before everything went to hell. Before I sold her to Lorenzo and?—
Mine.
It’s my baby.
The thought pounds through me with each heartbeat. It has to be mine. It happened during one of those nights I lost control and pinned her beneath me. When she still gasped my name in the dark, and at least pretended to be completely, utterly mine.
