“I’m going to sleep now, if that’s okay.”
“Yes, of course.” I exit the room with Nell in tow, my mind spinning with questions.
Nell closes the door behind us and blows out a breath. “Way too much excitement for one night.”
The humiliation still coursing through me on Laura’s behalf swells to anger. “Why would you do that? Why would you leave her alone like that?” Perhaps what I’m feeling is irrational, but I don’t care. Tonight wasn’t fair to Laura. Stepping away for a smoke isn’t a good enough excuse for what this poor woman just went through.
Face screwing up into a frown, she gives me a onceover. “Don’t you fucking judge me. Not when you had her son’s face between your thighs.” Her words hit my conscience like a punch to the gut.
“You saw us? You were watching us?” My momentary shock and embarrassment twists into disgust. “That’s why you didn’t hear her get out of bed. Why you didn’t see her get undressed, or leave the room. You were too busy spying on us?”
“Kinda hard to miss when you guys were out in the open.”
We weren’t, though. She’d have had to look for us, in order to see where we were, hidden in the shadows. “Do you have any idea how humiliating that must’ve been for her? All those fucking people seeing her like that? And Lucian! My God, if he can even look those people in the eye after this--”
“Oh, poor Lucian. Let me tell you something about your little Romeo. He didn’t want kids. He didn’t want Roark. And I’m guessing he didn’t want the baby Amelia was pregnant with when she killed herself. In fact, I’d bet that’s why she killed herself.”
“How the hell do you know she was pregnant?”
“One of her labs was accidentally entered in Laura’s medical chart. At first, I thought it was Laura’s, until I looked up the medical record attached to it. Amelia Blackthorne. HCG positive two weeks before she committed suicide.”
“Laura said--”
“I don’t give a shit what Laura said. The woman just walked into a crowded room naked. You think she knows what the hell is going on with her family? Aside from her precious Lucian …”
“You’re jealous.”
“Jealous of what? You and the Devil of Bonesalt? You can have your murdering piece of shit. And if you don’t believe me? Ask Giulia. Amelia never left those pills where Roark could reach them. Never. Roark was afraid to come into her room because of those fucking dolls.”
Giulia told me the same thing the first night I stayed in that room. She said that Roark refused to come into the room, that he was terrified of the doll on the nightstand. Still, that doesn’t implicate Lucian in any murder—Amelia, or Roark’s. Assuming Roark is, in fact, dead.
“You’re making assumptions about him without proof. You don’t even know that Roark is dead, and you’re willing to accuse Lucian?”
“You don’t know anything about him. He’s got his ugly face so far up your dress, you’re blind to everything around you. I’ve seen men show up at the house. Sometimes? They don’t leave. Did you know this castle is built on a big pile of bones?”
The unbidden memory of the man being escorted by Makaio and Rand into the elevator flashes behind my eyes. The one I’m certain was Franco. The horrific look on his face when the elevator doors closed, as if he suddenly realized something. I didn’t recall having seen him leave.
The first tendrils of doubt crawl over the back of my neck. “Why are you still here, then?”
“It doesn’t matter. And whether you believe me, or not, I don’t give a shit. But my advice? Pay closer attention.”
Chapter 38
Lucian
Seven years ago …
Hunched over paperwork strewn across my desk, I cup my face in my hands, mentally trying to block out the screams of my month-old son, Roark, two rooms down. The minutes of the last investors’ meeting are my only prep for the report I’m supposed to present to my father later today, and I’m suddenly wishing I’d made the drive to Gloucester, for the peace and quiet of my office there.
The high-pitched squeal is more than I can take, and I slam my pen onto the desk and push up from my chair. Whatever the hell nanny my mother hired when he was first born must be deaf not to hear those goddamn screams.
“Anna!” I growl, stepping out into the hallway.
A minute later, she still hasn’t appeared, or answered me.
“Anna!”
Still nothing but the incessant wailing from his nursery that, I have no doubt, was intentionally set up in the same hallway, just to piss me off.
I storm down the corridor to the door where the screaming is loudest, and slam through. “Anna!”
Instead of the nanny, I find Amelia sitting in a rocking chair, staring off with her head tipped to the side. She doesn’t make any effort to calm the baby, doesn’t bother to acknowledge me when I enter the room, either.
No sign of the nanny we’ve assuredly paid handsomely to keep this kid quiet. “Where’s Anna?”
At first, I don’t think my voice can reach her over the sound of Roark’s crying, but Amelia lifts her eyes to mine. How much she’s changed over the last few weeks. The bright young girl, once vibrant and witty, now wears the dark circles of depression and misery. Something I refuse to take credit for. “She didn’t come in today. Had some … errand to run.” Every word arrives as if she’s out of breath and weak, hardly audible over those wretched screams.
“Are you going to quiet him, or let him scream all hours of the day and night? I have an important meeting I’m trying to prepare for.”
Her gaze slides toward the cradle, where Roark still hasn’t quieted. Tears fill her eyes as she shakes her head, her bottom lip quivering. “I can’t.”
My mother says it’s post-partum depression, but I can’t stand it, just the same. She does nothing for him. Won’t even hold him. Why she didn’t arrange to have a backup nanny is beyond me.
A screech echoes through the nursery, and Roark almost sounds in pain, his wail shaky and tormented.
Groaning with frustration, I cross the room to his cradle, and find him lying in a pile of blankets, wearing nothing but a diaper. His naked body is red from crying, his face scrunched with agony, as he trembles like he’s been hit with a stun gun.
I’ve not held him once since his birth, mostly because I’m not experienced in holding babies and they tend to make me uncomfortable. But also because a part of me can’t help but think this child was the scheming of both my mother and Amelia. A means of roping me into a relationship with a woman I didn’t love.
Rubbing my hand over my head, I screw my eyes closed, the sound of his screams innervating some part of my brain that makes me want to throttle something. Breathing hard through my nose to calm the rage, I look down at his tiny hand, which shakes with his cries. Before I can stop myself, I reach out to touch it, drawing back my hand on finding him ice cold.
Jesus.
I pull the blanket up around him, covering his hand that remains propped beneath it, and with his shivering, the blanket covers his face. Seconds tick by as I stare down, his cries hysterical now, his small form squirming beneath the blanket. For the briefest moment, I wonder if it’s better to spare this child from a life of parents who didn’t want him. To let him suffocate now, rather than watch him suffer a lifetime of slow and painful asphyxiation.