"I expect you to incubate my heir," I growl. "I expect you to keep yourself safe. I expect you to prioritize the life inside you over your need to smear pigment on canvas."
"You’re suffocating me."
"I am protecting you."
"There is no difference with you!"
She throws the apple. It hits my chest and bounces off, rolling across the floor.
She tries to push past me.
I grab her arm. Not hard enough to bruise—never again—but hard enough to stop her.
"Let me go," she warns.
"Where are you going?"
"To the library. Or is reading dangerous too? Does ink poison the blood?"
I ignore the sarcasm. "Read. Rest. Watch TV. Do whatever you want, Ivy. As long as it doesn't involve toxins, exertion, or leaving this floor."
I release her.
She glares at me. Her eyes are filled with tears of rage.
"You think you’re keeping us safe," she whispers. "But you’re just making me hate you again."
She storms out of the kitchen.
I watch her go.
Hate me,I think.Hate me all you want. As long as you’re alive to feel it.
My phone buzzes in my pocket.
It’s Luca.
Meeting in 20. The Board is waiting.
I look at the empty kitchen. I look at the trash compactor where the coffee beans are destroyed.
I hate leaving her. Every minute I am not in this apartment is a minute where something could go wrong. A fall. A choke. A fire.
But I have an empire to run. And I have to run it harder now. I have to amass more power, more money, more walls. Because now I have two vulnerabilities instead of one.
I walk to the front door.
"James," I say to the head of my personal security detail, who is standing guard in the foyer.
"Sir."
"No one in or out," I order. "Not even for a fire alarm. If the building burns, you take her to the roof and call the chopper. Do you understand?"
"Understood."
"And James?"
"Sir?"
