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Warm, wrinkled hands grab hold of my arm, and she lifts her head off the pillow. “Promise me you won’t leave the pills out, the way she did.”
“I promise I won’t.”
“Good. You’ll make a much better mother to my Lucian’s children than she ever was.”
I clear my throat, the embarrassment of her words heating my cheeks.
“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.
