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Tristan settled back into his chair and snatched up his tea. “I don’t hope anything. I know nothing bad will happen. You’re not just a highborn, Ms. Randolph. You are an heir. You were even prime once. You are golden. There’s one set of rules for people like me, and a completely different set for people like you. It will be good for you to finally see it for yourself.”
Lila closed the lid on her lo mein. What had she really expected? That Tristan would jump at the chance to mend their relationship? That he’d listen to her at all? That he’d promise to swoop in and rescue her from a holding cell, just as he’d done for Dixon all those years ago? Just as he’d done for Oskar Kruger, consequences be damned?
Lila slid her lunch onto the coffee table, frustrated with her own hopeful stupidity. Yes, she’d wanted him to vow to rescue her, not that she actually wanted him to go through with it. The fact that he didn’t offer or even care about her welfare said a great deal.
Tristan was right. It was good for her to learn. The man no longer cared about her. The lingering daydreams she’d had at the cottage were the fancy of a child. Perhaps he wouldn’t care about the baby in her womb either, even if it was his.
In a few days, regardless of her sentence, she would have her first prenatal appointment. She’d ask for a paternity test, and she’d know once and for all.
If Tristan really was the father, at least her child would have a good uncle. As a highborn male, Dixon would do right by the baby.
If she decided to have it.
Her hand strayed to her belly. The father of her unborn child was either a man who had tried to kill her or a man who could barely tolerate her presence. But she’d brought it all on herself, hadn’t she? She’d made the wrong choices. She’d trusted the wrong people.
With such poor judgment, could she really trust the oracle? The last person she’d trusted had put his hands around her neck. She’d trusted Patrick Wilson too, and he’d tried to kill her. Her best friend had used her. Her mother had stolen every credit she owned. She’d even begun to wonder about her father and Chief Shaw. After all, she’d barely heard from them.
And now Tristan had flipped completely, from vows of love to apathy.
She’d always thought she was good at reading people, but she had to admit that her intuition had failed so completely that she couldn’t trust her own judgment about anything anymore.
She peered at the men, their faces disappearing into angles and hard lines.
“What? You don’t like the truth?” Tristan asked.
Lila sank into the couch. No, she really did not like the truth. For the first time in her life, she started to feel…
Lonely.
Dixon whistled in the awkward silence. Lila asked the oracle for a list of everyone who’s been on the compound.
“How far back?”
Ten years.
“Good luck going through all that data. Of course, that’s what you’re best at, isn’t it?”
He stood up and retrieved a stack of folders from his bedroom. He shoved them across the coffee table when he returned, nearly spilling her forgotten lo mein onto the floor. “Happy reading. That’s every transcript of every session between the oracle and the mercs.”
He sat back in his chair, eyeing her.
Neither spoke.
Tristan’s bedroom door opened in the quiet. A blonde woman stumbled out of the room, squinting at the light, wearing a pair of panties the size of an eye patch and a faded gray t-shirt several sizes too large.
A t-shirt Lila had worn only a month before.
“Oh shit.” The woman darted back into Tristan’s room and slammed the door.
Lila slipped on her hood quickly—not to keep her identity a secret, but because she didn’t want Tristan to see her face, to see her jaw working to form words.
For oracle’s sake, no wonder he hadn’t given her predicament a second thought. He had no spare thoughts to give. They’d all been filled with a curvy blonde, wearing his clothes and sleeping in his bed. He’d already gotten over her and moved on to someone new.
Tristan
stared straight at her, his eyes chipping away at her resolve. He didn’t smirk nor offer a self-satisfied smile or embarrassed grin. He didn’t even seem curious. She might have just been a cat or a stray cushion.
The bedroom door creaked. The woman emerged again and padded across the room, her feet bare. She wore a pair of trousers and her own shirt this time. Her blonde hair curled prettily around her ears. Her unlined, round face seemed young. She couldn’t have been more than twenty-two, just a couple of years younger than Tristan.
