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I go upstairs relieved to have a little time alone. In my bedroom I beeline into the bathroom. The lock doesn’t work anymore. He broke it the day I found out I was pregnant. I don’t think it’s an oversight that he hasn’t fixed it. I take the pills out of my purse. I study them, take in the strange six-sided shape of the four. Abortion pills.
Julia has given me the means to terminate this pregnancy. She called the baby an it. A weapon. And it doesn’t sit right with me. This baby is a human being. A life. Does she already hate him or her?
No. That can’t be. She’s just scared. And I get it. My husband is a formidable man. A devil. It’s what I’d thought him when I first laid eyes on him. A horned devil. And if he threatened Matty, well, I understand her desperation. And tonight, she was desperate.
But there’s another side to Jericho St. James. I saw it the night I played for him. It was in his eyes when they shone wet as he listened. It’s there every time he looks at his daughter. He’s human, too. He feels, too. And there’s something vulnerable inside him. I saw that in that room in the cellar.
I hear the bedroom door open.
“Isabelle?” It’s Jericho. I hurry to drop the packets of pills into the back of a drawer—I’ll hide them properly later—and busy myself brushing my teeth. He knocks on the bathroom door, opening it.
I wonder if he can see the guilt on my face so I bend my head to rinse. I take the towel he holds out to me and wipe my mouth.
“Are you going to fix the lock?” I ask.
“No.”
“You don’t trust me.”
“Should I?” It’s a rhetorical question. “Do you trust me, Isabelle?”
I don’t answer.
“I didn’t think so,” he says after a moment. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out Matty’s little blanket. I look at it, my heart pounding. He can’t know it’s Matty’s. How could he?
I slowly turn my gaze up to his. His eyes narrow but he doesn’t speak.
“Come,” he says, tucking the blanket back into his pocket.
I let him lead me out of my bathroom and through the door to his bedroom where he undresses me carefully looking me over as he does. I see the furrow between his eyebrows, the intensity in his gaze.
“I can do this,” I say once I’m standing in my underwear.
His gaze shifts to my breasts which are already fuller, more tender. He sets his giant hand against my stomach. It spans the whole of it.
I think about what he’s done with those hands. Who he’s hurt. How he’s threatened to cut off the hands of any man who touches me. Would he hurt Julia if he knew what she gave me? Would he hurt her if he knew one of the men Carlton hired to protect her shoved me like he did? Would he cut off their hands?
When I look back up at him, he’s studying me intently.
What a pair we make.
Enemies. Lovers. Secret keepers.
He picks up Christian’s T-shirt and tugs it over my head. Spinning me around, my back is pulled into his front, and his hand moves possessively over my stomach once more.
He pushes my hair back from my ear, kisses my cheek, my neck. He brings his mouth to my ear. “You lied to me,” he whispers.
I shudder. When I try to pull away, to turn to face him, he doesn’t let me.
“You and I have many enemies, Isabelle. And they’re ruthless. You give them an advantage when you lie to me.”
I turn my head enough to look at his face. “Will you hurt me when the baby is born?”
He shakes his head.
“Will you take him or her from me?”
“Don’t be her fool.”
“She said you threatened Matty.” His face is unreadable. “Is it true?”
“I won’t hurt a child. You have to ask me that?” He releases me and I sit down. My legs feel wobbly. “What did she say to you?”
“Nothing. Just that,” I lie again. Second time tonight. It’s getting easier.
“Right. Maybe I’ll ask her myself,” he says.
“You scared her.”
“Did I? If she was scared of me, how did she pull her trick tonight?”
I open my mouth, close it. He’s right about that. Why would she come to the theater? Bring Matty? How did she even know I’d be there? Maybe I mentioned it a long time ago? Maybe Paul told her. I don’t know.
“She’s fucking with you, Isabelle. With us,” he says.
“Us?”
“And it’s working.” He takes Matty’s blanket out of his pocket. “Maybe I’ll return this. Remind her to stay the fuck away from my family.”
He takes a step toward the door, and I jump to my feet. My brain barely registering his use of the word family. I grab his arm with both of my hands. “You can’t hurt them. They’re my family. Please!”
