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Back?“Back from where?”
The pain in my body intensifies suddenly, like it was just waiting for an excuse to flare up. My heartbeat picks up, and it feels like every inch of my skin has been dipped in a vat of molten lava. Sweat beads on my forehead.
“Wesley took her to the doctor,” Stuart supplies.
I told her to fucking wait. Why would she go behind my back anyway? It’s already dangerous enough for her when she’s on the estate, but to leave without me? I already feel my strength coming back to me, if only to bash someone’sface in for letting this happen.
“Why?” I snap. “I told her not to leave. I was supposed to take her to—”
“In the state you’re in?” Ingrid cuts me off, a scathing edge to her tone. “Calm ya balls, boy. I need you still to stitch ya up.”
I swallow the curses on my tongue. Of everyone in this house, I respect Ingrid the most. So I do what she says, tamping down the rage and displeasure heating my blood. As soon as she’s finished, I’m going to have word with WesleyandAlize.
But I have an even bigger problem on my hands.
Today, I saw a different side of my father.
It’s clear now that he hates me just as much as I hate him. He’s been pulling strings in the background for years, prepared for any eventuality. I can’t fucking believe he tricked me into making him the irrevocable trustee of my mother’s estate.
My father is desperate to prove to me that he’s the one with the power, that he has the control in this situation. But I’m never going to cede to him. Especially now I’ve found the woman I want to spend the rest of my life with.
Alize can’t be anywhere without me.
Now I know for sure my father has plans to marry me off to someone else, he might try to hurt her in some way. She needs my protection now more than ever, and I have to figure out how to win this stalemate with my father.
I’m not sure when it happens, but I end up falling back into a fitful sleep while Ingrid works on my wound. I dream of darkness and death, specifically of my father hanging from the eaves in my mum’s greenhouse.
When I come to, it’s considerably later.
Through the window of Ingrid’s room, dusk has fallen. I must have been out for a few hours. Stuart has left the room. I look around to find Ingrid sitting in an armchair by the window, knitting. When I stir, she turns to look at me.
“Good. I was starting to wonder if I’d killed ya.”
My restraints are gone. I flex my muscles, then slowly bring one of my hands up to touch the throbbing spot on the side of my head. I wince at the pain, but it’s already considerably less. I’ve endured worse. Pushing myself into a sitting position, I notice the blood all over the sheets and on my shirt.
Fuck, that’s a lot of blood.
“I take it this means you’ll be fightin’ him, now,” Ingrid says, not looking up from her quilt.
I look down at my hands. They’re a bit swollen from my tussle with my father and speckled with blood. I can’t be sure if it’s mine or his.
“Yes,” I say. “I have no choice. He wants me to marry Ottilie Welser or lose my inheritance. I would rather die than do that.”
Ingrid’s eyes snap to mine. As calm and composed as she can be, Ingrid is no stranger to what happens in our world. She’s seen the worst of it all—the war, the blood, the death. She knows it would be futile to try and stop me, and worse yet, she knows what the outcome of this will be.
We both won’t make it out of this alive.
“He almost killed ya,” Ingrid says. “You probably would’ve died if Ben hadn’t brought you to me.”
Ben? The same Ben who held a gun to my head?
“I wasn’t going to die,” I say. “I’m not going to die.”
For the first time in a long time, my life has a special meaning. I’mthisclose to becoming a part of the Kingmaker Society. Alize and I have a spectacular future ahead of us.
I’m not going to let my father ruin it.
“Measure twice, cut once,” Ingrid says, returning her attention to her quilt.
