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“You don’t understand why what?” Hayes asks as he walks into the living room. Sun is beginning to pour in, pushing out all the darkness from the night before.
“I don’t understand Rialta’s agenda. I don’t understand whose side she’s on. I don’t understand if she’s trained or lucky or just brave enough to fool us into thinking she is skilled with a weapon when she’s really not. I don’t know if she loves Lennox, or Kit, or Andrea. I don’t know if she cares about Ri or caused her injuries. I don’t know if she cares about any of us. I don’t know if she’s working for her father or some enemy,” Gage answers, but then pauses. “But there was something in her gaze before she left that begged me to trust her. That I needed to let her go, so I did.”
“That was foolish,” Beckett says, making us all jump. None of us realized he walked down the hallway.
“Ri’s sleeping, and I heard you talking about Rialta,” Beckett explains.
I nod. “I’ve made mistakes when it comes to Rialta, and if it caused the loss to your family and pain to Ri, then I’ll forever be sorry. I won’t make that mistake again. But before I take any actions when it comes to Rialta, I want to know everyone’s opinions.”
Beckett’s eyes are swollen and red. His skin is pale, and sweat soaks his hair. His clothes are covered in Ri’s blood. We all need a shower and a good night’s sleep. We all need time to process everything that’s happened.
But time is never something we have to spend as our own. We have a job to do.
“What do you think, Beckett?” I ask.
“We have evidence that Rialta worked with Andrea to take Ri. Ri was pregnant, and Rialta hadn’t been able to get pregnant yet. Vincent considers Ri his second daughter, so if Rialta never had a child, our child would become Vincent’s heir. Andrea couldn’t have that, and Rialta went along with it. She helped him figure out how to kidnap Ri, and then Andrea tortured her until there was no longer a threat,” Beckett’s voice is calm and steady, hiding the pain he’s going to live with the rest of his life.
They will be able to try again, but he’ll never forgive himself for not protecting Ri and his baby. But it’s impossible to have a baby in this world and guarantee their safety. It’s a fear they’ve had this entire time. It’s why they were happy when I agreed to marry Rialta and offer her my protection instead of them worrying about her safety too.
There are a lot of flaws with Beckett’s theory. The biggest being that Rialta couldn’t get pregnant because she was pregnant. Ri’s baby wasn’t a threat. And despite spending a lot of their life apart, Ri and Rialta love each other. So it would take a lot for one of them to betray the other. I’m not sure if Rialta actually betrayed Ri or just trusted the wrong person with her sister’s life.
But I’m not the one who should dispute Beckett’s story. And I’m not telling anyone that Rialta is pregnant, especially after what happened to Ri. I don’t know whose child it is—Kit’s, Andrea’s, or mine, but I do know the child is Rialta’s, and I will protect any child of Rialta’s with my life.
“Do you still think Rialta should be trusted, Gage? That her motives are pure and innocent?” Beckett stares at his closest friend.
“I’m an analytical man. I only make decisions with the facts. And the facts seem to support your theory, Beckett.”
“Thank you. So that’s two votes against Rialta,” Beckett says.
“However…” Gage rises from the couch and paces back and forth, staring at the ground as he replays everything in his head. Finally, he stops. “However, there was something in her look that is going to haunt me. There is a lot she’s not telling us. I saw how Ri and her were together. They loved each other. So something huge had to have changed for Rialta to have harmed Ri, and I can’t figure out what that would be.”
“So, how do you vote?” Beckett barks.
Gage looks at me and then sighs. “I’m on your side, Beckett.”
Beckett smirks and raises his eyebrows as he looks at Hayes, waiting for him to weigh in.
Hayes wipes his glasses on the hem of his shirt, stalling.
“Hayes?” I ask.
Hayes puts his glasses back on and then looks from Beckett to me. “I agree with Gage— Rialta is hiding something. And as I’m the positive one of the group and always sees the best in people—I’m not going to condemn her without a fair trial. No matter how horrible the crime. So I vote to trust Rialta for now.”
All eyes fall to me—the only expression I care about, though, is Beckett’s. His devastation is marked across his face. I know how he wants me to vote. And there is a part of me that thinks I owe him after what happened to Ri. I don’t want to lose his friendship, but I can’t vote the way he wants me to.
He shakes his head incredulously before I even speak.
“I love her. I can’t vote against her without undeniable proof, and there are too many holes in this story that don’t make sense.”
“What are you going to do, then? The vote is split,” Gage asks.
I sigh. “I’m going to wait for Ri to wake up—she’ll be the tiebreaker.”
“You might be waiting a while. She’s still unconscious. The doctor thinks she suffered a concussion on top of everything else. And that sometimes when you experience that level of trauma, the body shuts down and sleeps to avoid reality,” Beckett says.
“I’ll wait, however long it takes,” I answer.
“What are we going to do about Kit?” Hayes asks.
