Total pages in book: 75
Estimated words: 71701 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 359(@200wpm)___ 287(@250wpm)___ 239(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 71701 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 359(@200wpm)___ 287(@250wpm)___ 239(@300wpm)
“Once dinner was cleared, my grandfather laid out the papers and uncapped the pen. He signed his name to the forms and then stood back and watched my brother. Watched him as he read the pages and understood what was happening.”
“What was it?” she asks after too long a pause.
I look down at her eager, open face. “He isn’t a Montgomery. Not by blood.”
“What?”
“My parents’ match was not a love match, but so few are. She had an affair. And Theron was the product of that affair. My grandfather learned the truth when Theron was fifteen. Thankfully he was away at school when all hell broke loose within the walls of the Montgomery estate.”
“What did he do?”
How much do I want to tell her? I’ve come this far. We’ve come this far.
“He punished my mother.” A long silence draws out, and I have to force the next words. My confession. “And I stood witness.”
“What do you mean?” she asks with a tremor in her voice. I’m sure she is remembering the punishment room.
“He made her strip. Made my mother strip naked in front of me. And he whipped her raw.” Mercedes’s hand flies to her mouth. “The scars go from the tops of her shoulders to the backs of her ankles.”
“Oh, my God.”
“I stood and watched. I listened to her scream and sob and beg him to stop.”
“Jesus.”
“And I did nothing.”
“Judge, you were sixteen years old. A boy.”
I shake my head. “He made her believe if she paid the price, he would accept Theron. Someone had to be punished, after all. She sacrificed herself for her son.”
“Oh…”
“She was noble once. He broke her of that, though.”
She straddles me and cups my face with both hands. It takes my eyes time to focus on her because I think I was gone for a minute there. Back in that room. Back to the sight of my mother enduring my grandfather’s wrath.
“And when Theron learned the truth the night of his birthday, the night he should have celebrated a sort of coming of age, he changed. It happened before my eyes. He asked me if I’d known, and I couldn’t answer him. I didn’t need to, though he saw it on my face. I still remember how he hugged me. And how the knife felt sliding easily into my back. The pain of it. And then not much else.”
“Jesus Christ.”
She hugs me, and I find myself clinging to her, her weight slight on top of me, but her presence solid and warm and so fucking necessary. And I know without a doubt that what I feel for her I have never felt for anyone before. Ever.
“It’s not your fault. You know that, right? Please tell me you know that.”
I cup her face, feeling myself harden even now, even with what I just exposed. “I do, my sweet little monster. But I also know my temper. It matches his. Surpasses it.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Carlisle. His rage skipped a generation and landed heavy in the next.”
“That’s what you think?”
“That’s what I know.”
“And the reason you won’t marry. Because you think you’ll repeat history. You think you’ll hurt me like he did her.”
I try to push her off and get up because this isn’t where I wanted to end up when I started this story. But she doesn’t let me go. She sets her thighs firmly on either side of me, presses her soft breasts into my chest, and kisses me.
“You’re an idiot, Lawson Montgomery,” she says, kissing me again as she sheathes herself on me.
“And you are going to be the death of me,” I tell her, wrapping my arms around her and pushing deep into her. I shift my hands to her hips to move her over me all the while kissing and biting her lips as she kisses and bites mine, her moans growing louder as my thrusts become more urgent. And when I try to pull out, she grips me tight, the muscles of her legs pressing into me, and even though I could flip her off, do the less wrong thing and not come inside her again, I don’t. I hold on tight and listen to her pant my name as I come inside her.
22
Judge
The next few weeks pass in a lasting cease-fire. We are tender toward one another. We make love. We lie together in bed, Mercedes curling into my side. I hold her and wonder how I will ever sleep in this bed when she is no longer in it.
But I try not to think about that. I want to hold on to this tenderness a while longer. Already the end is near. I received a call from Hildebrand. Well, a summons. Not me, but Mercedes, although I haven’t told her about it yet. I have put him off, but not for very much longer. I have a feeling I know what he’ll require of her because she won’t walk away from her role in Santiago’s poisoning scot-free. No one does, not from The Tribunal.