Page 42 of Shattered King

I shook my head, trying to block it out. I couldn’t listen to this.

“Because of Pierce, I didn’t get to watch your belly grow round. Didn’t get to put my hand on you, feel him moving. I didn’t see him come into this world. Wasn’t there to help you, support you. That all changes now, you understand? That’s over. You and Josh, you’re mine. I take care of what’s mine.”

I was jerking my head from side to side in denial, blood thundering in my ears. “No . . . no.”

“This is happening, Lulu. I know we’ve got a lot of shit to sort out, but this is happening.”

“No . . .” Goddammit, why couldn’t I just say it?

“Jesus, we have a son, Lulu,” he said, something like awe in his voice.

Say it. Just say it. I opened my mouth, closed it, tried again. Nothing, nothing would come.

His expression changed, something flickering in his eyes. “Lulu?”

“I . . . I . . .” I don’t want to say it. Please, don’t make me say it.

He stared at me, expression shifting. “He is he mine. Isn’t he?” he rasped. “It’s not a hard question.”

I had to give it to him straight. Nothing, nothing would sugarcoat what I had to say. “I don’t . . .” My voice came out shaky as hell. “I don’t know.”

His eyes drifted closed and his fists clenched tight at his sides. When he opened them again, they were blue flames. “Your aunt gave me his birth date. I’m not dumb, I can do the math. You were mine when you got knocked up, right before I went down. Do I have that right?”

“Yes,” I whispered.

Now not only my voice was shaking, my whole body had joined the party.

“You were fucking around?” He spun away, shoved his hands in his hair, and strode across the floor to the window then turned back. “Who?”

Oh God.

Memories I’d kept buried until yesterday—until I sat in that chair, in that shitty abandoned apartment and felt that bastard’s hands on me again—flooded my mind. I couldn’t say it. I couldn’t say it out loud. I never had. Not once. That made it easier somehow, keeping it locked up, pretending it wasn’t real, that it never happened.

“Tell me,” he barked, and strode back toward me.

“I can’t . . .”

“Fucking tell me.” He got in my face, and I jerked back.

“I . . .”

“Who?” he roared.

I slammed my eyes shut. I couldn’t look at him, not when I said it. Not when I said the truth out loud. “Pierce. It was . . . Pierce.”

The room went electric, then deathly silent, the temperature going subzero in less than a second. “What the fuck did you just say?”

His anger washed over me, through me, and to my surprise, my own came roaring to the surface. My eyes snapped open, firing just as much heat back at him. Hunter was still close, in my space, and I shoved at his chest. “You heard me. It was Pierce.”

He looked ready to tear the room apart. “That’s why I got sent down? The guy you were screwing behind my back, your fucking stepfather, got jealous and wanted me out of the way?”

“No.”

“No?” he growled. “That’s how it sure as fuck looks to me.”

“Look again, asshole.” I shoved at him again. He didn’t budge, not an inch. The anger pumping through me was good. It was better than the fear and disgust, the pain I’d felt that night, hovering just beneath the surface, waiting to be unleashed all over again. “You think I’d willingly sleep with my stepfather? My mother’s husband? That I’d let him put his filthy hands on me? A man who I’ve despised for almost as long as I’ve known him? A man who blackmailed me into betraying you?”

I thought he’d looked scary before. I was wrong. That’s when I saw it, when he started to work it out. “The way I found you at that park.” He released a shaky breath. “You’re saying that wasn’t the first time he tried to hurt you like that?”