by Wren Weston
“Nothing can erase it completely. You’ll always remember, and it will be in my records. Some might guess, of course, after we arrest the highborn and hackers who infiltrated the government servers. But from what Senator La Roux told us, he was careful for them not to know who pulled the strings. The things he had them to do were subtle, much more subtle than his treatment of you, or he would have been in the Saxony Senate by now. In a few weeks, Bullstow will exile Sergeant Muller and Sergeant Davies. Things will sort themselves out.”
“I don’t know if this is right or if it’s wrong.”
“Maybe it was just the best end to a bad situation. Everyone benefited from the deal, and he knew it. He would have been hanged within the month. At least this way, his family’s honor and the honor of High House are both upheld.”
“Still doesn’t seem right somehow.”
“I think it was the thought of his children living with the scandal that sent him over the edge. If he didn’t have them, he might not have cared what anyone thought. He wouldn’t have taken the honorable way out. He would have gone to the press. You have no idea what a father would do for his children.”
Chapter 27
Lila drove past her reserved space near the entrance of Randolph General and parked in a spot behind the building. She felt vulnerable in the mostly empty lot. It wasn’t the thought of her assassin that made her nervous. It was the thought of her visit showing up in the press that made her wary. She wouldn’t be named, of course, not when she hadn’t announced her role as prime, but it wouldn’t take a genius to guess her identity based on a thinly disguised euphemism. The heir who favors black. The favorite daughter of the wolves. The serpent’s downfall. Any of them would be easy to guess.
Before disembarking from the car, she checked her reflection in the rearview mirror. Her makeup still obscured the bruise upon her jaw. She slid her sunglasses over her eyes and quickly arranged her scarf around her neck, then darted through the back entrance, sans coat.
Her vibrating palm drew her attention as she scampered upstairs. I’ve arrived at the clinic, Helen had written.
Me too, Lila typed before sliding the device back into her pocket. She jogged up another flight of stairs and crossed the hall, ducking quickly through the double doors of the clinic. Only a teenager had spied her from the opposite end of the hall, but he’d been too focused on a row of snack machines to look up.
Luckily, the clinic’s front desk was dark and empty. Lila fiddled with her sunglasses while she waited for Helen, careful to hide her family’s coat of arms in case anyone peeked in and saw her.
“Come inside,” Helen said, opening the door in the back. “No one should arrive for another hour. If we’re lucky, no one will even know you were here.”
Lila followed her into an exam room, the scent of cinnamon cleanser thick in the air. “If we’re not lucky?”
“Then I’ll sneak you out.” Helen patted the exam table.
Lila didn’t have the energy to resist. She removed her glasses and placed them on a chair in the corner, then folded her scarf and laid it on top. The paper on the exam table crinkled as she sat down.
Helen winced at Lila’s neck. She asked a few questions about the attack that Lila didn’t want to answer, but didn’t pester her for details and didn’t make Lila speak any more than was necessary. Indeed, she completed the exam as quickly as possible, though she insisted on pressing Lila’s ribs to see if La Roux had broken them.
Lila shrank back too quickly for Helen’s comfort.
The doctor took several X-rays and even a blood sample, ignoring Lila’s protests. “I know you think you’re fine, Lila, but you’ve been through a lot. Let me do my job,” she admonished before capping the vial and promising to walk it to the lab herself.
“I don’t want—”
“Your name is not on it. Just sit tight. I’ll be back in a sec.”
When the doctor’s steps retreated from the clinic, Lila put on her sweater and retrieved her palm. She’d nearly sent a message to Tristan and Dixon the night before, letting them know that the Baron had finally been caught. But every time she’d tried to write the message, she couldn’t progress past the first few words. Nothing sounded right, and she’d decided last night to write it later.
Later had come, and she still had the same problem.
Helen entered with her X-rays, latching them on to a lit screen on the back wall. Her finger traced over the translucent bones, and she cocked her head to the side to study them. “Nothing is broken, even though you’re more bruise than person at this point. You’ve been through quite a trauma, Lila. You should go home and rest. Let your body heal.”
“That’s not possible. I start working for my mother tomorrow.”
“Work can wait.”
“Clearly, you haven’t spent enough time with my mother.”
“You forget, I grew up with her,” Helen said, tossing her stethoscope over her neck. “You let me worry about your mother. I’ll get you a few days’ rest.”
The doctor sat down on a rolling stool, which rattled dully as she moved closer. “Now on to the next order of business. Since the office was closed yesterday for the Closing Ball, I had time to look into Dr. Rubio. Actually, I’ve been looking into her for the last few days. I just hadn’t found anything.”
“You found something?”
Helen nodded. “I drove to Dr. Rodriguez’s lab. I didn’t think the trip would yield anything, but I couldn’t get the idea out of my head. The good doctor has been doing some brilliant work in the last ten years, and she didn’t mind spending the morning boasting to a colleague. I couldn’t believe how much further she’s taken her research since Dr. Rubio left the group. They’ve isolated the really nasty compounds in NAT, including the one that halts sperm production. They’ve been puzzling out exactly how it works, hoping that they might understand it well enough to produce a treatment for male infertility.”
“Perhaps such a treatment might be used for Senator Dubois.”
“They’re decades away from anything like that. But while having lunch with Dr. Rodriguez, I mentioned Dr. Rubio’s name. I wanted to get the doctor’s impressions of her. Turns out that Dr. Rubio visited the lab almost a year ago. Some of their samples also went missing around that time.”
“What sort of samples?”
“Well, they don’t have a treatment for male infertility right now. What they do have is a very potent form of male birth control, birth control that doesn’t seem to have the unpleasant side effects of NAT.”
“Birth control?” Lila exclaimed, her brain spinning. “You think Dr. Rubio stole the samples and dosed Senator Dubois?”
“Yes, though I don’t understand why or how she’d do it.”
Lila’s stomach twisted. She knew exactly why and how. “Does this drug need to be ingested or injected?”
“Ingested would suffice.”
Lila stiffened on the exam table. Dubois had dined with the family several times a week for years. She’d eaten with him, watched him smile and laugh while another person at the table fed him an untested drug, changing the course of his career against his will. Had her mother studied his face all these months, reveling in the power she had over him?
Had she done the same with her daughters, thinking of them as her puppets?
Probably.
No wonder the chairwoman had sat with Jewel and Dubois all night long, crying with them, pretending to care. She had shaped their reaction, pushing them toward the one conclusion she wanted.
Lila pinched the bridge of her nose. She was the chief of security. She should have seen what was going on. She should have stopped it.
What if there were side effects?
“How long will it take for Senator Dubois to recover his seed?”
Helen’s gaze fell to the floor. “Lila, from what Dr. Rodriguez has ascertain
ed in the rodent trials, the effect is permanent. It’s the reason they haven’t tested it on human subjects yet. It’s a vasectomy in powder form. Dr. Rodriguez’s group is considering the market, but the fact that it’s permanent…”
Lila pictured Dubois milling around the park in the middle of Bullstow, wearing nothing more formal than a t-shirt and jeans, he and his brothers surrounded by children. Dubois, teaching his nephews how to throw a curve ball. Dubois, scooping up crying toddlers and setting them to rights once again. Dubois, wandering on the outskirts of the park, taking care of other men’s children, all the while dreaming of his own.
She recalled his list, a faded, yellowing strip of paper with all the names he had hoped to call his children one day, if only the mother would listen.
He’d bashfully shown it to her once, a very long time ago.
If she had just accepted her responsibility back then, he’d still have a chance to use it.
Helen’s palm vibrated. She checked her display and slipped it back into her pocket.
“I have to go.” Lila snatched up her scarf. “Thank you for the information.”
“Wait. Sit down. There’s something else we need to talk about.”
Lila cocked her head and hopped back on the exam table. “What is it?”
“The results of your blood tests,” Helen said with a contemplative frown. She rolled her stool closer. “Did you have sex with Senator La Roux?”
Lila shrugged, attempting to ignore the nervous twinge that erupted in her belly. “Why?”
Helen sighed heavily. “I warned you not to have sex with any of those men unless you wanted—”
Lila’s throat burned as she gulped. This time her mind didn’t call forth the charming La Roux. It brought up the brutal blackmailer. The same man who had punched and kicked and tried to murder her, with a red scowl and sweaty forehead and his fingers around her neck.
“I’m not pregnant,” she said, shaking her head.
“Even virgins can get pregnant the first time.”
“How do you even know? It hasn’t been forty-eight hours.”
“It takes forty hours to be sure of a no. It can take less time to detect the EPF in the blood for a yes. I thought I should test after—”
Lila hopped up from the exam table and paced throughout the room again, her stomach whirling. “Could it be a false positive?”
“Yes, but that’s—”
“Is it a boy or a girl?”
“It’s a collection of cells, and barely that. It’ll be months before we know the baby’s sex.”
“Is it…”
“Calm down, child.”
“No. Senator La Roux’s dead. He died this morning,” she confessed, not giving any further details than that. The man who had beaten her, the man who had tried to murder her, had left something of his behind.
Inside her.
It was more nauseating than a tranq dart.
“Do you want to keep the baby?” Helen asked gently. “You might lose it anyway. Many miscarriages happen in the first few weeks of pregnancy. Most women never even know they’re pregnant before it’s gone.”
Lila stopped. “I don’t know,” she said, barely conscious of the words that had just come out of her mouth, for another thought had entered her mind.
La Roux hadn’t been the only one who had been inside her lately. Tristan had gotten there first. They’d been having sex for weeks before she’d had the operation, including the night before. “What if someone else had been in the picture before Dr. Rubio reversed my CUT? I had a very long vacation.”
“I didn’t realize you had a lover.”
“I don’t. He didn’t like the idea of sharing.”
“I see. Sperm can live in a woman’s body for up to five days. Light a match and toss it into a bucket of gasoline, Elizabeth. That’s the equivalent of what Dr. Rubio did to you. Whether you had sex before or after the procedure, it makes little difference. The father is anyone’s guess, at least until I can do a paternity test.”
“Don’t call me Elizabeth. That’s what people call me when I’ve done something wrong.”
Helen cupped her cheeks. “Child, you did nothing wrong. It’s a baby.”
Lila turned her head away.
“There are pills I could prescribe for you.”
Lila ignored the doctor as she prattled on. She didn’t think of the baby. She couldn’t think of the baby. All she could think about was La Roux’s hands around her throat, killing her as a baby had killed her grandmother while she pushed.
Helen touched her shoulder, startling her. “Lila, if you change your mind, I can prescribe something that will make this all go away. If you wait too late for pills, then I can schedule an abortion. I won’t do any of that today, not when you’re this upset, but I promise you, I will help you if that’s what you decide. No one will never learn of it.”
Lila nodded and pulled away, tugging her scarf around her neck. “Senator Dubois will never have the children he desperately wants, and I will have a child that I never wanted. At the risk of sounding, like a petulant little girl, life is not fair.”
“It rarely is.”
Lila eyed the darkened computer in the back of the room. Helen hadn’t written a damn thing down during the entire visit.
“The lab has already lost your sample.” Helen dropped the X-rays into the trash, the glossy photos unmarked by a patient number or her name.
Lila nodded, still too stunned to say much. “I’m grateful for any discretion you have to offer, though I’m sure someone else in the department will pick up the slack.”
“Then they will not work here for long, not if I have anything to do with it.”
Lila slid her sunglasses back onto her face. “I fear you’ll be too short-staffed to make that decision easily. By the end of the day, Dr. Rubio will no longer work at this clinic—or anywhere else, if I can help it.”
Helen smiled. “I’ll try to temper my disappointment.”
Chapter 28
Lila braked inside her family’s garage and slammed the sedan’s door, nearly forgetting to adjust her scarf before disembarking. She ignored the two blackcoats in the garage, and neither tried to speak with her. They looked at her as one looks at a bomb about to explode.
Lila also ignored Sutton, who paced outside the garage, waiting for her as she brushed past. “Chief—”
“If you intend to yell, do it at another time.”
Sutton frowned. “This afternoon, then, when you’ve had a chance to calm down.”
“Keep your palm with you. I’ll send you orders later.”
The commander stopped at the great house’s front door.
A young footman opened it. He didn’t utter a single word as Lila hurried past.
She jogged upstairs and dropped her crimson coat on her bedroom floor before falling into her desk chair.
She’d had a bit more time to think on her way home from the hospital, and those thoughts had not led anywhere she wanted to go. After setting her computer to delete all of La Roux’s snoops on her desktop and palm, she ran several searches.
It took only a few hours to confirm what she had feared.
Snatching up her palm, she called a familiar number.
While she waited, Isabel brought up a bottle of wine and placed it on her desk, then bowed and withdrew. The scent of Gregorie filled the room as Lila uncorked with bottle with a hollow pop. It wasn’t until after she’d poured her first glass that she realized her mistake.
“Damn it,” she hissed, knowing she’d have to get along without wine for a while. Nine months, to be specific, not unless she miscarried.
Not unless she took care of the baby in a different way.
Lila shook her head, not wanting to think about it.
Thumbing the Gregorie label, she left the bottle
behind and moved to the center of the couch, not a single light turned on to expose her swollen jaw.
Jewel barged in moments later with barely a knock. Her hair had been styled into a few thick curls, which had been swept off her neck in a swishing ponytail. She wore her whitecoat, the Randolph coat of arms stitched in crimson on her breast, and stylish boots of the same hue. “Louis and I were about to leave for a walk. What is so important that—”
Lila kicked the coffee table away.
It smacked against the edge of her dresser.
Jewel startled, and she dropped the gloves she’d been twirling in her hand. They hit the floor with a dull flop.
Lila toed an ottoman before her. “Sit.”
Jewel swallowed and shook her head. “Later. Louis is waiting.”
“I said, sit down.”
“Why are you so angry?” Jewel asked, sitting on the ottoman as though merely humoring her. “You sound sick. Did—”
“I blamed Mother first,” Lila interrupted, crossing one leg over the other. “I always blame Mother for everything, but sometimes she just observes someone else’s betrayal and does nothing if it benefits her agenda. I’m chief of the family’s militia, Jewel. Did you think I wouldn’t figure it out?”
Jewel’s eyes widened slightly. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. What did Mother do now?”
“Nothing. She did absolutely nothing. That probably pisses me off the most. Why would you do it, Jewel? Why would you hurt the one you claim to love?”
“I would never hurt you.”
“I’m not talking about me, and you know it. I was too quick to judge Mother. She had nothing to gain with this plan, except deniability. That’s why she never said a word against it.”
“What plan?”
“You never stopped taking your birth control. All those years with Senator Dubois and the men before him, and you never stopped taking it.”
“Lila, what are you talking about? I haven’t taken birth control in—”
“Of course, you couldn’t get away with it forever. Mother would start making noise for you to see doctors, perhaps even give you a few fertility shots whether you needed them or not. Maybe she already had, or maybe the senator pushed you to see a doctor? Is that what gave you the idea? You saw a way out by turning him into the sick one? You wanted children too much to risk your own body, didn’t you?”