Reparation of Sin: A Sovereign Sons Novel

by Zavarelli, A.

  I nip at her lip and draw blood, and she digs her nails into my arms, moaning softly as I savor the copper crimson on my tongue. I'm hoisting her into my arms, and she's wrapping her legs around me as I carry her to the bed. I can't get her naked fast enough. Buttons are scattering, cloth ripping as I work to free her of the barrier to the sweetness of her flesh.

  Her tongue is in my mouth, tasting me as I spread her over the mattress and mount her. She's struggling with the zipper on my trousers, and I pause briefly just to watch as she grunts in frustration, desperate for my cock. I've never been so hard in my life as I am when she finally gets it free and strokes me in her palm.

  "Take me because you like it," she pleads, her eyes meeting mine. "Not because you need a baby. Not for any other reason. Just because you like it."

  I indulge her, the notion of babies a distant thought in my mind as I resume control and settle my body against hers, thrusting between her legs. She arches into me, fingers slipping under the hem of my shirt to press against the skin on my back. I let her have it. Just this once. The same thing every addict tells themself.

  Tongues and teeth and hips collide as we come together. I fuck her into the mattress, and she hangs on as if her life depends on it, groaning out my name when she shatters around me. A muttered curse leaves my lips, and it's my undoing. I'm coming inside her. Spilling all of my frustrations in the pulsing throb of my cock, emptying within her for the sole purpose of exactly what she said.

  Because I like it.

  My head dips against hers as I collapse onto my forearms, catching my breath. I'm trying to think of a way to destroy this sickness between us when a knock sounds at the door.

  Ivy blinks up at me, eyes heavy and face glowing. So fucking beautiful. Why does she have to look this way? Such a beautiful little liar.

  The knock comes again, and I growl.

  "What is it?"

  "I'm sorry to bother you, sir," Marco answers. "But there are guests waiting for you downstairs. Jackson and Colette Van der Smit. He asked to speak with both of you."

  A gust of air leaves Ivy's lips as she looks up at me pleadingly. "Can we talk to them? Please?"

  I pull out of her, watching my come leak down her thighs with satisfaction. For now, I suppose the interrogation will have to wait.

  "Get dressed."

  20

  Ivy

  Santiago has one hand wrapped around my arm as we descend the stairs.

  I glance at him. The way he’s holding me is almost his brand of affection, I think. The only way he knows to be. This is as close as he’ll come to actually holding my hand. I almost have to smile, but he looks too wretched, so I stop and turn to him. Before he can ask what I’m doing, I pull free and link my hand with his.

  He appears almost startled, but he’s quick to school his features, and I wonder what is going on inside his head as he looks at the knots of our fingers. When he shifts his gaze to me, I want to ask him what happened. Because I’m sure he’s been to see my brother. Did he hurt Abel? Or did Abel spin some story, make up some lie to cover his ass? Is that the cause of this strange look on his face? This uncertainty. Because Santiago is always certain even when he’s wrong.

  A cough comes from the foot of the stairs, and Santiago blinks, banishing any emotion. We both turn to find Antonia standing there.

  “They’re in the sitting room, sir.”

  “Why not the formal living room?” he asks as we get to the bottom of the stairs, and he unwinds his fingers from mine.

  I clasp my own hands, disappointed.

  “Mr. Van Der Smit wanted to be assured you’d have complete privacy.”

  Santiago sighs. “Fine.” He takes my arm again and leads me toward the sitting room. When he opens the door, we find Jackson standing at the window that overlooks the eastern side of the garden. Colette is sitting on the couch with a shopping bag at her feet. She looks anxious.

  “Ivy!” She jumps to her feet, her rounded belly looking even bigger than before. I do the math. She’s due any day now.

  “Colette.” I slip from Santiago’s grasp and go to hug my new friend. This woman I’ve only known for minutes but who has a warmth I’m not sure I’ve felt from anyone except my own sisters. “I’m so happy to see you,” I tell her.

  One of the men clears his throat, and we draw apart. Santiago and Jackson are both watching us, and I realize Jackson must be around Santiago’s age, the difference in years between him and Colette about what it is between us. With blond hair and stark blue eyes, his expression is stern or at least appears so, and I remember the high heels he’d made Colette wear, knowing they were uncomfortable especially considering the pregnancy.

  “Ivy,” Santiago says, and I realize my face reveals exactly what I’m thinking. He turns to Jackson. “Jackson,” he says by way of greeting. “What brings you here?”

  Jackson nods to Santiago. “Your wife, actually.”

  “My wife?” His eyebrows rise. “Well, sit down,” he says as the door opens, and Antonia enters with a tray of refreshments that she sets on the coffee table before leaving.

  I sit on one side of Colette as Jackson takes the other. She smiles up at him warmly and slips one hand onto his thigh as he tucks his around the nape of her neck. She seems to lean into it, and it takes me back because the way he’s holding her isn’t what I expect. It’s not possessive like some animal needing to mark his territory. Well, it is, but it’s something else too. Tender. I expect Jackson to be a brute, a cold and insensitive man when it comes to his young, pregnant wife, but that’s not what I see. Not yet at least.

  “Her shoes, actually,” Colette says and reaches for the bag beside her. “Ivy had lent them to me before dinner the night of the gala.”

  “Thank you for that,” Jackson leans over to say to me. “Colette thinks I have expectations of her that I do not.” He and Colette exchange a private look.

  “Well, isn’t that wonderful?” Santiago stands and checks his watch. I don’t know why he’s being so rude.

  Jackson doesn’t miss the rudeness either. “It will be when you hear the rest of what I have to say.”

  “Go on then. Don’t keep me in suspense,” Santiago deadpans, sitting down again and leaning back in his chair. He crosses his ankle over the opposite knee.

  “As you know, I’m one of the advisors to The Tribunal.”

  My heart drops to my stomach, and Colette closes her hand around mine like she feels this shift in me.

  “And?” Santiago prods, unimpressed by his status, which I guess he already knew.

  “Colette has been convinced your wife wouldn’t have done what she’s accused of and I’ve come to trust her intuition.”

  “Intuition is all well and good, but facts are facts,” Santiago says. “And I’m not sure your visit is appropriate, considering those facts.”

  “Hear me out, Santiago.”

  I’m trying to follow the dynamic between the two men. They’re not friends, obviously, but not quite enemies either. Or is everyone an enemy to my husband at least in his own mind?

  “You’ve seen the footage,” Jackson says.

  Santiago’s lips move into a tight line, and I want to scream at him that it wasn’t me. That I didn’t try to kill him. He can’t believe I would, can he?

  “Her sandals,” Jackson says. “My wife was wearing the same pair the woman in the security footage was wearing, but those aren’t the shoes she left home with. They’re your wife’s sandals.”

  “Oh my god!” I clasp my hand over my mouth, understanding what this means, tears of relief ready to spring from my eyes.

  Santiago is as still as stone for a moment before he uncrosses his legs, hands on his knees and leans forward.

  “Her sandals?” he asks.

  “Mine, actually,” Colette says. “Ivy was wearing them. We’d exchanged shoes before the dinner. It’s not possible Ivy was wearing the sandals the woman in the video was wearing because I had those on.”

  I can
almost see Santiago’s mind working as he processes. Then without a word, he stands and walks to the door then out of the room.

  “Um,” I start, standing too as Colette and Jackson get to their feet. “I’ll see where he’s going.”

  They follow me as we head toward the corridor that leads to Santiago’s office. I turn the corner to see him disappear inside. He leaves the door open, and we all follow. No one takes a seat as he moves around his desk to push a few buttons on his keyboard, and a moment later, those screens come alive with a scene I wish I could forget. But today, this morning, I move closer, peering intently at the monitors.

  “There,” Jackson says just as Santiago pauses the video. It’s just a corner of the screen. Easily missed. The flat sandals Mercedes had been irritated by. She’d wanted me in heels but obeyed Santiago’s order. And there’s the woman in those same flat sandals. In the distance is Colette in a matching pair standing beside her husband.

  Santiago plays the rest of the video, but it’s only in that one shot that her feet are visible.

  “Play it again,” I ask, but he’s already doing that. He slows the video, and we see it again.

  “I had Colette’s sandals on by then. And I was locked in the bathroom,” I say. He’s never let me tell my side of the story. He’s never wanted to hear it.

  He turns to me, and I guess I expect to find relief on his face. Maybe joy even, but even I know that’s a stretch. What I see, though, is at least a sliver of the former. It should hearten me, shouldn’t it? But there’s something else in his eyes.

  “Thank you, Jackson,” he says stonily.

  Jackson nods. “I’ll take this to The Councilors today. You’ll still need to bring your wife in on her appointed date, but I believe this will be enough to clear her name.”

  It’s over.

  A sob escapes me, and I catch the edge of the desk to steady myself. It’s over. This one part at least.

  Santiago nods tightly. “I need to talk to my wife,” he says, voice hoarse.

  “Of course,” Jackson says and turns to Colette. He gestures to the door. That’s when I see it. The ring on his finger. The insignia with the two hammers on the hand of the man talking to Holton on the night of the gala. The name my brother wanted.

  “Ivy,” Jackson says, and I shift my gaze up to his. “I hope the next time you and my wife see one another, it will be in happier circumstances.”

  I nod nervously. “Thank you. Thank you both of you.”

  Colette takes my hands and squeezes. “Your wedding veil is in the bag too,” she whispers when she hugs me. “See you soon.”

  “Thank you so much, Colette. Really, thank you.”

  “We’ll see ourselves out,” Jackson says.

  I watch them go then turn to my husband to find him watching me with a strange expression on his face.

  “Tell me about that night.”

  “You’re going to listen?”

  “Tell me.”

  “After your friend came to talk to you, I walked around for a little bit, then went into the chapel. I wasn’t going to hang around your sister or mingle. That’s where I met Colette and offered to swap shoes with her. She’d taken hers off and had been walking around barefoot. They must have been so uncomfortable, especially considering the pregnancy. Anyway, we stayed there talking until the first gong went off. She had to rush back, but I didn’t want to, so I found a bathroom and hid there for a while. I knew I couldn’t hide out forever, though, especially after the second gong, but when I tried the door, it was locked. I mean, it locks on the inside, so it wasn’t so much locked as barricaded I guess. I don’t know. I called out, but no one heard me, and then someone screamed. I think it was Mercedes. I’m sure, in fact. And then I could open the door, and well, you were lying on the ground.” I feel myself waver, remembering that moment. Remembering him like that. “And then the man—”

  “Judge.”

  I don’t repeat it. I don’t care about his name. I never want to see him again. “He knocked me out, and when I woke up, I was in that awful place.”

  “Bring me the shoes you were wearing.”

  “What?”

  “Colette’s shoes. Go get them.”

  “I don’t have them. I guess they got lost somewhere between the gala and the cellar. I—”

  “Mercedes had them sent to your room.”

  I pause. “No, she didn’t. I don’t have them.”

  His face becomes stone-like, and I swear I can see him thinking, trying to make sense of things. His jaw is tight, body tense. Before I can ask why it matters, he storms out of the office and down the corridor. I rush after him as he hurries up the stairs to my bedroom. By the time I get in there, he’s in the closet, and when I get to it, I see him inside, pulling clothes off hangers, opening drawers, and shoving things aside wildly.

  “Santiago?”

  With a roar, he knocks a whole shelf of shoes clear off, and I jump backward. He turns to me, and the rage I see in his eyes is nothing like I’ve seen yet.

  “Where are they?” he demands.

  “Not here. I told you!” I back away into the wall. “You’re being crazy!”

  “Where the fuck are they?” He slams his fist into the wall, and I jump, letting out a scream.

  He shakes his head and storms out of my room to barrel down the hall to Mercedes’s bedroom.

  “Mercedes!” He bangs his fist against her door, and when he finds it locked, he rams his shoulder into it so hard I hear wood splinter. It takes only two times for the door to crash open.

  “Santiago, stop!” I rush in after him and am glad for his sister that the room is empty.

  But then he begins to tear her closet apart, and when he doesn’t find what he needs there, he destroys her bed, then her desk, pulling out the drawers, dumping their contents, and smashing a beautiful antique lamp against the wall.

  “Santiago, what are you doing?” I scream as I try to pull him away, try to make him stop, but he just shakes me off. “Santiago, stop!” I grab his arm and cling tight, but it’s a mistake. He’s out of control, and when he next shoves, I go flying backward and crash against the large, heavy armoire, slamming the back of my head so hard that for a moment, time stands still.

  “Fuck! Ivy!”

  I blink, sway on my feet as the room spins. When my knees give out and I reach for something, anything, he catches me, big arms wrapping around me, sweeping me up just as consciousness slips away.

  21

  Ivy

  His smell is all around me. I breathe it in, but when I turn my head, pain makes me hiss.

  “Shh. Just relax,” Santiago says, fingers gentle on my face.

  “She’ll be all right. Probably have a headache, though,” says a vaguely familiar voice.

  I open my eyes to find Santiago and Dr. Hendrickson standing over me.

  “There she is,” the kind doctor says, smiling as he tucks something into his bag.

  I look from him to my husband, who looks absolutely tortured, and I remember what happened. Colette and Jackson coming over, the shoes in the security footage that will exonerate me. The brief relief followed by Santiago’s madness.

  Does he think Mercedes has somehow betrayed him? No. I can’t believe that. If there’s one thing I know, it’s that Mercedes loves him. She’d do anything for him. He must know that.

  The moment I try to sit up, Santiago’s arms are around me, hands lifting me, pushing a pillow behind my back.

  “You’ll need to take it easy today, but it’s just a bump. Santiago will keep a close eye on you to be sure there’s no concussion, but I don’t think so.”

  “Our session,” I say, vaguely remembering an appointment.

  “It’s actually why I happened to be here at the right time. I don’t think we’ll have our session today, Ivy, but I’ll be back next week.”

  “Thank you, Doctor. I’ll see you out,” Santiago says.

  “No need. You stay with your wife. I think Antonia is nearby a
nyway.”

  “Let her know Ivy’s fine. She’s probably worried.”

  “Will do.”

  They shake hands, and I watch the doctor leave. The moment he does, Santiago turns to me. He sits on the edge of the bed and pushes hair behind my ear. He studies my face in a way he hasn’t before and touches the spot where the tattoo gun left a tiny dot of ink.

  “Christ,” he says, wrapping his big hand around the back of my head, gentle with the bump as he weaves his fingers into my hair and draws me against his chest. He holds me like that for the longest moment.

  I breathe him in and can’t help the tears of relief as I wrap my arms around his middle, feeling his strength and the power of his protection.

  “What I almost did to you,” he says, the words barely audible as if they weren’t meant to be spoken at all as he brings his lips to the top of my head.

  I draw back, and he cups my face, his hands on either side, thumbs wiping away old or new tears. I can’t tell anymore. The look in his eyes, though, is pure torture.

  “I’m sorry,” he says. “I am exactly the monster you prayed I wouldn’t be the night of the wedding.”

  I shake my head, touch his cheek, and lean up to kiss his mouth. It’s a chaste kiss, salty with tears. He doesn’t kiss me back, but he lets me kiss him.

  “No. You’re not a monster. Not even close.”

  He draws in a deep breath close to my head as if he’ll draw my scent into his lungs, inside himself.

  “The foundation of my own home is cracked,” he says, and I try to understand what he’s thinking. The dress and the sandals, Mercedes was supposed to bring them to my room? She never did. I didn’t realize he’d somehow gotten hold of them after my days in that cellar. But that alone has led to this? It seems a bit far.

  “No, Santiago. It’s not right. I know it. She—”