The Ruthless Heir

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I am a Sovereign Son. A king within The Society.

With a look, I send men to their knees.

Yet she stands tall against me, taunting me with her rebellion.

But we all have rules we must live by.

Even me.

And I have broken the most sacred.

I took her to my bed.

I claimed that it did not belong to me.

And now that the beast within has had a taste, it wants more.

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Judge’s [POV]

I check my watch when the knock comes on my study door. Miriam is prompt, as I expect. “Enter.”

“You wanted to see me, sir?” she asks, eyebrows raised in confusion.

“I did. Come in and close the door.”

“It’s late, sir. I was-”

“This won’t take long.”

She nods, closes the door, and comes to stand before the desk. I’ve set one chair there. A low wooden one. Uncomfortable. Small.

“Sit, Miriam.”

She sits, arranges her usual black dress over her knees, and finally meets my gaze.

I set the paperweight on the center of the desk and watch her stunned reaction. The only sound is a tiny intake of breath as color leaches from her face.

“She didn’t lie, did she?” I ask, somehow calm even though what I want to do is the opposite of that. It’s violence. Pure and simple.

“I don’t know what you mean, sir.” She folds her legs one way, then the other. Then she stands. “I’m tired. My shift is over. Perhaps we can-”

“Fucking. Sit.”

She lowers herself, her knees trembling.

“You’ve been feeding my mother information.”

“Your mother? No, sir. I work for you.”

“Ah, but you and she, well, with your brother being Theron’s father, I imagine you’re all very close.” That’s what I discovered after a little bit of digging. It didn’t even take that much. She used her ex-husband’s name on her initial application years ago. Somehow it slipped past my grandfather although maybe he didn’t care who my mother took for a housekeeper. She lived in the cottage by then. It’s not like he ever had to see either of them.

“It’s not like that,” she croaks out.

“You kicked her when she was down. Literally and figuratively.”

She swallows hard.

“You could have killed her.”

“Sir…”

“And I believed you. The black eyes were convincing. How did you do it?”

Nothing.

“It doesn’t matter. What matters is what I did,” I say more to myself than her.

“I’ll gather my things.” She starts to rise again.

“Did you hear me dismiss you?”

She drops back into her seat.

“And no, you won’t gather your things. Because if you do, you’ll be going directly to a prison cell.”

“Sir, it wasn’t my intention. I never would have hurt her.”

“Oh, I think you would have, but let’s go ahead and discuss that, shall we? Whose plan was it?”

She hesitates. “No, I… I mean… She was so cruel to me. So belittling. You bringing her here like that brought her down a notch.”

“And you wanted to bring her down a few more.”

“She’s spoiled. You said it yourself.”

“How do you know what I said?”

She looks around the room.

“Walls seem to be remarkably thin in this house.”

She nods like an idiot.

“Did you tell her I gave her my permission to ride with Theron that afternoon?”

She clears her throat.

“Why?” I ask.

She shakes her head, eyes wet although I’m pretty sure any tears she sheds are to save her skin and not for any remorse she may feel.

“Answer me.”

“We thought maybe Theron…”

“You thought to put Mercedes in his path. You and my mother.”

She lowers her gaze to the floor.

“What else does my mother know?”

She stares at me with her stupid eyes. She’s not the brains behind this operation.

“How you answer me will decide what I do with you, and prison is a very real possibility.”

“I… The courtesan.”Text property © Nôvel(D)ra/ma.Org.

Fuck.

I keep my face neutral and impassive as if it means nothing at all. Because it means everything. Because if my mother knows what Mercedes did, she can cause real trouble for her. And she will if it will serve her.

I need to think. To get ahead of this. I have fucked this up so royally.

“Here’s what’s going to happen, Miriam.” She looks up at me and wipes her eyes and her nose. Snivels like a pig. “You are going to pretend this conversation never happened.”

She’s surprised at this. Nods enthusiastically. “Of course, sir. Of course! Thank you!”

“Don’t be so eager. If my mother or Theron get wind of this, if they find out that I know, I will haul you to a jail cell so fast you won’t know what hit you. Am I clear?”

“But… sir…”

I pick up the paperweight and toss it from one hand to the other as her face turns a shade of gray I didn’t know was possible for a living, breathing human being.

“And according to your file,” I say, opening the single folder on my desk. “It won’t be your first time. You were in prison before. Petty crimes but enough of them. I don’t imagine you liked it much. Inmates are brutal, aren’t they?” I give that a long minute to sink in. “None of the comings and goings of this house will be discussed with my mother or brother. Understood?”

“Yes, sir.”

I get to my feet, walk around the desk, and loom over her. “And if Mercedes so much as feels you’ve looked at her the wrong way, there will be hell to pay. Am I very fucking clear on that point, Miriam?”

A knock on the door interrupts our conversation. I barely have a moment to be pissed because whoever it is doesn’t wait for me to give the order to enter but keeps knocking and pushes the door open at the same time.

It’s Lois, which surprises me, but it’s the look on her face that has my heart drop to my stomach.

“Get out, Miriam.” I don’t wait for her to move but pick her up by her arm and give her a good shove toward the door. Lois gives her just enough space to clear the room, and I hear her running down the hall.

But I don’t care about Miriam. Because Lois is crying, shaking, and too upset to speak.

I take her arms and squeeze.

“What is it? What the hell has happened?”

“She’s gone. She’s just…”

“What?”

“Mercedes. She was feeling sick so I opened the window to give her some fresh air and-”

“The window?” She’s up on the second floor.

Lois nods. “She used sheets.”

I run past her up to Mercedes’s room and crash through the door to find it and the bathroom empty. The window is open, and it wouldn’t be wide enough for me to squeeze out, but Mercedes is smaller than me and much more flexible. But that’s not the worst of it. There, outside, Paolo is gathering up the sheets that she’d tied together, that had ripped from whatever she’d secured them to. The dogs are sniffing and barking, and I hurry back out of her room and down the stairs through the kitchen and out the door.

A memory of something I’d seen at her house crops up in my head. A magazine. Yoga. Aerial yoga.

But fuck. To tie sheets together and use them in an attempt to escape? And go where? The gate is locked. She can’t get off the property, and if she could, then what? She has no money. No transportation.

Although she has friends. Friends outside of IVI.

And she has one on the property. An accomplice is more likely.

Theron.

“Did she fall?” I ask, my heart pounding against my chest when I reach Paolo.

He holds out the ripped sheet.

“Fuck!” Did my brother come to get her? Did he somehow plan her escape? Did Miriam facilitate it? For all I know, he could be running off to elope with her. But she wouldn’t do that to me. She wouldn’t.

At least she survived the fall. There’s no blood. Nothing like that.

I dig my phone out of my pocket and dial my brother. After a few rings, it goes to voicemail, and I hear his arrogant voice commanding me to leave a message.

“Where the fuck is she? Pick up the goddamn phone, you little prick!” I disconnect, then hurry to the stable to get my horse. The grounds are acres large, and the South Cottage is at the farthest end of the property with its entrance and exit. I need to take the detour to the stables because it will be faster to get there by horse than on foot.

As I mount, I call Theron again, and it again goes to voicemail after a few rings.

“If you touch her, I will fucking kill you.” I disconnect and ride at the speed of light to his cottage, keeping low to Kentucky Lightning’s back as we take the shortest route through the woods.

I hear the dogs somewhere nearby. They must have picked up her scent. But I’m surprised when the sound of their barking grows farther away. When Theron’s cottage comes into view, it’s dark. No lights are on. No smoke from the fireplace. His car is in the driveway, but the house is empty. I know it. He’s not here.

And my alarm grows. Because this is more wrong than my brother stealing her away just to fuck with me. I feel the dread in my gut.

On the wind, I hear the whining of the dogs. I squeeze my thighs around Kentucky Lightning’s body and turn him in the direction from where the barking grows louder.

But it’s farther off than it should be, in a direction I don’t expect. And as I near the outbuildings, passing the one I’d kept Ivy in, my blood runs cold.

Because there’s one place I’ve forbidden her. Would she go there? Would he take her there?

I stop thinking as I approach the dark mouth of the entrance because I hear a terrifying scream, and my gut wrenches.

“Mercedes!” The wind carries my call away. Can she hear me in there?

Another scream is followed by a choked sob, and I hurry blindly through the darkness, stumbling over stones. When I reach the door, all I can think is I don’t have the key but that doesn’t matter because the lock is gone. Someone has cut it out. I push my way in, and I don’t know if it’s the ear-piercing scream or the sight that greets me that makes my vision darken, makes my brain rattle inside my skull.

Because there, naked and bound to the leather-topped bench I remember well, is Mercedes up on the tips of her toes because she wouldn’t reach the handholds otherwise. She barely reaches them now. Her arms are stretched too far, her hair sweeping the filthy floor. But the worst of it. Fuck. The worst of it is the soft, fragile skin of her ass and thighs burns a throbbing, angry red, the skin broken in places, a drop of crimson blood sliding over the crease of one knee as she sobs as I’ve never heard anyone sob.

And behind her stands Theron. He’s shirtless and covered in sweat, holding a cane in his hand. A whip is discarded at his feet. The look on his face, in his eyes, that’s not the brother I know even in his cruelest moments. Even when he put the knife in my back.

That man was human.

This one I don’t recognize this one.

But when he raises the cane again, I don’t think. I can’t over the roaring rush of blood that deafens me. Or maybe that’s my scream when I charge him. Because I’m going to fucking kill him.