The Ruthless Heir

Judge’s [POV]

It’s three in the morning when I get home. I’m exhausted. I haven’t slept much in the past two weeks what with trying to avoid Mercedes. The house is dark, and my footfalls are quiet as I make my way down the hall to my bedroom. I glance at Mercedes’s door like I do every time I walk past it, then open my own, wondering how she is doing. What she’s thinking? How hurt she is by my refusal of her. Especially after what I did. What I took.

I close the door and switch on the light only to hear a gasp from my bed. I’m not sure who is more surprised, her or me, because Mercedes sits up, squinting into the sudden light, her hair a dark waterfall over her shoulders and her naked breasts.

“What the hell are you doing in here?” I set my briefcase down and stalk across the room to her.

She scratches her head and rubs her eyes. “I fell asleep. What time is it?”

“Time for you to go to your room.” I jerk the blanket off her, very aware that I’m taking my anger at myself out on her. But then I see she’s naked, and it takes me a minute because fuck, I want her. I want to be inside her again. Hear her breathe my name. I want to hold her. Feel her warmth when I kiss her.

These weeks of avoiding her have done nothing to lessen my desire. And this is exactly why I can’t be near her.

She stretches her arms over her head, back arcing, making her breasts jut out toward me. It’s feline, the movement, and sensual as hell.

I take her arm and haul her up. She resists. “How did you get out of your room, Mercedes? And into mine?” Lois knows to lock it after she cleans, and Miriam should be locking Mercedes’s bedroom door every night.

“Stop. Jesus. You’re hurting me.”

With a sigh, I let her go. She rubs her arm but doesn’t cover herself, and my gaze sweeps over her, taking in the dark, hard nipples and her shaved sex. I scrub the scruff on my jaw, which needs shaving, and tries to look away.

“What time is it?” she asks, glancing at the clock. She yawns, appearing at home. She isn’t having the same struggle I am.

I strip off my jacket and set it over the back of the chair, then unbutton my vest.

“Your brother paid me a visit tonight.”

Her forehead furrows. “He came here? I didn’t see him. Didn’t he want to see me?”

“Not here,” I lie, leaving out the part about him stopping by here first. “The office.” I busy myself taking off the vest, undoing the buttons of my shirt, then removing the links from my cuffs and setting them on the tabletop before taking off my shirt.

“Oh.” I don’t have to see her to know she’s still hurt by the fact.

“He asked me about our kiss at the compound the night of the party.”

She clenches her jaw and raises her chin, ever stubborn. “What did you tell him?”

“That you did it to skew the conversation from something embarrassing for you to something that would make all your little girlfriends jealous.”

“They’re not my friends.”

“Not the point.”

“Was he angry?”

“He was concerned.”

“Well, he shouldn’t be. I’m an adult. He gets to have his own life on his terms, and I want my own.” She gets up out of the bed and comes to stand a few inches from me. “And I don’t deserve how you’re treating me. You’ve been punishing me for weeks because you’re angry with yourself, and it’s not fair.”

“Life isn’t fair.”

“You think I don’t know that? Me?”

I grit my jaw.

“You’re supposed to be different, Judge.”

“I’m a man, Mercedes. And you’re fucking hard to resist, but I need to do just that. For both our sakes.”

“No, you don’t. Not for my sake.”

She puts her hands on my chest, and I physically move her out of the way to walk into the bathroom, where I switch on the shower. Ice cold. I expect her to follow me in. She does but instead of coming into the stall, she just leans against the doorframe, watching me as I stand under the spray. When it’s clear she won’t go away, I switch off the water, step out, and dry off. She follows me into the bedroom, where I pull on a pair of pajama pants.

“What do you want out of this, Mercedes? You know I won’t marry.”

“Which is stupid.”

“You don’t know my reasons.”

“Then tell them to me. Trust me with your secret. I won’t hurt you with it.”

I grit my teeth. I know that. I believe she has honest feelings for me. And she’s right. I’m punishing her for my shortcoming because I have feelings for her. And therein lies the crux of the problem.

I tilt my head to the side and narrow my gaze. I need to end this. Now. And I’m going to have to hurt her to do it for her own sake. But before I get a chance to speak, she does.

“I’ll even go first.” She takes a deep breath in, clenches her hands, and steels herself. When she looks up at me, I see the child she was in her eyes. One who once trusted the world. “My father,” she says, her chin trembling, voice a quiet breath.

“Your father what?” I asked tightly, seeing how the emotion of what she was trying to tell me is taking a physical toll on her.

She swallows hard. It’s a long minute before she continues. “The scars. You wanted to know who did it. And I’ve never told anyone in the world. Only Antonia knows because she found me that night in the chapel. She’s kept my secret even from Santi.”

A lump forms in my throat. Something familiar. But for Mercedes to have endured something as brutal as the beating that left her scarred, it’s just wrong. I have the urge to draw her to me and hold her. It takes all I have to keep my arms at my sides.

“How old were you?”Property of Nô)(velDr(a)ma.Org.

“Ten.”

“Jesus.”

“I wanted to stop playing the piano, and he told me I wasn’t stopping. It’s why I haven’t played since he died. It’s why playing here has meant so much.”

I drop into the seat behind me and rake my hand through my hair. “Jesus fucking Christ.”

Kneeling between my legs, she puts her hands on my knees and looks up at me. Fuck. She’s so hopeful. So vulnerable.

“Now you tell me why you won’t marry.” I watch her little face and brush her hair back from her forehead. How could he have done it? But isn’t that what my grandfather did to my mother? She wasn’t ten, though. Still. What he was capable of. What I know I’m capable of. Violence runs in our family. “That’s how trust works, Judge. It’s how it grows.”

“I don’t want to hurt you.” She won’t understand the meaning of these words and how deeply I mean them.

Mistrust hardens her eyes. Wipes away any trace of the vulnerable girl.

I get up, grab the pajama set she must have taken off and left on the foot of the bed, and drop it on the chair I just vacated.

“Get dressed and go to your room, Mercedes.”

“What?”

I can’t look at her. Jesus. I won’t be able to do this if I have to see her.

“Judge.” She’s behind me and puts her hand on my shoulder. “No one has ever seen me the way you do. And I trusted you. Trust you. Shit. I don’t know what tense that should be. Just please don’t make that a mistake. Don’t make telling you a mistake.”

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

I turn to face her, taking my shirt from the back of the chair and draping it over her shoulders since she won’t put on her pajamas.

“Do you want to know why I’m so late, Mercedes?” My voice sounds foreign to me. The lie is so clear. The wound I’m about to deal so final. So vile.

She shakes her head, and I’m not sure I’ve ever seen her as sad as I do at this moment.

I draw in a deep breath. “I was at the Cat House. It’s where I’ve been practicing every night since you got here.”

For a moment, she looks like I’ve slapped her. “That’s not true.” She backs away a step. “You told me it wasn’t true.” Her voice sounds different too. Broken.

“I lied to you. You’re very sweet. And lovely. And so very inexperienced.” I go to her, touching her cheek.

She slaps my hand away. “I don’t believe you!”

“It’s true.”

“I don’t fucking believe you, you asshole!”

“I’m sorry, but I don’t want you.”

Hurt turns to something else. Something dark. Her lips curl in disgust, and the way she looks at me then is pure hatred. She pushes my shirt off her shoulders as if she can’t stand having it touch her, having any part of me touch her, and stalks toward me. She raises her arm and slaps me so hard my head snaps to the right. My cheek stings and the sound of it is still reverberating in my head when I slowly turn back to her. The vulnerable girl is gone, and a broken thing is in her place.

“I hate you. I hate you so much. And I will make you pay for humiliating me. Mark my fucking words. I. Will. Make. You. Pay.”

With that, she spins on her heel and leaves my room, exactly like I wanted. Exactly.