“So you’re going to go back to insulting the highborn again, is that it?”
“I love you, Lila. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do here.”
“You can still have me. I just have to take a partner for the season, or at least until I get pregnant.”
Tristan looked away. “I’m not going to stand by while you fuck some other man.”
“Then you want too much. I’m not the chief anymore. I’m prime. There’s just no time for us anymore, not in the way that you want.”
Tristan stood up and pulled her out of her chair. He slipped his arms around her, and his mouth landed on hers hungrily. Their tongues intertwined. She tasted whiskey, quite a bit more whiskey than usual.
At some point, her kiss changed. Her lips stilled, and her thumb lingered on his cheek. Passion fled where goodbye lingered.
“Why do you kiss me like that? Why do you kiss me like that if you don’t have feelings for me? If you can just run away and have feelings for someone else?”
“None of this is about feelings. I’m not taking a lover. I’m making an heir.”
“You couldn’t do that with me?” He blinked back tears. “Mine works just as good as theirs. Why am I not enough for you?”
“What would have me do, Tristan? Would you have me seal the child’s birth record? Even accepting for the moment that your breeding does nothing for my family’s prospects, what would I tell the child when it grows up? That she can’t see her daddy because he’ll be working in the mines for the rest of his life? That he’s a slave who got caught doing something stupid? Or maybe I should say that she can’t see her daddy because he hates everything she stands for. It’s hard enough for me to put up with, and I’m a grown woman. How’s a child supposed to deal with all your backhanded slaps? I won’t put a child through that.”
Tristan pulled away.
“I won’t have a child who can’t rely on her father for help. Look at Alex and Simon. Look how it worked for them.”
“Get it from a jar.”
Lila sighed. “That’s not how this works, Tristan, and you know it. I’m prime—”
“If it’s only too late if you become prime, then don’t become prime. Live with me.”
“I can’t, and I’m sorry if you don’t understand why I can’t choose to be with you in the way that you want. I’m trying to meet you halfway, and I don’t know why you won’t do the same for me. I can’t turn my back on my family, and you shouldn’t ask me to.”
“I wouldn’t ask if you really wanted to be the prime. I’d let you go. But this doesn’t suit you, Lila. None of it does. Not being prime, not having a child, not sleeping around with other men. Fine, maybe some people, some highborn, can do this, but you aren’t like them. Dixon wasn’t either. Don’t you get that? Why must you go along with this?”
Lila swallowed. That morning she would have said she deserved it. She had killed people, and part of the compensation for that involved this life she had never wanted.
But her mind had changed since then. She no longer regretted her actions, not since the shooter took aim that morning. The Italian mercs had sealed their fate in the warehouse the moment they took her and her friends hostage. Were she in that place again, she’d draw her gun and shoot. No tears would fall upon her cheek. No remorse would cloud the aftermath. She’d shoot again, just as she would have shot the sniper that morning.
The monster in her mind vanished, along with his club.
For the first time in weeks, her mind quietened, but what remained surprised her. “I’m going along with it because I love my family, because I can handle the office, and because I can do more good as prime than I ever did in the security office. Pick one, Tristan. My mother needs me. My sister needs me. My family needs me. I was never meant to be anything but the next chairwoman. I’m tired of running from that. It’s exhausting.”
“No, you’re just running from us. Again.”
“It’s not about us.”
“So becoming prime is just fate?”
“I call it life. I call it duty and responsibility. I call it growing up.”
Tristan scowled, shaking his head. “You could do more good by my side in a week than
an entire lifetime as prime.”
“Really? Where’s your Randolph General?”
“Don’t be an ass. That’s not fair, and you know it. There are more ways to do go good than with money. Join me. We could do good things together.”