Chapter 205: Ease Up

Chapter 205: Ease Up

Roman

I knew the second I stepped back into the bedroom that Sav would be waiting with questions. She had heard enough of my voice on the call with Reese to know something was wrong.

The shift in tone. The request for privacy. She never missed those things.

She was sitting up against the headboard when I came in. The twins were finally down in the cot beside the bed. Andrea had fought sleep the longest, the way she always did, but sleep won.

As always.

Sav’s eyes tracked me the moment the door closed. “Roman. Is everything okay?” The worry was already in her voice. “Why did Reese sound like that? Why did he need to talk to you alone? Did something happen? Is Lizzie alright?”

I let out a slow breath and pinched the bridge of my nose as I crossed to her. Her gaze never left me. Searching. The kind of look that made lying feel impossible even when the truth was going to hurt.

How was I supposed to say this to her? She was pregnant with my child. There was no way around it.

Whatever I would tell her was going to hurt, and the urge to put a bullet in Randall only sharpened with every second I spent looking at her and knowing what he had taken from us.

“Roman.” Her voice had gone quieter. Scared now. “You’re making me worry.”

I tried for a smile and glanced toward the cot. “Finally got her into her own bed?”

“Don’t.” She shook her head once. “Don’t deflect. Tell me what’s wrong.”

I sat on the edge of the bed and drew her carefully against me. She didn’t resist. She leaned into my chest like she was bracing for impact, and the trust in that small movement made the next words harder.

“I’m sorry, my love.” I rubbed slow circles between her shoulder blades. “I’m truly sorry.”

She tipped her face up. “You’re scaring me. What’s happening?”

I cupped her cheek. The words had to come out eventually. There was no version of this that didn’t damage something.

“Randall put cameras in the room we used at the manor.” I kept my voice as steady as I could. “He recorded us in the bathroom. He was watching us the entire time.”

She went completely still.

For a second I thought she had stopped breathing. I slid my thumb under her nose just to feel the faint proof of air. Her eyes glassed over in the low light, the surface of them turning bright and shiny.

The first tear hit the back of my hand. Then another. Then she was crying in earnest, the sound breaking out of her in small, wrecked pieces.

“Bastard.” The word was barely heard.

Each sob landed like a stab to the heart. I had always hated the sight of her in pain more than almost anything else this life could throw at me.

Watching her shake against my chest while tears soaked into my shirt made the rage under my skin turn cold.

I didn’t know how to hold her through this without feeling like I had failed her by ever bringing her near that house.

All of this was my fault.

If I had never been shot in New Hope, she would never have set foot in the manor. She would never have been within Randall’s reach.

The chain of cause and effect was ugly and simple, and it pointed back to me.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered into her hair. “I’m so fucking sorry.”

The apology only seemed to open the flood further.

She fisted both hands in my shirt and held on like the floor had dropped out from under her. Her whole body trembled with the force of it.

I could feel the pregnant curve of her against me and the fear that the stress would touch the baby sat right beside the fury in my chest.

I covered the swell of her stomach with one hand. “Sav. Please. Ease up. You’re going to make yourself sick.”

“Why?” The question tore out of her between breaths. “Why would he do that to us? How does someone do something that sick to his own brother?”

“Randall has never needed a good reason to be disgusting.” My voice came out rougher than I intended. “We both knew he looked at you the wrong way. We just didn’t know how far he was willing to take it.”

She dragged in a wet breath and tried to wipe her face. “What about Lizzie? They’re still there. What if he’s been watching them too? You have to tell—”

“Reese already knows.” I kept my hand steady on her. “He’s been recorded as well. There are files. Including a separate folder with her videos on it.”

The sound she made then was worse.

She pressed both hands over her mouth as fresh tears spilled. “Oh my God. Not Lizzie. She’s not going to handle that well. Roman, we can’t let him walk away from this—”

I pressed a kiss into her hair. “I know. And I’m going to make sure he understands what happens when he decides another man’s wife is something he gets to collect.”

She pulled back enough to look at me. “You’re going back to the manor.”

“Yes.”

She searched my face, reading the decision that had already settled in me.

“No one makes you cry like this and keeps breathing easy,” I said. “Least of all him.”

She shook her head and reached for my wrist. Her fingers were cold. “Don’t kill him. Please.”

The request sounded wrong. I stared at her. “What?”

“He’s your brother—”

“He stopped being anything to me the second he decided your body was footage he could keep.” The words came out flat. “If he could sit there and get off on a recording of my wife, he is not my brother. He's just another name on my list.”

“You can hurt him,” she said, voice cracking. “You can destroy whatever needs destroying. But please don’t kill him. Promise me.”

I couldn’t keep the disbelief out of my expression. “Sav. Do you understand what he did? You’re asking me to show restraint to someone who has been violating you for years. Actively. I'm not certain you're thinking straight.”

She squeezed her eyes shut. Another tear slipped free. “I know what he did. I also know I hate it when you come home with blood on your hands because of me.”

The statement pulled me up short.

“I don’t like it,” she continued, quieter now but no less certain. “It makes something in me go cold when I think about you touching me with the same hands that ended a life. Even when that life deserved it. Even when it was for me.” She said, “It makes me fear you.”

I watched her. This was not new. Sav had never romanticized the violence I was capable of when it came to protecting her. She had always seen the cost of it more clearly than I did.

She met my eyes. “It’s not romantic, Roman. It’s frightening. It scares me when you disappear into that version of yourself. Please. Stop choosing that first. I would hate to wake up one day and realize that I fear my own husband.”

I looked at her for a long moment. Then I said the only thing that was true. I didn't want to reply to her.

“I’m leaving for the manor in a few hours. I need to pack.” I started to stand.

Her hand locked around mine. “I’m coming with you.”

The words stopped me cold.

“No.” I turned fully toward her. “You’re staying here with the children. That place is not—”

“I’m going.” Her voice had gone steady in the way it only did when she had already decided. “If you refuse to take me, then you don’t go either.”

A short, incredulous sound left me despite the situation. It was honestly a little hilarious.

My pregnant wife, smaller than me by every measurable standard, was issuing an ultimatum about walking back into the house that had already hurt her.

“You think this is funny?” Her eyes were still wet, but the grief in them had hardened into something else.

“Not at all, my love.” I said. “It's just amusing. You're threatening me.”

“I’m angry. I’m hurt. And I feel like I’m back in that office again. Like someone is holding me down and I can’t get the weight off my body. All over again.”

The smile died instantly.

The professor. The office. The particular trauma she had spent years clawing her way out of.

I saw the memory move through her in real time—the way her shoulders drew in, the way her breathing went shallow, the way her free hand pressed briefly against her own sternum as if checking that she could still expand her lungs.

“I can feel it, Roman,” she whispered. “The same helplessness. The same sense that my body was never really mine in that room. That it belonged to someone else without my consent.”

My fists tightened.

“And now I find out someone else has been watching me. Abusing my body while I was taking care of you. While I thought we were safe enough.” Her voice fractured. “I’m pregnant, Roman. I'm emotional. This is not the moment to decide I should sit quietly at home while you handle the man who made me feel like I was being raped all over again.”

I rushed forward and pulled her into my arms. “You don't deserve this. You don't deserve any of this.”

She began sobbing again. “You know what I’m like when I get like this. You know I won’t stay soft.” She said, “Please take me with you. I want to look him in the eyes and ask him why.”

I had not planned for this. I had never wanted her within a mile of the manor again. I did not want her to stand in the same air as Randall. I did not want the twins anywhere near the poisoned ground of that house.

But the look on her face told me that trying to leave her behind would only become another kind of violation—one more decision made about her body and her pain without her consent.

She held my gaze without flinching.

“Make the choice,” she said. “I go with you. Or you don’t go at all.”

“I’m sorry, my love.” I exhaled. “But I can't let you get hurt.”