Chapter 218 Then Keep Bending

Chapter 218 Then Keep Bending
Chapter 218: Then Keep Bending 
Reese 

“Lauren claims she has Nathan’s unsent letters,” I said. “They suggest he was afraid of the tapes going public. She also eavesdropped on my conversation with Lizzie. The bitch recorded it.” 

Roman frowned for a second, then snapped his fingers as the name slotted into place. “Lauren. The White heiress. The delusional one.”

I almost laughed. “Don’t tell me you forgot who she was.”

He exhaled, eyes on Reginald’s portrait above the fireplace. The painted version of our father looked down on the living room with the same cold patience the living one used on the driveway. 

“She’s not memorable. There’s just something about her being in this house that sets my teeth on edge. Might be the fact that she’s sleeping with her brother.” 

“She told me she’s adopted.” I let out a short, incredulous breath. “Worst lie I have heard in a while, and that is saying something in this family.”

Roman’s mouth twisted. “Obviously a lie. She’s trying to sand the edges off the thing so it looks less grotesque. If anyone in that pair is adopted, it is the brother. Lauren looks an awful lot like Nathan White. The boy? I have squinted and I have zoomed. There is nothing. Something is wrong with those two, and it is not the kind of wrong a bedtime story fixes. Does she think a lie like that washes the rest of it off?”

“That seems to be the idea.” I rubbed a hand over my jaw. “Everything about her is rot. She will not give me the letters. Not unless I agree to what she wants.”

“She wants you.” Roman’s chuckle had no kindness in it. “You really need to do something about that face. What a mess it's gotten you into.”

I rolled my eyes. “Not funny, Roman.”

“Could have sworn it was.” The smirk faded as quickly as it came. “It is time to take her off the board. Letters or no letters. Tapes or no tapes. She has used up whatever patience I can spare. If she thinks having a recording of you and Lizzie talking about the pregnancy is leverage, then she is not going to stop until she has you miserable and tied to her. That is the whole design.”

“It is getting harder not to put my hands on her.” I stared at the unlit grate. “She keeps pushing. I cannot add Lauren to the pile I am already carrying. There are the empty graves. Those two sisters are still running loose. God knows what they are doing out there—”

“Don’t you think it is time we told Ryan the game is over?” Roman’s voice dropped into something sharper. “He is in something with her. We both know it. We are out of time, Reese.”

I looked at him. “How do we even—”

“Reginald’s birthday is in less than two weeks.” The words came out harsh. “I will be damned if he is still breathing to cut that cake. You said Lauren knows the first pregnancy was a lie. What happens if she walks that recording into his study? He is planning something. I can feel it on him. He did not take this morning lightly.”

“I know.” The slap, the guns, the public humiliation—none of that was going to stay in the driveway. “He never does.”

“If he comes near my children, I will end him myself.” Roman did not raise his voice. “You have a child on the way. I do not care how ugly the argument in that bedroom was. There is a life in Lizzie right now. You know what this place does to new lives. It snuffs them out and calls it tradition.”

My fists tightened until the knuckles ached. “If he touches my child, I will turn this house into a graveyard. That is not a figure of speech, Roman.”

“Then we move first.” He stared past me, at nothing I could see. “I cannot explain it cleanly. Something is coming. I have felt it since we walked through that door. That is why I do not want him alive to see his own birthday.”

“I feel it too,” I admitted. “Something is wrong.”

Roman nodded once, decision already made. “I'm going to talk to Lizzie. I know that sounds like I am walking into your marriage. But I'm doing it anyway. I understand that fear better than most people in this house. I used to live on that side of it. If she ends the pregnancy, she is doing Reginald’s work for him. He does not even have to get his hands dirty this time. She does it herself. And I do not think she is built to survive the guilt afterward.”

The accuracy of it got me.

“I would appreciate it,” I said, and hated how much I meant it. “She is terrified of me leaving. Of me disappearing into the baby and forgetting her. Of loving the child more than I love her. Of being a bad mother. Of dying in childbirth. It is a lot of ghosts, Roman. She will not hear anyone through them.”

He smiled. “I understand her. Her fears are not stupid. I was sick with it when Sav was carrying the twins. I watched enough birth footage to know what I was asking of her and it still did not prepare me. Lizzie is twenty-three. A few months into a marriage that has already been through more than most people see in a decade. Of course she is afraid of dying. Most women are. The ones who say they are not are lying or have not looked at it yet.”

“I know that.”

“There is a difference between knowing and understanding.” He leaned forward. “You know the list. Do you understand the girl holding it? Because right now she is going to feel cornered. Isolated. Like every person around her has stopped seeing her and started seeing a body that can make an heir. That feeling will feed the fear. It will make ending it look like the only way she gets to remain a person.”

“I have never tried to make her feel like that.” The defense came too fast. “I have bent. I have waited. Ten years. One year. Whatever clock she set.”

“Then keep bending.” Roman’s smile this time was quieter. “Demonstration is faster than argument. You keep meeting her where she is, and one day she will find herself walking toward you without being dragged. That is the only version of this that doesn't poison things.”

I stared at him.

He kept going, eyes distant in a way that had nothing to do with strategy.

“Watching Sav bring those two into the world—knowing what she endured for nine months, knowing the risks, knowing I could not take any of it from her—I would spend the rest of my life bending to her if that was the cost of keeping what we built. The fact that she did it all with grace is the part I am still trying to understand. The respect is not a speech. It is the only honest response I have left.”

“Hmm.”

“That is what I want you to get to.” He shook his head once. “If she goes through with what she thinks she wants, she will regret it. Not today. Not this week. Later, when the fear has burned off and the empty place is all that is left. By then it will hurt more, because she will know she did it to save a marriage and ended up teaching the marriage that both partners could do without each other.”

He stood.

“I am going to speak with her now.”

I stood with him. The anger that had been sitting under the conversation finally found a direction that was not Lizzie.

“Then I am going to Ryan.”