Chapter 4

Vivienne's POV

The pressure closed around my throat. My lungs compressed, air forced out in slow, grinding increments.

I stared into Lucas's bloodshot eyes.

Only once before had I seen that look on his face.

When I was nineteen. The school was burning. He had torn through scorched brick with his bare hands, eyes red, clawing through the rubble for any sign that I was still alive.

And now, for the sake of an embryo, he was using those same hands to choke the woman he had once nearly destroyed himself to save.

The man who saved me had become the man trying to kill me.

"What's the rush, Lucas? Worried about that empty burial plot?"

Even with his hands around my throat, I forced out a cold laugh.

"You said it yourself - only my name goes on that headstone. Whatever she gives birth to will just be a bastard with no claim to anything."

His fingers tightened. I could feel my windpipe flexing under the pressure.

I held his gaze and delivered the only warning that mattered.

"Lucas. If you can't finish the job, I will have that double grave filled in and leave you with nowhere to be buried."

Something warm dripped onto the back of his hand.

He hesitated. Looked down.

I must have gripped the scissors too hard earlier - my palm had been cut, and blood was running down over his cuff.

He released my throat like he'd been burned.

I slid down the closet door, coughing hard.

Lucas forced the rage back down behind his face.

"It's done, it's done. It probably wouldn't have survived anyway."

He didn't believe a word of that. Neither did I.

But his body moved before his pride could stop it.

He turned, grabbed a bottle of high-proof whiskey from the bar cart, twisted the cap off with practiced ease.

"Give me your hand."

No matter that they were standing in a mansion. No matter that the medicine cabinet was stocked with the best that money could buy.

Under pressure, he always defaulted to the most raw, most instinctive method he knew.

Back in the days when we were hiding from enemies in the slums, there was never any medicine. He would grab the strongest liquor he could find and pour it over my knife wounds.

That burning sensation was proof we were still alive.

Dark amber liquid mixed with blood and dripped onto the floor.

The alcohol hit the cut like a lit match. It brought me sharply back to myself.

He kept his head down, rinsing the wound, muttering curses under his breath.

"How did you manage to cut yourself this badly."

A moment ago he genuinely wanted to choke me to death. Now he was tending to my hand.

Killing me and saving me in the same breath.

Lucas Holt. You really are out of your mind.

He wasn't doing it out of tenderness. He was repairing damaged property.

"Get off me."

I yanked my hand back and knocked the whiskey bottle to the floor.

Glass exploded. The smell of aged whiskey mixed with blood spread across the room.

"Don't touch me."

I looked at him evenly.

"Your hands were just on her stomach. They're dirty."

Lucas looked at the broken glass on the floor. He was quiet for a moment. He didn't blow up. He just pressed the intercom and called for the house doctor.

Then his phone rang.

He glanced at the screen, and something shifted in his face.

The hospital, most likely.

If the procedure had gone through, he wouldn't look like that.

He didn't say anything else about my hand. He turned and walked out, long strides, forgetting his jacket entirely - his whole posture radiating undisguised panic.

That line about it's done, it's done - complete garbage.

He still wanted that child.