Bloodline of the Broken / Chapter 2 / 20

Chapter 2 - The King's True Verdict

The massive iron gates groaned shut, sealing the estate like a tomb.

Radios crackled instantly across the perimeter as his men scrambled to execute the command. The faces behind the mansion windows vanished into the shadows. Under the portico, Vivienne stood perfectly still, but her eyes had narrowed.

For the first time since I entered this family, she looked terrified.

Roman ignored everyone else. He sprinted across the flooded driveway, ripping off his heavy wool coat and draping it securely over my shivering shoulders. Without a word, he dropped to both knees in the freezing mud, his large hands gently cupping my bare, bleeding feet as if evaluating the damage the earth had done to me.

“Bianca,” he scraped out, his voice thick with a raw, dangerous emotion. “Look at me, sweetheart.”

I tried to focus on his face, but the cold was shutting my system down. “She... she touched the baby, Roman,” I whispered.

A terrifying stillness passed over his features.

He rose slowly, turning his back to me to face the mansion. The man who stood up wasn't my husband anymore; he was the apex predator of the New York underworld.

“Who held my wife down?” he asked the courtyard.

Silence.

Roman tilted his head slightly. “Ask again, Marcus.”

Marcus, his head of security, stepped forward, drawing his weapon. A young maid near the doorway immediately broke, dropping to her knees. “Mrs. Kane ordered it! She said the child was a curse on the bloodline!”

Vivienne’s chin lifted defiantly. “I simply executed what this family was too cowardly to do.”

Roman took three slow steps toward his mother. “You put hands on my wife.”

“I protected our legacy!”

“You humiliated the mother of my child,” Roman corrected, his voice dropping into a deadly whisper.

Vivienne attempted a mocking laugh, though her hands were visibly shaking. “Your child? Roman, don’t be so sentimental. A common girl from Queens was never meant to inherit our kingdom.”

“Our kingdom?” Roman repeated softly.

The headlights of a black SUV illuminated the drive as the family doctor and Roman’s personal attorney rushed out of the vehicle, a sealed leather file in the lawyer's hand.

Vivienne’s face drained of color.

“Open it,” Roman commanded, his eyes never leaving his mother’s face.

The lawyer broke the wax seal with trembling fingers. “We recovered this from Mrs. Kane’s private vault in Zurich, sir.”

Roman skimmed the first page. Then the second. The storm seemed to grow louder, matching the violent tension in the air.

“Roman, what is it?” I asked, clutching his coat around my stomach.

He looked up at Vivienne, and any trace of filial loyalty was entirely gone. There was only a king looking at a traitor.

“You knew,” Roman said, his voice dropping to a register that chilled me more than the rain. “All these years, you kept the truth hidden.”

Vivienne backed away until her spine hit the mahogany doors. “Roman, listen to me—”

He hoisted the document into the air.

“My father’s true will states that the Kane empire does not pass to me, nor does it stay with you,” Roman announced, his words slicing through the wind. “It passes entirely to my firstborn daughter.”