Chapter 7
Lucinda felt her knees go weak beneath the table. The sculpted satin of her evening gown seemed to offer no armor against his penetrating stare. The fair, rosy flush on her skin had turned to a sickly, translucent white. She realized that arguing against the clear, undeniable eyewitness testimony of the child, spoken with such raw, unadulterated trauma, was a losing battle.
"Reuben, darling, please," Lucinda whispered, her voice a fragile, pathetic breath, entirely abandoning her polished social poise. "I... I loved you. She was holding you back. She was weak. You needed a queen beside you, not a shrinking violet. I did it for you! For us!"
"Does love require a woman to drown the mother of my child and terrorize my blood?" Reuben finally asked, his deep voice slicing through the heavy air.
He slowly reached his hand forward, placing it firmly on the back of his son's velvet chair. He didn't push her; he simply let the question hang, a gesture of absolute, terrifying dismissal.
"My family's rivals put me up to it!" Lucinda cried, pivoting wildly, tears of panic and frustration spilling over her cheeks. "The Vance family threatened me! They said they would kill my father if I didn't help them remove her! I had no choice!"
"Do you believe my wife's blood can be washed away by the cowardice of a traitor?" Reuben inquired, his cold, perceptive eyes dissecting her false narrative with surgical precision.
Lucinda opened her mouth, her breath catching audibly in the quiet room. She looked at the towering, deeply masculine Mafia boss, realizing that the formidable intellect she had so arrogantly underestimated had just trapped her perfectly.
"My father will not stand for this insult," Lucinda hissed, panic mutating into cornered, vicious entitlement. "If you humiliate me based on the ramblings of a child, my family will declare war. He will shut down your southern supply lines."
"Will he declare war?" Reuben asked, tilting his head with dangerous curiosity. The loose strands of wavy hair falling over his forehead contrasted violently with the absolute, apocalyptic death promised in his cold eyes. "Or will he thank me for returning his defective, murderous daughter before she caused a war he could not possibly win?"
Lucinda’s mouth dropped open. The color drained entirely from her lips. She realized she had absolutely no power left in the room. The alliance was dead, severed by her own psychopathic ambition.
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"Get your hands off me!" Lucinda screamed as two massive men in tailored dark suits stepped forward from the shadows and grabbed her by the arms. She thrashed wildly, her sculpted satin gown twisting awkwardly around her legs. "You are choosing a servant and a hallucinating brat over a queen! You are a fool, Reuben!"
"Are empires built by men who sleep beside the assassins of their own wives?" Reuben inquired, entirely unaffected by her venom.
