Page 86 of Last Man Standing

“Over time,” he continues. “With familiarity, I suppose Paul and Arabella saw something else in each other. He saw that she wasn’t the highbrow pain in his ass he thought she was, and she saw that he wasn’t a mindless, order-following drone working for the very asshole she loathed. He was working undercover and thought she was loyal to her father. She was working undercover in a way, too, and thought Paul’s loyalties were with his paycheck.” He inches closer and lays his forehead against mine. “They fell in love long before they knew the truth, which made things a million times more complicated for the pair. Then…” He exhales a noisy breath and stares down at my lips. “He caught her sneaking out of her room one night with a hunter’s knife hidden under her nightgown and a feral glitter in her eyes.”

Curious, I pull back and search his expression. “A knife?”

“He followed her in the dark, all the way to Richard’s private suite. She’d intended to kill her own father.”

Stunned, I turn over the pieces in my mind. The jumbled puzzle of what I thought was Arabella’s story, and overlay that with this new information.

“Paul stopped her. Swept her up and got her out of there. She was kicking and screaming, furious and wild, because she could have ended the old prick right there and then.”

“W-why didn’t he let her? Richard was an awful, evil man. She could have⁠—”

“A man’s perspective is always twenty-twenty when he has the luxury of hindsight and more information. But in that moment, he saw her with a dagger inches from Richard’s heart, and his orders were to observe Richard’s operation. Not destroy it.”

“Stopping her would have convinced Arabella Paul’s loyalties were with Richard.”

“Mmhm. Hence the kicking and screaming and absolute fuckin’ chaos of a homicidal woman who didn’t get to draw blood. The only soldier who saw any of this go down was Bastion, and he was always loyal to Paul. My dad got her back to her room and basically had to hold her down. Force her to stay still. She was spitting and snarling. Fuck knows, as men filtered past and heard the struggle, they might’ve assumed he was getting a taste of the kingpin’s daughter against her will.” Sebastion trails his fingers over the swell of my ass and draws a repeated pattern my brain clings to.

I’ll draw that pattern tomorrow. Maybe.

“None of what she’d attempted made sense to my dad, so they duked it out for hours. She thought she was alone, like she couldn’t trust him with her truth even if, previously, she’d trusted him with her body. But the dam eventually broke, like they always do, and the truth came out. His and hers.”

“What was hers?” I whisper. “Why did Arabella want to kill⁠—”

“She was in love.” Sebastion’s eyes soften with a nostalgic smile. “She shared herself with Paul, physically and emotionally, for months already. Consensually. But there was another man who sometimes took her body, too.”

My heart turns to stone. It stops in my chest and sits heavy enough to weigh a ton.

“The second wasn’t consensual. A dozen times, it happened. And a dozen times, it was done to her. She hadn’t told my dad he was just one of two back then. She was ashamed and devastated. She was terrified it would scare him away, and if she’d lost him, she dreaded a future of sexual intimacy that only ever included pain and fear. Coercion and violence.”

“It was rape,” I rasp. “The second. The sex not with your dad.”

He drops his gaze to my lips, nodding and thoughtful. “Yeah. It was. And her rapist was preparing to sell her off to the highest bidder.”

I knew it was coming, and yet his words bring tears to my eyes. Her own father raped her. “She thought she could make it all go away if she killed him?”

“Mmhm.” His long lashes flicker up and reveal beautiful dark brown eyes. Almost black unless we stand in the sun. “It’s entirely possible her plan would’ve worked, since she had a dozen soldiers inside her home who would have protected her when the shit hit the fan. She didn’t know they weren’t loyal to Richard, and they didn’t outnumber Richard’s actual loyalists. Even so, it might’ve worked if Paul hadn’t stopped her.”

“Twenty-twenty,” I sigh. “He panicked.”

“Right.” He lays his palm flat on my thigh, measuring the large limb against my body. “She told him her devastating secrets, Richard survived the night, and word had spread amongst the men that someone hurt Arabella the night before. A soldier. In Richard’s warped mind, he was determined to protect her from whoever had violated her, so her security detail was increased and, by pure luck, he only shot my father twice for not doing his job.”

“What?” I startle and jolt back. “Richard shot your dad?”

“Twice.” His lips curl into a smile, as if the idea of being shot, twice, is just a friggin’ joke. “Word had spread, remember, that someone hurt Arabella. For that to have happened, Paul obviously didn’t do his job. No one knew who was making her scream that night, and Arabella wouldn’t confess, so security was increased, Paul was lucky his injuries weren’t worse, and for every moment Richard’s back was turned, they formulated their escape plan. My Uncle Bas set himself up to become the ultimate scapegoat. He was the face of Operation: Get Arabella The Fuck Out. Arabella’s betrothed was brought to the house, he and Richard discussed business, and when deals had been struck, he attempted to woo his future bride.”

“She wasn’t having it?”

Sebastion barks out a playful laugh, shaking his head softly from side to side. “Not even a little bit. But, as had been proven in the past, men have the power to take, even when she didn’t want to give. They have the power to control, even when she was determined not to let them. She was just a girl. Not very old. She knew going through with a wedding would spell the end of…” He shrugs. “Everything. Because she would not lie down for him. She would die defiant, or he would die by the end of her blade. Together, Paul, Arabella, and Bastion planned her escape, but shortly before they were set to leave, she turned ill. Nausea was her constant companion. Pain in her hips made it difficult to walk. A growth in her stomach made it all horrifyingly real.”

“She was pregnant.” My breath catches on emotion. “With you.”

He nods. “With me. She swears to me, swears on her life, she knew from the start I was Paul’s son and not her father’s. Claims she never once doubted it. She insists that a mother knows. Though I’m not sure I believe her,” he chuckles. “Wasn’t she tempted even a little to cut me out of her stomach in those early days? Make it go away, just in case?”

“She knew.” I trail my fingertip along the bridge of his nose, Paul Jameson’s nose, and thank the stars the right sperm won thirty years ago. “She was sure.”

His shoulder twitches. “Either way, it was time to go. Her plan was not simply to run away. It was to die. Disappearing would only give Richard a new obsession, a new target to hunt, so it was imperative that he believe she was dead. She never breathed a word of her pregnancy to anyone, not even my dad, until they were gone, and on the way out, she wanted Richard’s empire flattened, his resources minimized. This was the only way she could feel safe.”

“So they faked her death,” I rasp. “That thing with Bastion and Paul and…” Lincoln told me some of the story already. “How she was raped and stuff.”