Ruthless Noble by Alley Ciz

CHAPTER 37

My head hurts.

My eyes burn.

Razor blades attack every time I swallow.

My body feels like I let Wes use me for a sparring partner.

But…

It’s my heart that has taken the worst beating of all.

Jasper is the only reason it’s not shattered beyond all repair. He helped hold it, and me, together at my most broken, most vulnerable, even when I could tell he felt uncomfortable with some of my requests.

If there were any lingering doubts when it came to our feelings for each other, we banished them time and time again last night. Even now, he’s like a silent sentry at my back, not moving away but not trying to insert himself into the situation. He does that a lot, letting me handle things on my own but staying close enough to back me up should I need him.

It’s…different. Not at all like how it feels when I’m with the Royals, and that’s telling.

It’s also something I didn’t think an alpha like him would be capable of, yet here we are.

My throat is dry from all the word vomit I spewed as I dragged every skeleton I could think of out of the King closet. How is it possible to feel lighter while simultaneously feeling like you’re about to be crushed by your truth?

I can’t believe I admitted…all of it. I told every-fucking-thing. It was a risk, one that very well might bite me in the ass, but I needed to take the chance. I’m done.

I’m done hiding.

Done playing along.

Done being used.

Done being kept in the dark.

Done being lied to.

Just…done.

I refuse to be controlled any longer.

I sway a bit, everything from the last twelve-plus hours catching up to me. The hand resting on my hip flexes then Jasper is there, flush against me, not letting me fall.

“I’ll tell you,” Mitchell agrees to my request. “But could we sit before you keel over?”

Jasper doesn’t bother to wait for me to answer, instead guiding us to take one end of the large leather couch, me settled across his lap and leaving Mitchell to take the matching leather chair opposite us. Duke meanders over, passing a mug off to Jasper and taking the cushion beside us.

The sweet aroma of coffee hits my senses, and after taking a sip, Jasper hands the cup to me. It’s more bitter than I usually take it. Still, caffeine is caffeine, and anything that can help me expel the sludge of yesterday from my brain is good enough for me.

I must make a face, though, because I can feel the faint reverberations of a restrained laugh everywhere my body touches Jasper’s.

Again I notice the way Mitchell watches how we interact. There isn’t even a hint of disappointment or a trace of the disdain I’m used to from Natalie. Honestly, he seems…I don’t know…almost like he’s pleased? Like he enjoys the sight of me…well, I can’t say happy at this particular moment, but I guess content could work.

Why isn’t he more upset that I’m canoodling with a man who is most definitely not the man he arranged a betrothal to? Wasn’t the whole thing meant to help foster his future political career?

“The only thing I ask before we begin…” He pauses and clears his throat. “Is that you reserve your judgment until I tell you everything.” He doesn’t actually say the word please, but the plea is there in his eyes. “I first met your moth—Natalie”—I appreciate the correction—“years ago.”

“Roughly nineteen, give or take a few months,” I supply. With my birthday closing in fast plus the nine months or so for pregnancy, it’s simple enough math.

“Yes.” Mitchell nods, shifting forward and resting his elbows on his knees.

My stomach rolls in anticipation, or more like trepidation, of what I’m about to hear.

An arm bands across the tops of my thighs, then a hand is gripping the side of the one furthest away before I feel the hypnotic back and forth pattern of a thumb tracing figure eights over the cotton of my sweats.

With Jasper’s touch helping draw the stress from my body, I shift until my back is resting half against his chest and half against the arm of the couch and prepare myself to listen.

Mitchell tells the tale of how, as a young twentysomething, he was just starting to prove himself in the family business. He traveled all the time, visiting any St. James property he was tasked to handle projects for, until the flagship hotel—the one where we both currently reside—landed on his itinerary.

On his second night, he met a flirtatious Natalie at the bar at the St. James, and the two had an instant rapport unlike any he had experienced with anyone else before. As much as I wish I could, I can’t blame him for falling for my Momster’s charms. Her soul may be black and ugly—that’s what happens when you sell it to the devil—but on the outside, she’s a beautiful woman. For months now, I have experienced just how adept she is at pretending to be something she isn’t.

Again he reiterates that he didn’t know she was married, nor that she was pregnant when their affair—oh how that word applies in so many ways—ended when he left for his next St. James property.

“If—” He has to pause to clear his throat. “If I’d known about you, I would never have left.”

I close my eyes and do my best to breathe through the emotions that simple confession invokes. While the Falcos love both Carter and me like one of their own, I haven’t had a parent claim me since Dad died.

Oh my god!

Would he have even loved me if he knew I wasn’t actually his?

Shit! Shit! Shit!

The seizing of my lungs is instantaneous as that thought slams home. I have my inhaler out of my pocket and at my mouth before I’m able to recognize how preposterous and outright wrong that thinking is. Jeremy King was a great man, an honorable man, a loving man. He wouldn’t let the sins of my mother keep him from loving a child, from…loving me.

Leather groans as Mitchell shifts forward in the chair, worry flashing in his gaze at my need to use my inhaler. I wave him off, explaining that despite him learning about my asthma in one of the more traumatic ways he could, using it is common and not cause for concern.

I don’t miss the way Jasper slides a hand along my back, leaving it to rest near the bottom of my lungs, or how he squeezes me just a bit tighter when I give him an I know what you’re doing side-eye.

Still…

I have to know. If only for my peace of mind.

“Did—” It’s my turn to clear my throat, swallowing to soothe the scratchiness. “Did my dad know?”

Mitchell doesn’t flinch or balk at me referring to Jeremy as my dad. “From what your mo—Natalie has said…no, he didn’t.”

“Why tell you?” I snap, defensiveness on behalf of my dad creeping into my tone.

His expression remains neutral, not reacting to the sharpness in my voice. “It was a case of fortuitous timing on my part.”

I arch a brow at the positive spin he put on that statement.

“Shortly after I moved back to town, there was a fundraising event—though for what, I’m not entirely sure—hosted at the St. James. I had just finished meeting with my bar manager when the event let out, when who should I spot but the same woman I carried this strange torch for, for almost two decades.”

I could scroll through my memories to figure out the event, but there would be no use. Before the day Natalie called us to her house to tell us about her recent elopement, it had been months since the last time we’d seen her.

“She was easy to recognize,” Mitchell states. I can believe it. Again, with the whole sold her soul to the devil thing, Natalie doesn’t look much older than she did when she had me. There’s also the plastic surgery she used part of Dad’s life insurance money on, sooo…

I listen with a sense of detachment as he continues with his story, doing my best not to let on how it affects me when he relates that he overheard Natalie’s casual brushoff when her friend asked if she needed to be home for me. Of course she didn’t. I was living with Carter.

Thankfully, he glosses over most of the details of their reunion, sticking with an almost bullet point–type list.

He was sad for Natalie when he learned she was a widow but happy for himself because it meant she was available. It wasn’t until he asked about the child he’d overheard she had that he did the math.

“This is the part I need you to not judge me for.” He runs a hand across his mouth, and I do my best not to outwardly react. It wasn’t the widow comment he was worried about?

“It was also around this time that I had been in talks with my good friend Frank”—he gestures to Duke, who nods in recognition of his father—“about my plans to transition into politics.”

“Makes sense to seek out advice from a current elected official.” Some of the tension leaves Mitchell at my statement, and his shoulders fall away from where they were hiked up near his ears.

“Yes, but this is where I’m afraid I might have put your current situation”—he bounces a finger between Jasper and me sitting together and Duke—“in motion, albeit unintentionally.”

He explains how Governor Delacourte introduced him to Walter Noble. I pointedly ignore how my nipples perk up at the growl Jasper emits when his dad is mentioned. Aren’t we a pair with all our parental baggage?

Thankfully, the sound was too low for Mitchell to hear. He continues with how he was told candidates who are married, especially those with children, statistically do better with voters than those who are single. Therefore he had already been in the mindset of looking for somebody to settle down with when he reconnected with “the one who got away.” And, bonus,she came with a kid—one he could even biologically link back to himself if the story was spun correctly.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I ask.

“About being your dad?” I flinch. I try not to, but I do, and then I give him a nod. “You were already going through so many other changes—your mom’s new marriage, moving into a new home, changing schools—I didn’t want to blindside you with this.”

“So much for that idea.” Though, admittedly, that’s my fault because I was the one who snooped her way into his safe.

Instead of calling me out on my underhanded sleuthing, he only gives me a sad smile. “When I realized the…delicate circumstances, I thought it would be best if we got to know each other first before dropping that kind of information on you. Because, Savvy—”

Gah!Why? Why did he have to call me Savvy right now? Natalie refuses to use it, but when he learned that’s what I typically go by, he quickly switched over to using it.

“—I am proud as hell to be able to call you my daughter.”

Emotion works its way up my throat, and I’m blinking back tears. I don’t think I can ever recall Natalie saying those words to me.

It’s too much. I need a minute.

“Why did you tell Carter before me?” I ask the one question that has been burning on the tip of my tongue since my brother confessed he knew.

“That’s not exactly how it went down.”

He explains that after the showdown between my brother and my currently-muttering-curses boyfriend at the hospital, Carter decided to go for round two with him. Mitchell had just learned about my asthma in a harrowing experience and was dealing with all the fallout that comes with it while making the necessary arrangements for bringing me home once I was released from the hospital.

Carter, who I’m sure was feeling guilty for not being at the dinner party, was most likely triggered into being all kinds of extra overprotective. He demanded I went home with him when I was released, and Mitchell pushed back. Carter demanded to know what right he thought he had to make that call, and a confession about me being his burst free without thought.

I can practically see how it all occurred in my head.

“After I realized what I did, I probably did the most selfish thing I could have done and asked him to let me be the one to tell you.”

So many things are starting to make sense.

Carter’s avoidance…he probably felt guilty as hell not being able to tell me.

I bet that’s also why he all of a sudden seemed to be more comfortable when I decided to start sleeping at the penthouse more.

There’s also…

“Is that why you never used the step title when you would introduce me to people?” Mitchell nods. “Wow.” I slump against Jasper. Here I thought it was just a way for him to make me feel more…I don’t know…accepted by him. Another thought slams into me and has me jackknifing up. “Did you enroll me here as St. James because you want me to change my name?” My pulse picks up speed, and a cold sweat breaks out across my neck.

“No.” The quick, assertive way Mitchell delivers the answer has the worst of my panic ebbing. “I only did that because your—Natalie suggested it.”

I pinch my lips together. I just bet she did.

“Can I ask you something now?” The intentional question has my back straightening with attention, and I dip my chin. “Why were you in my safe?”

Oh shit! I whip my gaze around to Jasper, my eyes wide, eyebrows flying up my face, not at all sure how I’m supposed to answer. Is this one of those times it’s best to deny, deny, deny?

Jasper looks over my shoulder, keeping his gaze trained on Mitchell for a moment before reaching up to cup my cheek. “Princess.” His pearly eyes hold me captive. “I think you should tell him. He might be able to help.”

Help? Is he crazy? I know we’re sitting here having a moment and shit, and yeah, sure, maybe we’ve decided Mitchell is a good guy.

But…

And, holy crap, it’s a huge but.

He married Natalie. He flipping asked her to be his wife. I may have had my doubts that he was mixed up in her schemes, but why should I think he would go against her?

I’m just a girl he’s only begun to get to know. They’re the ones who have history. Sure, we share DNA…but the two of them shared vows. Which one of those holds more weight?