“That’s a load of shit,” Shay counters, pissed. “You married Rosa just like they ordered you to. What more do those old farts want?”
“No. It’s not the families that have reminded me of the small print of the contract, but my dear wife here.”
Shay snaps his neck my way, accusation and disappointment in his eyes.
“I don’t understand,” Colin interjects with less venom to his tone.
“For the agreement to be truly fulfilled, Rosa must continue the Kelly lineage. That way, our families will, in fact, be forever bound.”
I shift in my seat but keep my schooled features intact.
“Having been so eloquently reminded of my shortcomings this morning, I have asked you all in here today to make a request.”
“And what request is that?” Shay asks apprehensively.
“I need you both to carry that burden for me. Father the next Kelly heir.”
I gasp, getting out of my seat so fast the chair falls over.
“What?! You cannot be serious!”
“Sit down, wife. The walls are thin, and I don’t particularly want anyone to listen to this conversation. What is said here, dies here. Is that understood?”
Both Shay and Colin nod, but I’m not so easily subdued.
“What you’re proposing is absurd.”
“Is it?” He smirks. “If I recall, I was there the day the treaty was forged. Not you. Nowhere was it specifically said that to guarantee our mixed bloodline that I had to be the one to do it. Only that you must.”
I frown.
“You will get a Kelly heir, Rosa. Just not mine.”
I let that piece of information fester in my mind.
What is he saying?
That he would rather whore me out than touch me again?
“Before you start with your rebuttals, I want you to listen very closely. This is the only way to ensure you get what you want.”
I let that sink in.
Is he telling me that he can’t have children?
Cristo.
Shame hits me like a tidal wave at how I treated him earlier. Maybe that’s why he was reluctant to sleep with me at first. I mean what would be the point? Sex with a person you have been chained to unwillingly probably didn’t seem very appealing to him from the start. The only other reason to have sex is to have kids. And here he is, telling me he can’t.
Or am I being na?ve right now?
The night that we had sex, Tiernan made sure never to cum inside of me. He even asked me if I was on the pill. A man who is physically incapable of having children wouldn’t be concerned if their partner was using that form of contraception or not.
No.
He can have children.
He just chooses not to.
At least, not with me.
“Fine,” Shay mutters, running his fingers through his Jesus-like long hair. “I don’t necessarily like being blackmailed and backed into a corner,” he starts off, throwing another disappointed glare my way for insinuating I would go to the other families and tell on his brother. “But like hell if I’ll let our family be the cause of breaking the treaty on a technicality. Just tell us which clinic you’re working with, and I’ll make sure Colin and I fill as many cups as we can to put a baby in your wife.”
He makes it sound like some kind of joke, and I guess to him, it is.
But not to me.
“We are not using a clinic.” Tiernan shakes his head, getting confused looks all around the boardroom table.
“So, how do you expect us to knock up your wife?”
“Can you please not be so crude?” I interrupt, feeling embarrassed enough with this situation as it is.
“Sorry, petal. But Tiernan needs to be clear in his demands. You sure the fuck were with yours.”
I’m sorry, I want to tell him.
Explain to him that I didn’t see another way.
That I would never purposely put the lives of thousands of people in danger just on a whim.
But instead, I pick the chair I knocked down up off the floor and sit right back on it, waiting to hear what Tiernan’s concocted as a solution to our problem.
“Boss?” Colin calls out when Tiernan takes too long to reply.
I swallow the lump lodged in my throat as my husband, my enemy, my one-time lover, stares me down with such sadistic malice in his eyes that the room begins to spin. I grasp on to the edge of the table to keep steady and face the consequences of my actions.
“Rosa will get her heir the old-fashion way.”
Gulp.
Both Colin and Shay are stunned into silence as Tiernan gets up from his seat and plants his palms flat on the table.