Chapter 1 The Breeder

Chapter 1

Lana

The Breeder

“How much weight have you lost?”

I stared at him.

Not because I hadn’t heard him. Not because the question didn't register.

But because I needed a full three seconds to confirm that Gerald Whitmore—self-appointed gift to the female population had just looked up from his roasted asparagus and asked me how much weight I'd lost.

In public. In a restaurant full of people. With the same casual precision he used to cut his food.

Don't freak out. Do not freak out.

“What?” I said.

Gerald smiled. That smile—God, that smile.

Polished and practiced and completely empty behind the eyes.

“I'm going to be mayor. It would be deeply embarrassing to have the woman on my arm looking rotund at public events. Unkempt.”

He picked up his wine glass, unhurried, unbothered. “Surely you understand the optics.”

I understood, alright. I understood plenty.

Somewhere in the back of my mind I thought about his sister Gabrielle—sweet and quiet Gabby who'd disappeared into the upstairs bathroom at Thanksgiving last year and came back twenty minutes later looking pale and hollow-eyed while the turkey went cold.

I'd always wondered about those lace gloves. About what she was hiding underneath them.

About what years of shoving her fingers down her throat to please men exactly like her brother had left behind.

I didn't say any of that. I asked, “Why does it matter?”

“Because,” Gerald said, savoring the word like fine wine, “I expect my woman to be a flawless reflection of me in public. Elegant. Desirable. And in private—”

A slow deliberate pause “—something worth coming home to once the lights go out.”

I blinked.

Translation: he just told me he won't fuck me if I’m not thin enough. In a restaurant. On a Sunday.

I reached for my wine and took a long sip. I immediately regretted, because it loosened the sharp thing sitting behind my teeth.

“So what you're telling me,” I said, setting the glass down, “is that you want a trophy wife. Someone decorative and silent who smiles at your events and entertains your guests and doesn't have opinions above a certain volume.”

Gerald dabbed his mouth with his napkin, looking genuinely pleased with me.

“You catch on fast.”

I looked at him. Really looked at him.

The blond hair slicked back without a single strand out of place, not one, as though even his hair was afraid of him.

The pressed blue suit. The practiced posture. The jaw that had probably never experienced a consequence in its entire pampered life.

Misogynistic pig, I thought pleasantly.

My fingers found the fish knife at the edge of my plate. I held it loosely, the way you hold something you're considering.

The thought that followed was calm and specific and wholly satisfying:

I could stab him in the neck right now and deal with the legal fallout with my full chest. At least I'd know I did something worthwhile tonight.

“Oh,” I said. “I see.”

I turned back to my plate. The smoked salmon sat there looking exactly as unappetizing as it had for the last forty minutes.

The smell of it—fish and butter and smoke was thick enough in the air of Briar and Stone to choke on, layered over the soft jazz coming from somewhere I couldn't see and the low murmur of Caldwell's finest dining around us in their expensive clothes.

Gerald had ordered the salmon. He didn't know I hated fish. He didn't ask but ordered it anyway because it was one of his favorites and my preferences existed only as far as they didn't inconvenience him.

At least this time it wasn't garlic. Last dinner he'd ordered garlic mashed potatoes, I'm allergic to garlic, and when I'd pointed it out he'd looked at me across the table and said, very seriously, that he thought it was witches who had that kind of aversion.

He'd called me a witch. Just like that. No apology. Nothing.

All I'd wanted tonight was to go home, change into something that didn't feel like a torture device, curl up against Mr Snuggles with a good book and a mug of Martha's hot chocolate while the storm rolled in outside.

The sky had been threatening all evening—lightning flickering behind the clouds beyond the tall windows of Briar and Stone, the kind of electric dark that made the restaurant's warm glow feel like a trap rather than a comfort.

Instead my mother had personally poured me into this ridiculously tight spaghetti-strap dress and instructed Grayson to drive me here and not come back until Gerald called.

I was here because Sylvia Langford had decided so, which meant I was here for all the wrong reasons, sitting across from Ken doll who'd crawled up from the depths of Tartarus and somehow convinced my mother he was a good idea.

“Sylvia tells me you start school tomorrow,” Gerald said.

“Mm-hm.”

His mouth thinned. He'd always hated the school thing. Said so regularly, with varying degrees of barely contained disdain.

The only reason he'd stopped actively fighting it was because a future mayor having a college dropout for a fiancée looked worse than letting her attend—and Gerald cared about appearances the way most people cared about breathing.

“I still don't see the point,” he said. “I can provide for every need you have. Every single one.” He set his fork down with that infuriating finality.

“Your focus should be on becoming the wife I need. Raising my children. Running my household. That is a full life, Lana.”

“What if I don't want children?”

The look he gave me could have cut glass.

“That isn't negotiable. If you wish to become my wife, you will give me children.”

I kept my voice very even. “How many?”

“Five.”

Five.

I stared at him.

What the actual fuck do you take me for? A fucking breeder?

Before I could say a single word of that out loud, a waiter appeared at Gerald's elbow—young, impeccably dressed, the kind of anxious efficiency that meant he was probably new.

He reached to replace Gerald's sparkling water.

I turned to him. “You can take my plate. I'm done.”

He reached across carefully, but his sleeve caught the rim of my lips and smudged a vivid streak of my red lipstick across his white cuff.

He pulled back immediately, apologizing in a low, horrified rush, staring at the stain.

“It's really okay,” I told him. “Don't worry about it.”

“Leave us,” Gerald said, in the voice he used on people he considered beneath him, which was most people.

The waiter practically sprinted away from the table.

I pulled my compact mirror from my purse and flipped it open, ignoring the way Gerald was staring at me.

“I've been trying to ignore it all evening, but I can't. What is happening with your face?” He said.

I paused. “I don't follow.”

“I told Sylvia specifically—specifically—that your makeup should be soft. Classic. Feminine.” His lip curled.

“Not whatever the hell this is. You look like Dracula's deranged bride climbed out of her coffin, helped herself to a full cosmetics counter, and called it a night.”

The heat that climbed my neck was equal parts humiliation and fury, which was a deeply uncomfortable combination.

“Go to the ladies’ room,” he continued, “and wipe it off your face. Right now. You look like a fucking hooker.”

I sat very still.

I'd known the makeup was too much—I'd known the moment the artist finished that my mother's instructions had produced something I'd never have chosen for myself.

But sitting here right now, in this dress and these heels and this restaurant I didn't want to be in, looking at Gerald's curled lip across a plate of fish I didn't eat—something in me hardened like cooling metal.

I would rather bite off my own tongue than agree with him.

“No,” I said.

“Excuse me?”

“I said no. I like it. I'm keeping it.”

His eyes went flat. “Stop being childish.”

“If I'm being childish,” I said, hearing my own voice climb and not caring, “and you're trying to marry me—what exactly does that make you, Gerald? Isn't there a word for that?”

His face cycled through three shades of red before he found his words again.

“You ungrateful, stupid little girl,” he said, very quietly, that particular tone that meant he was genuinely angry.

“Do you have any idea what I've done for your family? What I'm still willing to overlook? Watch your mouth before I decide the trouble outweighs the benefit.”

Something settled in me. Clean and cold and completely certain.

“I'm done,” I said clearly.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Done! I'm done, Gerald. With you. With this dinner. With sitting here pretending I don't want to scream every single time you open your mouth!”

His eyes cut around the room, registering the heads turning, the murmurs beginning to swell at the neighboring tables.

“Lower your damn voice,” he said through his teeth. “You're making a scene.”

“I haven’t even started making a scene.”

“Stop acting crazy.”

I laughed. It came out sharp and real and slightly unhinged and it didn't sound anything like the girl who'd walked into Briar and Stone an hour ago.

“Crazy?” I said. “You want crazy, Gerald? Buckle the hell up.”

I shoved my chair back. The screech of it against the floor cut through the whole room like a blade.

I reached up, tore the diamond teardrop earrings from my ears—the ones he'd given me at Christmas like a collar with better PR and threw them at him. They landed in his plate with a clean, ringing clink.

“What the hell are you doing?!”

The bracelet came off next. I threw it. It bounced off his chest and hit the table.

“Lana.” Warning soaking every syllable.

I kicked off the six-inch heels. One sailed past his shoulder. The other disappeared somewhere behind me.

My feet hit the cold floor and I nearly moaned with relief.

Then I grabbed the side of my dress and tore it. The sound of expensive lace ripping apart in a silent restaurant is something else entirely. Every single person in Briar and Stone heard it.

Gerald shot to his feet like he'd been launched, grabbing my wrist in a grip that was going to leave marks.

“Have you completely lost your mind?!”

“Get. Your hands. Off me.”

He didn't. His voice dropped to something low and dangerous.

“You are forcing my hand. Don't make me do something you'll regret in front of all these people.”

White. Hot. Fury.

I picked up my wine glass and threw the contents directly into his face.

The red wine hit him like a verdict. It streamed down through his perfect blond hair, soaked into his collar, bled dark down the front of his blue suit while the entire restaurant inhaled in one collective, horrified gasp.

“What the hell!”

“Go ahead,” I said, my voice shaking with something I refused to call fear. I tilted my chin up and held his eyes.

“Hit me. Right here, right now, in front of every single person in this room. Show all of Caldwell exactly what kind of animal is running for mayor. I dare you.” I hit his chest.

Gerald stood there, fists clenched, jaw tight enough to crack, wine dripping off his chin—and he didn't move. Because he couldn't.

Because there were forty witnesses and a room full of camera phones and Gerald Whitmore cared too much about his spotless reputation to ruin it on me.

For the first time all night, I had all the power at this table.

I yanked my wrist free.

“Go to hell,” I said, loud and clear. “And take your grandmother to dinner there. I'm sure she'll enjoy the salmon.”

I grabbed my purse.

And I ran.

Behind me Gerald's voice cracked like thunder through the restaurant, shouting my name, but I was already at the door, shoving through it, stumbling out into the night and straight into the storm that had finally stopped making promises.

Rain came down in cold, heavy sheets, soaking through what was left of my ruined dress in seconds.

I ran barefoot down the sidewalk with no direction and no plan, lungs burning, heels of my feet stinging against wet pavement.

Anywhere, I thought, breathless and wild and freer than I'd felt in so long.

Anywhere is better than here.

I didn't know then that anywhere was about to change everything.

I didn't know that the night was only just beginning.