Page 82 of Uprising

“She was a whore.” He spits. “A worthless piece of…”

I don’t let him finish that sentence. I force the words back into his mouth with my fist, feeling with more than a little delight the way his teeth crunch, the way they break.

“She’s worth a thousand of you.” I snarl. “She always was. You just couldn’t see beyond your own greed.”

“And you can’t see beyond your own cock.” He spits. “You got one taste of her and that’s all you wanted but Rose doesn’t love you. Not really. She’s a Capulet, she’s just like the rest of us, she wants power, money, everything you cannot provide and everything Darius does.”

I punch him again, focusing all my anger into the fist that slams into his eye.

“She’s not like you.” I state. “She’s nothing like you.”

“And yet you’re here and she’s in the Governor’s House, riding his cock.” He laughs.

I’ll admit that makes me lose it. I slam one fist and then another, beating his body, hitting him so hard the chair slams back into the floor and I have to physically calm myself, physically pull myself back from murdering him.

“You sold her.” I state. “And I want to know what the price was.”

He’s panting, visibly shaking, and that beautiful silk shirt he had on is torn to pieces and covered in his blood.

“What do you think it was boy?” He says.

“You get a cut on the whole organ thing.” I reply.

He grins at me, his teeth all sharp and broken from where I’ve punched him. “Not just that. It was never just that.”

“Then what else?”

“You think too small. Just like your father did. You think only of the short term but what good is that, what good is any of it if someone like you could come in and destroy it?”

“So what else?” I ask.

He sits back in the chair, lifts his jaw as if this were a conversation in his office, that it was on his terms and not mine. “Power.” He says. “Ultimate power. With my name tied to Darius, with our blood tied to his no one can come at us, no one can take us down.”

“But that only lasts as long as he remains Governor.” I state.

He grins then. We both know Darius can only run for two terms, that by the laws of this state he’s not able to run again once this one is up. But that look, it tells me something, it tells me so much.

“He was going to change the law…” I murmur.

“Of course he was. You think he’d do all of this and risk someone new coming in and dismantling everything?”

“But the people would never accept that.”

“He owns them.” Ignatio states. “He owns the press, the media, every voice in the street. Every dissenting voice has either been paid off, blackmailed, or murdered.”

I stare at him for a moment as if I can’t quite comprehend the words.

“So why did he want Rose? Why is she even caught up in this?”

Ignatio tuts like I’m an irritation. “Come on Montague. You’re better than that.”

“Tell me.” I growl.

“She’s the perfect wife. She was for Paris. And now she’s with Darius he doesn’t even need to fake his approval ratings. They love him because of her.”

I turn my face up disgusted. She’s just a pawn they’re using. A tick box to maintain their grip on their power.

“And once she’s popped out a few of his children…”