His words were bristling with fire. With fight. With the kind of strength that people always associate with a beast like Lucian Morelli.
“So, what do we do?” I asked him.
My heart was racing, only it wasn’t fear it was racing with, it was something else. Respect and awe. Because that’s the master in him that stole my heart. The man who controls and dominates whatever is around him, not just me.
Everything.
Every fucking thing in his path.
He was sitting up on the bed, naked and brilliant. I felt like a meek little lamb lying beside him, staring up at the monster.
His answer was enough to make me tingle. The idea was one I’d never have considered in a million years.
“What we do, is take hold of London and put our mark on it, loud and clear. We work our connections and we use our strengths and we own it. We own our names and our lives for who we are, fuck our families and what they want to do to us. They can keep their bitter shit across the Atlantic and accept who the fuck we are.”
I didn’t even know what to say, I was so shocked.
His smile was proud.
“Who would you rather be, baby? Penelope or Elaine?”
My answer was quick and obvious.
“Elaine.” I managed a proud smile too. “Provided Penelope doesn’t live seventy years longer next to Jason’s side than Elaine lives next to Lucian’s. I like gardening a bit too much for that.”
I was trying to make light of the tension, because I just didn’t know how to process it. I didn’t know how to even begin to digest that we could be Lucian Morelli and Elaine Constantine, walking the London streets together as Lucian Morelli and Elaine Constantine. It just seemed… unreal.
But that’s when I realized just how much power that gave my heart—the idea of us walking the streets together as us. Proud. Because that’s what I’d be. Proud. I’d be so fucking proud of being Elaine Constantine at Lucian Morelli’s side with the whole world there to see it.
“Then we do it,” Lucian said. “We take hold of London and we put our mark on it, loud and clear.”
I propped myself up onto an elbow, still trying to let it sink in.
“The very idea of a Morelli with a Constantine is going to drive people wild. Everyone in the world knows we detest each other.”
“Yes.” He nodded. “They do. So let’s fucking surprise them.”
I let out a giggle. “It’s hardly how Romeo and Juliet ends, is it?”
“No,” he said. “It’s not, but what if Romeo and Juliet had used every bit of power they had in them and stepped out proud and given their families the middle fucking finger?”
I shrugged. “Their families would have probably stabbed them and danced on their corpses.”
He was shaking his head. “Not if Romeo and Juliet had a whole fucking army around them, ready to stab their families right back.”
I could see his reasoning now. I could see what he meant by connections and strengths and using them.
He was planning on working this city and all the associations he’d known at a distance from across the Atlantic and forming allegiances in this new world.
I had a whole flood of new admiration for him when I saw another burst of fire in him. He was truly a master. A master who needed to be ruling an empire.
Jason Reynolds could never be ruling an empire. Not from some cute little cottage on the British coast.
“You with me?” he asked. “You ready to stand up as Elaine Constantine at my side? The two of us proud to be one?”
I could feel the fire in my eyes match with his.
“Yes,” I said, “I’m with you all the way.”
16
Lucian
I showered with Elaine, soaping her up in a lather very carefully around the slice on her chest before we stepped out together and toweled each other down. I brushed my teeth as she brushed hers, eyes on each other in the bathroom mirror, but my mind was already hard at work, weighing up what I needed to be doing in this place.
I still had my investments and my financial empire overseas, wrapped up safe and tight in the legalities. I had my reputation and my known power, and the talents that had led me to ruling the Morelli kingdom so effectively. Letting Lucian Morelli go would be a crime against my humanity.
I watched Elaine pull some fresh clothes on from her suitcase once we were back in the bedroom.
Not standing tall and proud next to that beautiful angel would be a crime against my very soul to match.
I hadn’t ever known my soul. It was still an interesting stranger to me. Elaine had brought that gift to me by showing me hers.
It wasn’t clothes I tugged from my suitcase, it was the little black book I’d slipped deep between some shirts when I’d been getting out the cash cases from Kington Peak. The book I’d always used to record the most private of my affairs, in scrawled handwritten text, safe away from the virtual world. I’d been writing in it for years. Passwords, and ID numbers, and names and connections. The most important keys of the most important locks of my life.
Elaine lay down on the bed next to me as I thumbed through the pages.
“What’s that?” she asked, her pretty eyes shining bright in the lamplight.
“It’s our future,” I told her, and turned the book around to face her.
She scrunched up her face as she stared at the numbers and letters. “Business stuff?”
“Financial security of the very highest order.” I flicked through a few of the pages, until the numbers and letters turned to names and numbers. “Associations of the highest power. This is where we’ll get started.”
“Some of those are from the UK, right?” she asked, and took the book from my hands.
“Some very important ones of those are from the UK,” I said. “So I’d best get taking advantage of them before my father realizes this is where I’ve gone and starts reaching out to them himself. I need to get a head start on the battle.”
She handed the book back. “So, we’re really doing this? We’re really going to be Elaine and Lucian?”
I knew it, right down in my core. Yes. We were going to be Elaine and Lucian. Running away as damn Penelope and Jason would be a pitiful last resort. Elaine deserved to be a Constantine even more than I deserved to be a Morelli. She was too regal to carry any less of a crown.
I smiled at her. “It would be a travesty to call you anything but Elaine. You are Elaine. You will always be Elaine, not just to me, but to the world.”
She let out another one of her sweet little giggles.
“I never, ever thought we’d be holding up each other’s names as some kind of pride thing. We were born to hate each other’s names. I was told to hate the Morelli family as soon as I could understand the words.”
“I was taught to hate the Constantines with so much venom it would kill a whole fucking nation,” I replied. “You were nothing but pieces of shit since the moment I first opened my eyes.”
“Strange, isn’t it?” she asked. “It’s insane how the universe turned so damn weird and brought us together.”
“The universe is a strange fucking place,” I said. “Only it isn’t. Not when you really think about it. Not so strange as it seems. The whole world is magnetic. Opposites. It’s full of poles apart in the most extreme of ways with the most potent attractions. Darkness and light. Fire and ice.”