“Your father wants your body,” the driver said. “And I’m gonna be delivering it to him. But first, he wants to see me do it. He wants to see you fucking die.”
He took out a cell phone and pointed it at us, and the light came on as he set the video camera rolling.
Once again he gestured us forward, guiding us into a space on the grass.
“Get the fuck over there,” he said to Lucian, and Lucian held his hands up as he stepped away from me.
“Stay where you are, Elaine,” he said as I made a move to follow him.
“No!” I cried out, but Lucian hissed at me.
“Stay there, Elaine. This is between me and my fucking father.”
The driver laughed. “Not quite, Morelli. Your father wants the blonde bitch’s corpse too. You can get married in fucking hell.”
My heart was weirdly glad I’d be going along with him. I didn’t want to live without Lucian. I’d rather be dead alongside him.
“Any last words for your father?” the driver asked Lucian, stepping up closer to get a decent view on camera.
“Yes,” Lucian told him, stepping forward so his stomach was pressed to the gun. He looked straight at the cell and pulled a smirk. An evil one. “Go fuck yourself, cunt.”
I screamed as the gun sounded and Lucian collapsed onto the grass, lifeless. I rushed over but I didn’t get very far, the driver stepping between me and my love before I could reach him.
I was wailing inconsolable, on my knees on the grass when the driver pointed both the cell and the gun at me.
“How about you, slut? Any last words for Mr. Morelli?”
The evening was dark around us, but not so dark that I didn’t see the movement of Lucian’s body between the driver’s legs. It didn’t make any sense, because if Lucian wasn’t dead, he would be screaming and flopping. He wouldn’t be able to hold himself still.
But of course.
He wouldn’t.
He wouldn’t be feeling a thing. He couldn’t feel a thing.
I gulped in a breath when my love got to his feet without a sound.
I’ll never forget the sound of that knife going in. The driver fell to his knees, dropped the cell and almost dropped the gun. He tried to swing it round but Lucian had him, snatching the gun in a beat.
My love won the battle and fired the next shot.
The driver fell to the floor, bleeding out and wailing before Lucian shot him in the back of the skull, just like the driver should have had the sense to do to him.
Then my perfect lover collapsed himself.
He collapsed to the ground with his arm clenched to his wound, blood spilling from his mouth as he struggled.
“Thank fuck for my insensitivity to pain,” he whispered.
I don’t know how I had the breath or the voice to make the call to the emergency services from Lucian’s cell, pulled out from his tux pocket, but I did it.
“Where the fuck are we?” I asked desperately trying to remember the name of the village we went through.
“Briar Dene,” Lucian managed.
“YES! Briar Dene Village, straight through it and onto a gravel path, in the woods. Please hurry,” I said to the despatcher.
I sat next to my fiancé and begged the heavens to save him. Please, please just save him.
My hand was pressed tight to Lucian’s bleeding stomach when the sirens and lights showed up, begging them for help as they fought for his life.
Thank fuck, and thank the lord, they managed to get Lucian’s breathing steady before we pulled up at the hospital, screeching to a halt outside the emergency entrance, a team all set to take him inside.
I waited for him through a long night.
I waited for him with the Quentins alongside me, Francesca rushing on in to give me a hug and hold me tight.
I waited until the morning next to the people who’d become our friends, grateful for the true support I felt from them with every breath.
And then, finally, when the sun was bright outside and London was stirring to life for another day, the doctor arrived to tell me Lucian Morelli was done with surgery, and that he too was stirring with life for another day.
Lucian Morelli was going to make it.
My fiancé was going to survive.
Epilogue
Lucian
It’s a beautiful thing, having such ultimate power over somebody so powerful. Enough evidence to destroy them if they so much as step a threatening foot onto your turf.
It was such a foolish move of my father to demand a video of my murder in which he’d been referred to by name. Such a fantastic stroke of fortune to have Quentin deliver the driver’s cell phone when I was recovering in the hospital from the shot to my stomach. As it turns out, Quentin’s contacts really did stretch as far as I’d figured, the veins reaching right into the upper echelons of the police force. High enough in the ranks that they handed over the evidence backhandedly, without another word.
My Morelli family were quiet across the Atlantic, feigning a pathetic happiness to the press at my engagement to Elaine Constantine, clearly realizing it wasn’t worth the risk or the fight. They’d been quiet for months. Months where Elaine and I had enjoyed our engagement very happily in our Morelli-Constantine Manor, feet firmly rooted on UK soil.
Even I had been surprised when my family’s feigned happiness for my new life stretched as far as a call from my father late one Thursday evening with a grudging invitation in his tone.
Come back to Morelli Holdings.
It wasn’t really my father behind the request. It was the board itself. They felt free to interject their opinions about my personal life, insisting that it reflected on the company. But in the end they knew I had tripled our profits since taking the helm.
My father would be no replacement for me, even if they wanted him.
It made me glow inside in the coldest of ways.
Yes, I was the head of the Morelli kingdom. I’d been destined to be from the day I was born.
I would return as leader. As ruler. As the CEO of Morelli Holdings.
Elaine was nervous as I’d shared the news with her. Her beautiful blue eyes were filled with reluctance along with her pride at my father’s admission.
“Of course he needs you back,” she told me. “You’re too incredible for them to do without you.”
I loved her faith in me. I loved the joy in her smile.
It was only a few hours later that her reluctance reached the surface.
“But will we make it there?” she’d asked me. “Will we be okay there, Lucian? I mean really be okay there? In New York with everyone in our family’s?”
I’d been certain of my answer.
“Yes, we’ll be okay there. We’ll be okay anywhere we go, princess. The world is ours.”
The world would be ours with her at my side, devoted to each other, husband and wife.
I was surprisingly nervous as my wedding day began, pride of place in Bishop’s Landing, back on home ground. I woke up alone in bed with a strange rush of flutters in my stomach, still scarred after all these months from taking the bullet. Hunter and Clark were downstairs in the breakfast room, still looking groggy from their drinking the night before as they guzzled down black coffee. Devon was telling them about his insurance empire when I stepped in to join them, clearly still tired from his flight across the Atlantic. All three of them let out a cheer and gave a little applause as I sat myself down at the breakfast bar in my dressing gown, giving them a smirk that matched my mood. A happy one.