I got the suitcases ready to go, positioned at the bottom of the stairs. She told me how she’d packed everything she could see we’d need, and how I should check it to be sure, but I shook my head at her.
“Whatever you’ve packed will be fine.”
“Okay,” she said.
“Getting out of here is our biggest hurdle,” I told her between loading up the suitcases into the trunk of the car. “But the UK isn’t going to be all that easy. People will be screaming out for our blood, on both sides of the family divide.”
“I know,” she said, then took another deep breath. “My uncle Lionel has sex with my mom, you know? Well, she used to. They’ve had that thing for years. She’s going to be screaming out for blood louder than anyone when she finds out you killed him.”
“She’ll hopefully be screaming out for Colonel Hardwick’s blood, then, since I set it up to look like he shot Lionel. She won’t be screaming out for his blood for very long though, since he’s already dead. I made sure it looked like he killed himself after murdering your uncle. Only that won’t wash. Not for long. Not for the people who know us.”
“Hopefully they’ll never know it was you. Not ever.”
“There’s that beautiful optimism again.” I shrugged. “Your mom should have listened to you when you were a little girl begging for her care and protection. She’d have probably killed your sick fucking uncle herself.”
Elaine said something that shocked me right to the fucking core.
“Not so sure about that.”
“Not so sure about that?” I pushed, helping her out to the passenger seat of the Merc. “That your mother wouldn’t want to kill a man that was setting you up for abuse?”
She shrugged. “Just not sure she really ever loved me enough that she would have turned against him.”
If I’d have had a heart, it would have broken to see the pain in her face. My angel truly believed that she was unloved, by everyone. Only it wasn’t just that. It was the twiddle of her fingers in front of her again that spoke words she’d never say. The way they were twisting, hurting. The way she was clearly so broken inside.
My angel really believed she was worthless.
Only she wasn’t worthless.
She was worth everything in my whole fucking world.
“I really am going to make them all pay,” I told her, and my voice was a ripple of well-deserved hate for those disgusting pricks.
“Thank you,” she said, and there was the young Elaine again, staring over at me with a smile.
It was all I could take. I grabbed her hard and strong before I lowered her down to her seat, showing her my full depth of emotion before letting go of her enough to belt her in, trying to show her everything she deserved and had never had. Protection and love. I’d give her both until my very last breath.
Unfortunately, that last breath might not be all that long coming.
I was still holding her tight when my cell sounded out again, three times straight in a row before I broke away to pick it up from the counter.
Trenton Alto.
My right-hand man was a long way from being my right hand right about now, but still, he was trying.
I managed to answer his call on his fourth attempt, grunting out a yeah, what?
“Yeah, what the holy living fuck are you doing?!” he hissed at me. “Did you just fucking kill Lionel fucking Constantine on Hanborough Park Golf Course? People are saying it was some Hardwick guy, but you were there too, weren’t you?”
“What do you think?” I hissed back. “Not that it’s any of your fucking business.”
He cursed at me.
“Fuck you, Morelli. You’d better be glad it is my fucking business, or you’d be up to your neck already.” He paused. “You’re fucked both as Lucian Morelli and as Terence fucking Kingsley, you know. The cards are all falling down. The Power Brothers have someone on their way already. Warren, a guy with a scar down his face.”
“Yeah, tell me something I don’t know,” I scoffed. “I’ve got a handle on that one.”
“But you haven’t got a handle on anything, have you?” he said, and his voice got lower. “Because if you’re in Kington Peak, and I suspect you are, you’d better get the fuck out of there right fucking now.”
My blood froze.
“You’re there now, aren’t you?” he said. “You may think it’s a private refuge, Lucian, but you’re wrong. People know it’s out there. People know it’s where you go.”
“People?” I asked him. “Who do you mean by people? I still don’t know how the hell the Power Brothers ever found out about this place, so who the hell else are you meaning?”
“I mean your father,” he told me. “And believe me, Lucian, he’s after you. He knows you’ve fucked up and gone after the Constantines. He thinks you’ve killed Lionel and taken the little bitch Elaine, or even worse than that… he thinks you’ve kept her. For you. The cleanup team are on their way, right fucking now.”
I knew Trenton was breaking every rule of self-preservation and common sense he had in his head.
There was no way he should be warning me. No way he should have ever tried to save my ass from my own undoing.
I stayed on the call long enough to give him a response.
One single phrase.
“Thank you.”
I rarely said it, rarely felt it, rarely considered anyone worthy.
He confirmed what I already knew would be the only route ahead for him.
“This is it for us,” he said. “From this moment on, I’m on team Morelli. They’ll take my life if I’m not. They’ll take Lucinda’s life, too. If they tell me to come for you, I’ll be coming for you.”
Lucinda was his little baby girl. Four years old.
“I know,” I told him.
“Goodbye, Lucian,” he said.
And then he hung up.
9
Elaine
It was bad and I knew it.
“We need to go,” he said. “Now. People are already on their way.”
I nodded, mute, praying I’d packed everything we needed to take, only there was nothing for me to be taking. I had nothing here.
Nothing except Lucian Morelli.
It seemed Lucian did have things left to pack up, though. I should have waited in the car, holding my wound tight in my bandage, but I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t stay still. He was already in the kitchen when I joined him, pulling the panel from the bottom of one of the cabinets, then pulling out several cases to follow. He opened them up one by one to check the contents, quick and sharp. Cash. Lots of cash. Several guns came out after them in a case of their own.
He was a machine as he headed outside and loaded up the trunk with the final contents ready to roll. I would have helped him, but I was too busy getting my feet into my high heels with trembling fingers, managing a surprising amount given the pain I was in.
“Stop it, Elaine,” he hissed when he stepped back in to join me. “Let me do this for you. I was going to help you into this before we left, I just wanted you as safe as possible in the damn fucking car.