The warfare outside was because of me.
I let out a sigh. “Maybe they won’t actually find out it was you. Maybe we can stay holed up here forever and nobody will ever think to look in Bishop’s Landing. Maybe this can be the Lucian and Elaine paradise, immune from the world.”
“I love your stunning optimism. I wish it had a scrap of a chance of being true.”
The Morelli god got out of bed and slipped on some sweatpants as I watched him. I’d never seen him so casual and it suited him. His body really was a masterpiece, sculpted to perfection. His pants sat down low on his hips, the V of him proud.
There was no protest from him today as I dipped straight into his closet and pulled out one of his shirts. I slipped it on over my head as he watched me right back.
“You really are a beautiful creature,” he said, and it made me glow.
I could have flicked on the TV on our way through to the kitchen. But I couldn’t face the barrage of news about my abduction. I couldn’t face seeing my sisters crying, begging people to contact the authorities with any news of my disappearance. I didn’t want to see the speculation, and the stories, and the hotlines for reporting information. I had too many feelings swirled together—guilt, fear, and irrepressible love.
Lucian had his phone with him but he wasn’t looking at it. That’s when I got a sense of it again—that simmering tension under his skin, knowing even better than I did just how the world would be coming for us.
We headed right through to the kitchen for coffee, neither of us acknowledging the calls he was trying his best to ignore.
I shot a glance out of the window, and my mind was right back on the body buried out there under the flower beds.
“What you did to Reverend Lynch, Lucian…I don’t even know how to say thanks for that. Is it even right that I’m happy he’s dead? Does that make me a bad person?”
“Of course you’re happy he’s dead,” he told me, deadpan. “If I could have prolonged his suffering any more, I’d have done it. As it is, the ground is soaked in his blood.”
I knew I was blushing. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” he said, and he meant it. I could see it in his eyes.
I chose to face up to the obvious. “How long do you think we’ll be able to stay here?” I asked him, and he shrugged.
“Days, tops. Questions will start needing answers. Bullets will start flying. Every scrap of the war will lead them closer to the core.”
Even the thought of it had my stomach twisting. “Then we run?”
“You would really do that?” he asked. “You would run away from everything you’ve ever known?”
My nod was frantic. “I’d run right now. Together.”
He was quiet, pondering. Staring out through the window as I stared at him. “I haven’t a damn clue where we would go. Our families have reach in every place we could run to. They’d be after us, chasing us down every single day for the rest of our lives.”
I couldn’t hold back my flood of emotion. “And every single day would be worth it.”
He leaned against the counter. “You might not be saying that when we’re running around the globe like a couple of escaped convicts, living from a suitcase.”
“What’s the alternative?” I asked. “Waiting here until they find out you were the one who took me and hunt us down? We could always try the double suicide option.”
“The alternative is that you head back into the city,” he said. “You tell them the Power Brothers did this, or some random criminal on the street, or whatever the hell you want to tell them, and go back home. Regardless of how pissed your mother is, she won’t let you stay on the streets. She won’t let you die. You’d be back home safely.”
My reply was instant. Strong and fierce. “This is home. With you.”
The stare between us was intense. My heart thumped, hard. I meant it.
This was home. He was home.
His thumb brushed my cheek as he stepped up close, and my body was alive with the scent of him, the touch of him, the heat of him. “I’m glad to hear it,” he said. “Just remember that I gave you the option once you have a gun barrel in your face, saying your holy goodbyes.”
“That wouldn’t matter,” I whispered. “Saying my holy goodbyes, I’d still be happy that I’d spent the last of them with you. With you inside me. Loving me.”
That’s when the beautiful monster surprised me more than ever. “It’s not just your body I want to be inside. I want to be inside your mind, your hopes, your fears. Your quirks and your laughter. Your whole fucking soul.”
It slammed me, right in my heart. I felt like a little girl again, praying that I’d be good enough for someone to love me one day.
We were kissing when his cell started up again.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” he cursed, finally pulling away far enough to take hold of the phone. “It’s the devil himself. Bryant Morelli. Well, he was always a brazen son of a bitch.”
Chapter Two
Lucian
Not in the slightest. The days were counting down to hours, to minutes. All of them leading to our doom. Was Bryant Morelli calling to gloat?
“Good morning,” I said, knowing full well that it would be anything but good.
“What have you done? What have you fucking done?”
This shock seemed genuine, but then again he was a smart man. A manipulative man. Right now he seemed the most likely source of the kill order. “You knew I was going after Elaine. You knew I picked her over the company.”
“You’re a traitor,” he growled. “And you’re an idiot to match. You must have been trying to get yourself killed, fucking around with a Constantine. They aren’t going to stand for it.”
“Are you going to stand for it?” I asked softly.
“Come home. We need to strategize. We need to make a plan.”
“I’m busy.”
“Your mother is crying her eyes out.”
“How do I know I’m not going to get shot as soon as I walk into the door?”
There’s a pause. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
“No.”
“Are you suggesting that I put out a hit on my own son?”
“Spare me the outrage. Someone did. And you aren’t exactly the picture of fatherly love. I tried to take over Morelli Holdings. That was before I committed the ultimate sin—caring about a Constantine.”
“We all make mistakes,” he says, his voice wry.
The way he said it made me wonder if he’d made similar mistakes. I knew the takeover of Morelli Holdings from his father hadn’t been a peaceful one. I wouldn’t have expected any less from my father. It was practically a family tradition for the Morellis.
It made me wonder if he’d made similar mistakes about forbidden women. It would explain why he hated the Constantines so much. And why he’d refused to really take action against them now that Caroline was a widow. Did he secretly want her?
None of that mattered.
I would have a better sense of my father’s intentions in person. And if it was him, then the hit was more than a simple desire to have me dead. It was a power play. And the way to react to a power play wasn’t to fucking run. It was to face him.