4. LUKE LANCASTER
When Lily flinched at Father’s hold on her shoulder, my lips snagged into a nasty smirk, before I had to stop when it made me move my nose.
Even that fraction of an inch pulled on the break, and the tape I had on the bridge, snagged on my skin, dampening my mood, even as it fed my desire for revenge.
Tonight was my night for vengeance, and the plan was already underway.
Lily gently tilted away from Father, just a tad, not enough for him to notice. I, on the other hand, noticed everything.
Of course, I knew what Father was doing to her, what he’d been doing for years, but with a man like our father, there was no stopping him.
I knew because I was reared in his image.
Lily was weak. Exactly like Mother. The opposite of Father and me.
We were men of old. Vikings who raped and pillaged, took what we wanted, owned whatever we dared claim.
Did it sicken me that he was fucking her?
Yes.
Not much sickened me, but that did.
Even if it didn’t surprise me.
A man like Donavan Lancaster wasn’t one to be denied anything he desired, but even though I knew, there wasn’t much I could do.
Not yet.
I was biding my time.
There’d come a day when he’d topple from his pedestal, and I’d be ready and waiting to take advantage of his weakness and to claim everything that was his and make it my own.
It was a day that wasn’t far in the distance. The second I’d shown him my sanctuary, I’d known he’d fall into temptation too.
And he had.
His end was approaching.
My lips curved in earnest when he moved to the head of the table and Lily relaxed.
My gaze switched between her and her best friend. Tiffany was an annoyance, but in this instance, she was going to help me.
Without even knowing it.
I watched her as she guzzled the drinks I’d insisted Conchita use to accompany this meal, and I handled the bar myself, slipping small amounts of the drug I’d ground up into her drink over the course of the evening.
Finally, she was starting to look shaky on her feet.
Lily’s tension at our father’s impromptu speech about how he missed our mother, and how he wished she was here to see us both—farcical considering he was the reason she wasn’t here in the first place—actually came to my aid.
She was tense, on edge, and ever since he touched her? In another world.
I knew how that worked.
A safe place.
Like anywhere on this rotten planet was truly safe.
Her wandering off to Narnia helped me because she didn’t recognize the state Tiffany was in.
There’d been a time when I liked Tiffany. I liked her goo-goo eyes over me, but something changed, and ever since, she’d turned into an irritation.
When her crush had died, I’d tried manipulating her into wanting me, but she’d rebuffed me one too many times, and only Father telling me to back off had made me stop.
I wasn’t the kind of man who took no for an answer—which was why tonight was going down the way it was—but for business? I got it.
Tiffany’s father was a cash cow for some important people, our family included, so who was I to turn down free money?
When the interminable meal was over, I wandered off without a farewell.
Heading outside to where I parked my car in a dark corner of the front yard, I waited for Tiffany to stagger toward her car, leaving Lily and Father back in the house.
She almost tripped and fell on her face, but she caught herself just in time.
Her purse landed on the ground, and I almost laughed, watching her try to collect the crap she stored in there.
By the time she was back on her feet, she was shaking, and she almost slouched over the wheel.
Without the drug, she’d probably just be riding the limit, but now? She was a danger to everyone on the road.
Which was what I was banking on.
Loving that my new car was fully electric, which meant it purred to life rather than roaring like Tiffany’s did, I began tailing her.
It was painful and pitiful watching her crawl down the driveway in her beast of a car, but when she sped up as she approached the highway that would make the journey to her house take five minutes, she stalled the engine.
A few seconds later, she was back in motion, but she was going too fast.
When she slipped down the shoulder, the tires spinning, I was almost disappointed when she wasn’t involved in a worse crash.
Still, beggars couldn’t be choosers, I thought, as I pulled up behind her and slid out onto the asphalt.
She was moaning when I reached her, but luckily for her, she wasn’t harmed.
Puke covered her front, though, and she reeked of it.
I was used to worse stenches, however, so I didn’t curl up my nose, just was careful not to touch any of the filet mignon Conchita had served us as I reached for the phone she had put in the dock on her dash.
Holding it up to her face for it to unlock, I rummaged around her messages until I found the biker I was looking for.
Sin.
The unofficial guard dog the biker had set on his bitch.
A bitch whose blood I was going to taste tonight.
I thought about how tracking him had been so easy.
Surprising, but easy.
Tiffany was more fastidious than anyone let on. I was fucking gorgeous, but she’d never fuck me. Never even cast a look my way since she was a teen.
What the fuck she saw in that scum, I didn’t know, but it was to my good fortune that she was deciding to rough it.
I’d been following the bikers for about a week, tracking the ones the Sinners’ Enforcer had set on his cunt of a woman, and the pretty boy fuck called Sin was the one who was usually on the snatch’s tail.
That was how I’d put this plan together.
Following him had led me to discover that he was boning Tiffany.
Fucking slut.
She was snippy with me, but would spread her legs for that biker trash?
The thought had rage flushing through me, and though I wanted to take it out on her, I decided not to waste my energy on this bitch.
Giulia Fontaine was the woman who deserved my wrath, and with that fucking biker of hers out of town, tonight was my night to party.
The second I’d found Sin’s number, I typed out a message.
Tiffany: Got into a crash. Can you help me?
Sin: Fuck, are you all right?
That he responded almost immediately had my brow rising.
Did the filth have feelings for his uptown girl?
My lips snagged into a grin at the thought, and as I hummed the Billy Joel song under my breath, I replied.
Tiffany: No. I don’t feel so good. Can you come and help me?
Sin: Shit. I’m on the clock.
A pause when I didn’t reply.
Sin: Christ. Okay, I’ll be there as soon as I can. Send me your live location.
I sent it, carefully wiped the phone down, then I dumped it in the dock where I’d found it.
Squeezing her tit on the way out of the car, hard enough for it to hurt, for her to moan in her drug-induced state, I chuckled at the noise and, with a jaunty step, retreated to my car.
Blasting the radio as I pulled out onto the road, I headed toward the town where the Sinners’ new bar was located.
The second Sin had left, the second that bitch was alone, she was mine. Giulia was about to learn how it felt to wish she was dead.
The dead felt nothing.
The dead were free.
Life was the prison, and I was about to become that cunt’s jailor.