38. Lucrezia
Chapter 38
Lucrezia
W hen God made me, he broke the mold.
“The last time I wanted your half-brother to see us having sex was in my living room a few weeks back, when the curtains were wide open and everybody had just gone home.” Raiden walks around Kristopher before slapping a hand on his shoulder, his fingers digging into the muscle. “No offense, of course. I didn’t know you at the time, and honestly, I was just trying to make a point about boundaries.”
“Fuck you,” Kristopher spits.
“I know you now, though,” Raiden continues, removing his hand and taking a few more steps toward me. His eyes are warm as he looks at me, but his words are cold and directed at Kris. “I know you’re a sick puppy. You’re the kind of guy who deserves to have his dick chopped off and fed to the dogs. Hell, if I were a little more unhinged, I’d chop it off and let you watch me eat it. But I’m not a human flesh kind of guy.” There’s something about the casual way he delivers the threat that makes it all the more terrifying.
I grin as he stands before me, looking down at me with all the charm of the man I’ve come to know and love these last couple of months. His presence is magnetic, and I am drawn to him in spite of, and because of, the violent words he just spoke. “I don’t know about all that. I remember you eating my pussy pretty good.” I bite my lower lip to hold back the laugh that threatens to spill forth as I deliberately provoke Kristopher.
“Disgusting fucking piece of filth,” my brother mumbles under his breath.
Raiden reaches up to place a hand on my cheek. The warmth of his fingers makes me melt, seeping into my skin like summer sunlight. I was fourteen years old when I wrote off the loving touch of a man, deciding that tenderness wasn’t meant for someone like me. I was sixteen when I realized that men would never look at me the way they look at a woman they love—with that mix of devotion and desire that I’d only ever seen in movies. I spent the remainder of my formative years using my body and sex as a weapon instead of giving them freely to someone who earned my affection. I turned what should have been intimate moments into calculated moves in a game I’d created for myself. But it’s different with Raiden. With Raiden, it’s real.
“The first time I saw you, I wanted to ruin you.” He draws his thumb along my jaw, his eyes tracing the curves of my lips. “I’ve seen grown men cry as they walked through the door of the clubhouse, but you kicked it down and stormed in like you didn’t have an ounce of fear. I hated it, and I wanted to defile you so fucking badly. I wanted to smear your pretty red lipstick across your face, watch it stain your skin like blood. I wanted to show all the other men there that I was the only man worthy of a girl like you. Not because I wanted them to respect me, but because I fucking knew that I was the only one who could handle you. The only one who could match the fire burning behind your eyes with an inferno of my own.”
His words are poetry, spoken between hard-lined lips and signed with desire. “I didn’t care about you at all. I just wanted you for muscle,” I admit.
“I know.” The grin on his lips spreads, and his face becomes softer, the harsh angles melting into something almost vulnerable. “I hated that, too. I always have an effect on women, and you were immune. It pissed me off. You looked right through me like I was nothing but a tool to be used.”
All I wanted when I returned to Manhattan was to destroy my brother. I loved my sister, but she didn’t understand. How could she? She’d never felt the crushing weight of betrayal from someone who shared her blood. I cared for Kristopher, and I knew I needed his help, but I also knew I needed to be careful around him. His intensity both drew me in and warned me away. I had no one else in my corner, not really. I relied on revenge and anger to be my life’s purpose, letting them fill the hollow spaces where hope used to live. If I’m being honest, I didn’t expect to live much longer. A part of me hoped I’d die alongside Saverio because killing him wouldn’t have killed the darkness in me.
But somehow, Raiden changed everything. He changed me.
In between late-night planning sessions and cups of coffee that had grown cold, I let him in. I don’t know when it happened, I couldn’t pick out the moment even if I wanted to. One day, I went to sleep thinking he was nothing more than a hired hand; the next morning, I woke up and wanted to talk to him. Not about Saverio or our plans, not about the Destroyers or Kristopher, but about anything and everything in between. About the weather, the construction in Manhattan, the future, the house decor. I woke up disgustingly, infatuatingly in love with someone who’d made it clear he was as broken as I was. He’d lost someone the same way I’d lost myself, and it healed something in me to be around someone who could understand my pain.
Raiden’s presence became a balm I didn’t know I needed, filling those dark spaces with something warmer than vengeance. When he spoke about his past, about the grief that had shaped him, I saw myself reflected in his eyes—not as the monster I’d become, but as someone worthy of being whole again. It terrifies me how easily he slipped past my defenses, how natural it feels to let my guard down around him. How what started as revenge turned into so much more.
Kristopher’s snarls break through my reverie. “I hope you both die. I hope you walk out of here and Saverio kills you both. It’s the least you deserve for what you fucking did to the guy.”
“That’s the thing, Kris, I deserve all that and more.” I look into Raiden’s eyes as I speak. Even though I’m not talking to him, he’s all that matters. “I deserve my brother’s ire for more than trying to kill him. I hired the Destroyers to fuck with the woman he loved. I seduced men within his ranks to tell me info I should never have been allowed to know. I undermined his power for the sole purpose of ending him.” My voice cracks slightly, but I force myself to continue. “I’ve been a terrible sister my entire life. But I know, and Saverio knows, that we’re family.”
“You and I are family,” he says, his voice hoarse.
Raiden brings his hands to my naked hips, wrapping them around my bones and squeezing tight. “No, that’s the problem. You and I aren’t family. We share blood, but family is more than that—it’s the choices we make and the loyalty we show. You hate me right now. If you could, you’d kill me without hesitation. But even after all the shit I did to Saverio, all the ways I tried to tear him apart, he came to my rescue. Families fight, and families feud, but when the chips are down and everything’s falling apart, your family is the people who show up for you. And that wasn’t you, Kristopher. That was Raiden and all the men outside this door, standing guard.”
“Stop deluding yourself. You’ll never have a family. You’re unlovable, Lucrezia. I had to look past your flaws to love you, and even that wasn’t enough. You’re a cancer that spreads to everyone around you. You’re toxic. You destroy everything you touch. Watch out, Drake, she’ll destroy you, too. She’ll wrap her poisonous tendrils around your heart until there’s nothing left but an empty shell of who you used to be.”
I could have killed Kristopher if I wanted to. I’ve killed before; I’m sure I’ll kill again. Mother Superior was right: there is sin in my bloodline. I’m not afraid to get my hands dirty. But I don’t have to.
Raiden drops a kiss on my lips. It’s quick, brief, a flash of passion that leaves my skin tingling with electricity. “I’m sorry about this,” he says a moment later. Then, all I see are fists and blood, a violent ballet of knuckles and crimson spatters that paint the air between us like abstract art.
“Don’t you ever talk about Lucrezia again.” Every word is punctuated with violence, each syllable marked by the wet crunch of fist meeting flesh. Kristopher’s chair tips backward and slams against the ground with a thunderous crack, but that doesn’t stop Raiden. He climbs on top of him like a predator claiming prey and continues his assault until Kristopher is unrecognizable beneath a mask of purple bruises and scarlet streaks. But when my half-brother no longer fights back, when he has nothing left to give but shallow, gurgling breaths, Raiden grabs him by the head and slams it repeatedly into the ground. The floor drinks up the spreading crimson pools, and arterial spray paints Raiden’s face and chest in patterns of red. It’s a glorious display of unhinged aggression, and I fall deeper in love with each impact, each grunt of exertion, each splash of blood that marks his dedication to defending my honor.
When he gets off the floor, he doesn’t have an ounce of penance in his blood. Raiden grabs the discarded blanket that came with the room and uses it to wipe off as much of Kristopher’s blood as he can, then he tosses it onto the corpse lying dead on the ground. “Let’s go,” he insists, gesturing toward the door with a sharp, decisive motion.
I grab Luciano’s jacket from the floor and pull it around me. For some reason, it feels too hot. I’m sweating despite the winter chill that sends shivers down my spine when Raiden opens the door.
The men outside spring to life when we exit. Priest’s mouth parts when we emerge, and he sees Raiden covered in smeared blood. “Jesus,” he mumbles under his breath.
Raiden ignores him, his focus solely on me. “I hate to do this to you, but since you don’t have any shoes, it’ll be easier.” Then he sweeps me off my feet, literally, cradling me in his arms like precious cargo. “Bash, Luciano, someone go ahead and get a car started or something. She should see a doctor for hypothermia and malnutrition. She’s ice cold.”
“I’m fine,” I frown, though my chattering teeth betray me. When did that begin?
“You need me to send a crew in?” Saverio asks, walking in step with Raiden. “Clean up?”
He tosses a look over his shoulder at the abandoned cabin and then shrugs his shoulders. “Do what you want. Your DNA isn’t on the crime scene. Send’em in. Don’t send’em in. I don’t care. I did what I had to do, and I’d do it again.”
I press my head against Raiden’s chest, feeling safe in his arms. He and Saverio keep talking, but my brain doesn’t register the words anymore. Their voices fade to a distant murmur. Sleep pulls me under the waves like a gentle tide, and for the first time since Kristopher kidnapped me, I rest without fear of what awaits when I wake.