Chapter 41 Rae
RAE
DEPARTURE NOTICE [URGENT]
Flight: Bordeaux → New York
“Good. You’re awake.”
I turn to see Lukas emerging from the kitchen. Gone is the breezy, at-ease linen he’s worn for the last two days. He’s back to a crisp, starched Oxford cloth button-down with a high collar. His hair is combed and oiled; same with his beard. A pair of aviator sunglasses hides his eyes from view.
He’s got his battle armor on again.
“The car is waiting for us out front,” he says. “We’re wheels-up in twenty-five minutes.”
“Great,” I say, flat and bitter as day-old coffee. “So that’s it, then.”
Lukas pauses mid-stride. “Excuse me?”
“Oh, nothing.” I cross my arms over my chest. “It’s just funny, is all.”
“What’s funny?”
“You.” I point my chin at the suitcases. “One second, you’re all, Five million bucks means you’re worth more than a simple dinner. Then, all of the sudden, it’s Let’s wrap this show up. I guess I should’ve known you were a bullshitter. Do you even have any horses in that stable?”
His jaw tightens behind that perfectly groomed beard. The sunglasses make it impossible to read his eyes, which I’m sure is the point.
“The horses—”
“—were a pretense. Yeah, I know, I get it. Like everything else.” I’m being petty and bratty now, and I know that, but I can’t stop. The humiliation from last night—from hearing him, from letting him hear me, from cumming with his name on my lips—is curdling into something ugly.
He got what he wanted.
That makes one of us.
“Are you finished?” he asks. He’s speaking to me like I’m a toddler throwing a tantrum and he’s waiting for me to exhaust myself.
“No, actually,” I snap. “I’m not. I’m just getting started.
You’re really, really good at all the up-front stuff, aren’t you?
You know how to enter a room, how to cultivate an aura.
But when it comes to actually delivering on all those dirty promises?
Well, at that point, you turn into Just Another Guy. So, yeah. It’s a little funny to me.”
Lukas’s lip curls with contempt. “‘Just Another Guy,’” he repeats. “Is that what you think I am?”
“It’s what I know you are.”
He takes one step toward me. Then another. The sunglasses come off, revealing eyes that burn with something I haven’t seen before.
“You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t I?” I hold my ground. “You talk a big game, Lukas. All that I’ll ruin you bullshit. But when it comes time to put your money where your mouth is, you hide in your room like a scared little boy.”
His nostrils flare. “Careful, Rae.”
“Or what? You’ll threaten me again? Add it to the list of shit you’ve promised and then been too chickenshit to follow up on.” I laugh right in his face. “Can’t even take a girl on a damn horse ride.”
Lukas’s face is roiling with tension. Even with his thick beard, I can see all the anger twitching under the surface of his skin.
“Fine,” he says at last. “You want your fucking pony ride? Let’s get it over with.”
He pulls out his phone and fires off a text, then shoves it back in his pocket.
“The pilot will wait.” He turns and starts striding toward the back of the house, toward the path that leads to the stables. “Move your ass, Rae.”
I scramble after him, my sandals slapping against the flagstones as I struggle to keep pace with his long, furious steps. The morning sun is far hotter than it was yesterday, baking the vineyard into a shimmering haze of ash and brown.
The stables are tucked behind a grove of olive trees. It’s a beautiful structure. Weathered stone walls, a terracotta roof, the whole rustic French countryside fantasy.
By the time I step inside, Lukas is halfway through preparing the biggest horse in there. He’s pulling straps, adjusting stirrups, some other horse stuff I don’t know the first thing about.
What I do know is that the horse he picked looks like the one the Grim Reaper would ride around on. The thing is black, scary, and massive. I can almost see my reflection in his shiny, obsidian coat. He stamps and snorts as Lukas works, looking every bit as irritated as his master is.
Within minutes, our stallion is ready.
“Just, uh…” I look around, suddenly overcome with nerves. “Just one? Isn’t there, like, a cute little pony for me?”
“You said you’ve never ridden before, right?” Lukas asks in a clipped, impatient tone.
I shake my head.
“Then you’re with me. I don’t have time to teach you. Nor do I have time to explain to the local police how you ended up with a broken neck.”
“Because your French isn’t that good?” I ask hopefully.
He snorts. “Because they’d ask too many irritating questions.”
Again with the reassurance.
Before I can formulate another snarky comeback, Lukas’s hands close around my waist.
He lifts me like I’m freaking Thumbelina. Just hoists me straight up and deposits me sideways onto the saddle. I only have time to grab a fistful of mane before he’s swinging up behind me.
Then his arm wraps around my middle and pulls me back against his chest.
Oh, this was a serious mistake.
His body is a wall of heat behind me, solid and broad. I can feel every breath he takes and every twitch of muscle as he gathers the reins in his free hand. The horse tosses impatiently beneath us. I’d have fallen to the ground immediately if it weren’t for Lukas’s thighs bracketing mine.
“Hold on,” he says against my ear. The advice is a little unnecessary, all things considered, but points for the chivalry, I guess.
Then he kicks his heels, and we’re moving.
The stallion explodes out of the stable like a bullet from a gun.
After the gloom of the stable, the sunlight blinds me for a split second.
When I blink it clear, I see that we’re thundering down a dirt path between the vines.
The wind is whipping my hair into a frenzy and Lukas’s arm is an iron band across my stomach.
It’s kind of exhilarating at first. The speed, the power. Lukas rides like he does everything else—with total, terrifying control.
But then he urges the horse faster.
And faster.
And faster still.
The path curves sharply ahead, and instead of slowing, he digs his heels in harder.
The stallion’s hooves churn up clouds of dust. We take the corner at a speed that makes my stomach fly into my throat, the horse’s body tilting at an angle that feels catastrophically wrong.
I could swear I feel my cheek graze the dirt.
“Lukas!” I scream over the pounding hooves. “Slow down!”
If anything, he goes faster still.
We’re careening now. Even as the path narrows where it snakes between crumbling stone walls, we’re picking up more speed with every stride. Branches whip past my face. The stallion’s breathing is agitated, foam flecking at the corners of his mouth.
“Lukas, stop!”
His arm tightens around me, but that’s the only acknowledgment I get.
Suddenly, I feel very, very stupid. I poked the bear. I mocked him, goaded him, called him a coward. The man is a murderer, for fuck’s sake. And I just pushed him to the limit.
What the hell did I think was going to happen?
The path opens up without warning, spilling us into a clearing I didn’t know existed.
Lukas pulls back on the reins and the stallion skids to a halt.
My heart has relocated itself to somewhere in the vicinity of my esophagus.
When I finally coax it back to a normal location, I take in our surroundings.
It’s a grotto. A secluded grotto, like something out of a fairy tale—if the fairy tale was written by someone with a very dark imagination.
Piles of craggy boulders rise up on three sides, draped in creeping vines and moss so thick it looks like velvet.
A natural spring bubbles up from somewhere beneath the rocks, feeding a pool of water.
Steam rises up in little curlicues from the mirrored surface.
The whole thing is shaded by a canopy of gnarled olive trees with their branches interlocking overhead.
Beautiful.
Also, isolated. A place where someone could disappear and never be found.
Lukas swings down from the saddle. He loops the reins around a low-hanging branch, then comes back and plucks me off the horse with the same ease with which he put me onto it.
My knees buckle slightly when my sandals hit the gravel, but his grip steadies me. Then he releases me and steps back.
“I own everything you can see from here,” he says, sweeping a hand at the surrounding hills. His voice is conversational, almost pleasant. There’s trace of the anger he was just channeling for our death ride here. “For kilometers in every direction.”
I swallow hard. “That’s… nice?”
“It means there’s no one around, Ms. Everett.” His sunglasses are clipped to the collar of his shirt, so I can see the full shine of his gunmetal eyes. “No neighbors, no tourists, no hikers. Not. One. Living. Soul.”
Now that he mentions it, the grotto feels a bit less idyllic all of the sudden.
And just in case I didn’t get the memo, he adds…
“That means there’s no one who could hear you scream.”
Oh.
Right.
Jillian’s voice pops up in my head, tinny and distant: His wife didn’t just die, Rae. She disappeared. They never found the body.
Is this how it happened? Did he bring Elena to some beautiful, isolated spot just like this one? Did he charm her, seduce her, make her think she was special—and then… and then…
I take an involuntary step backward. My heel catches on a rock and I stumble.
Lukas watches me. “You wanted to know who I really am,” he says quietly. “Didn’t you, Rae?”
I keep retreating, but it’s hard progress. My sandals continue sliding on the slick moss underfoot. “Lukas, I—”
“You called me a coward.” Another step. He sounds almost gentle. I think I preferred the angry version. “A bullshitter. Just Another Guy.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“Oh, yes, you did. Don’t back down now, Rae. You meant every word.” He’s close enough now that I can see the pulse ticking in his throat.
My back hits something solid—one of the boulders ringing the grotto. Nowhere left for me to go.
“I’ve killed men, Rae.” His eyes bore into mine.
“With these hands right here. I’ve done things that would make you vomit if I described them in detail.
I am not a good man. I am not a safe man.
I am not the kind of man who gets a happy ending.
Neither does anyone unlucky enough to get caught in my gravity.
So when you stand there and call me a coward—when you mock me for not following through—you should understand exactly what you’re asking for. ”
Move, Rae. Move, move, MOVE.
I lunge to the side, desperate to put distance between us, to find a path back to the horse, to civilization, to anywhere that isn’t here—
But as I move, my sandal catches on a root.
My ankle twists.
And then I’m falling.
Lukas doesn’t move to stop me.
My back hits the water and the hot spring swallows me whole. It’s shockingly warm—blood-warm, womb-warm—but dark and murky. I don’t know which way is up. My red dress billows around me like a parachute.
The last thing I see before the light goes is Lukas’s face, staring down at me from the edge.