Chapter 49 Lukas
LUKAS
NYU LANGONE DENTAL — EMERGENCY INTAKE
Patient: Howell, Preston J.
Mechanism of Injury: “Tripped and fell." When asked to elaborate on mechanism, patient became nonverbal.
The car pulls away and I don’t look back. I can’t.
If I look back, I’ll see Rae standing there on that sidewalk with her ruined makeup and her swollen lips, her eyes full of questions I have no intention of answering. If I look back, I might do something catastrophically stupid.
Like get out of the car and go to her.
I press the heel of my palm against my chest, trying to ease the pressure building there. It doesn’t help.
This is why I had to do it this way. I shoved her to her knees and fucked her throat like she was nothing more than a warm body, I made it crude and transactional and mean, because if I didn’t, I would have done something far, far worse.
The only alternative was tenderness.
The alternative was brushing the hair from her face and telling her she’s the first thing I’ve felt in eighteen years. Admitting that, when she looks at me with those brown eyes, I thaw in a way I never thought I’d be able to do.
I can’t afford that.
Not now.
Not ever.
Tenderness gets people killed in my world.
I learned that lesson early in life. It only takes a few untimely funerals before the lesson really sinks in. You stand by a hole in the ground and watch a body be buried, and you learn very, very fast that you must be hard. You must be cold.
I built everything I have on the foundation of that coldness.
The Bratva doesn’t follow soft men. The men who obey me have signed up to follow strength, ruthlessness, and the willingness to do what must be done without flinching.
Every man in my organization has watched me put bullets in skulls.
They’ve seen me carve loyalty into flesh when words weren’t enough. They respect me because they fear me.
And Kir…
My son needs a father who can teach him to survive this life. Not one who gets distracted by a woman half his age with sad eyes and a smart mouth. If he sees me soften, sees me want something beyond power and control, he’ll think it’s possible to have both.
It isn’t. I know that better than anyone.
The partition lowers. “Home, sir? Or the office?”
Neither option appeals. Home is basically a mausoleum.
The office is worse, though. Fluorescent lights and the lingering scent of Rae’s perfume clinging to every surface of the fiftieth floor…
Blyat’, I can still taste her on my tongue.
“Neither.” I clear my throat. “Upper West Side. 89th and Broadway.”
As we cross the city, I reach into my pocket and find the scrap of black lace that I made Rae give me. My fingers close around it and my dick starts to harden again. I lose myself in the warmth of it, the softness.
Soon, the car comes to a stop that jars me out of my reverie. “Here, sir.”
I step out of the vehicle and into the shadows across the street from the brownstone that is my destination. An upper story window glows yellow against the night.
The rage that’s been simmering since I dropped Rae off hasn’t faded. It’s intensified during the drive here, feeding on itself, growing teeth.
She knows what she did tonight. She meant to do it. So did he.
So now, I must do this.
When I knock, Preston Howell answers the door in cashmere loungewear, scotch in hand. His smile falters when he recognizes his late-night visitor.
I don’t wait for an invitation—I step inside and close the door behind me.
“L-Lukas,” Preston says as he stumbles backwards, recovering his composure. “This is unexpected. Can I offer you a drink?”
I survey the tastefully decorated foyer. Original artwork—a Basquiat, if I’m not mistaken—hangs on the wall. Fresh flowers in a crystal vase. The life built on Daddy’s money and tech-bro charm, all of it arranged to project effortless sophistication.
I feel nothing but contempt for him.
“No,” I say. “But you’re going to need a strong one.”
The memory of tonight’s dinner makes me sick to my stomach. For three fucking hours, I watched Preston Howell lean into Rae’s space, touch her knee, drape his arm across the back of her chair like he had any goddamn right to be near her.
That fucking smile of his. I hated that smile. I looked around the room and saw a hundred objects I could use to fucking ruin it. He looked at her and grinned like it was only a matter of time before he had her spread beneath him.
I want to break every bone in those hands that touched her.
I want to cave in that smug face until his own mother wouldn’t recognize the pulp.
I want to wrap my fingers around his throat and squeeze until his eyes bulge and his legs stop kicking and the light goes out of him forever.
The violence coils in my chest, black and hungry, demanding its pound of flesh. It takes every ounce of the control I’ve spent sixty years cultivating to keep myself rooted to this spot instead of painting his foyer walls red with his fucking intestines.
Preston must see some fraction of that rage in my eyes, because he takes a step back. Then another.
I don’t advance on him. I don’t need to. I simply walk forward at a measured pace as he keeps scurrying away. When his back hits the edge of his piano, though, he’s run out of room to flee.
“You touched something that belongs to me tonight,” I inform him.
Preston’s laugh is wheezy and anxious. “Lukas, come on. We were just talking. She’s your assistant; I didn’t realize you two were—”
“Oh, you realized.”
I watch the moment true fear flares in his eyes. He’s no fool. He knows he’s fucked.
“I’m a reasonable man, Preston.” I adjust my cuff. “I believe in proportional responses. You put your hands on her, so I’m going to take something from you in return.”
From my jacket pocket, I produce a pair of pliers. The metal gleams dully in the lamp light as I set them on the piano’s closed lid.
I turn and walk away. “Here’s how this works,” I say, settling into a leather armchair. I cross one leg over the other, perfectly at ease. “You’re going to pull out one of your own teeth. Your choice which one. I’m not particular.”
Preston stares at the pliers in horror.
“Or,” I continue, “I will remove several. Along with other pieces you might miss more.” My gaze drops meaningfully below his belt.
The color drains from his face in stages, from pink to grey to corpse-white. “You’re fucking insane,” he whispers.
I reach out, pluck the scotch from his trembling hand, then lean back in the chair and sip it.
“Rae seemed to be quite wrapped up in your smile tonight,” I say. “Let’s see if she still thinks it’s nice after this.”
I gesture toward the pliers with an open palm.
“Whenever you’re ready, Preston. I have all night.”
When it’s over, Preston is collapsed against the piano, a huddled wreck.
The pliers lie on the hardwood floor, alongside the bloody stump of his molar.
He’s crying, bleeding, and—judging by the dark stain spreading across his cashmere loungewear—pissing himself.
Pathetic whimpers escape through the hole in his gum line.
I stand and smooth my jacket, then drain what’s left of his scotch in one long swallow. The man is a fucking swine, but he does have good taste in booze.
When it’s empty, I drop the glass.
Preston screams when it hits the floor and shatters. He scrambles backward, pressing himself against the piano like he can teleport through it and escape from me.
I bend down until my lips are inches from his ear. “If you even think her name again,” I hiss, “I’ll come back for the rest. Do you understand?”
He sobs and nods frantically. Blood and snot drip down his chin.
I pat him on the back. Then I adjust my cuffs and walk back out into the night, leaving Preston Howell bleeding and broken behind me.
Let that be a fucking lesson, my friend.
Never.
Touch.
What’s.
Mine.