Chapter 17 #2
She is still in love with him. You can read it on her face. Not that we need to.
She was bold enough to profess it to a room full of people.
The three-hour plane ride here was not good for me. She was sitting where I could see her in all of her quiet elegance, and I had too much time. My empathy for her began to wane.
I just want her anywhere but here.
“Up,” Lucian says, already lifting me, one arm banded around my back like I might fall again out of spite. “Into the war room. Now.”
I do not fight him on this one. Mostly because my hand is throbbing and partly because his voice has a quality that makes arguing feel structurally unwise.
He walks me in with his hand still wrapped around mine in the sleeve, but the weather-proof material is not absorbent, and there’s blood everywhere. “This damn coat,” he spits.
The outerwear might be the next to die.
He sets me down in the nearest chair like I am something that might shatter.
“Medic,” he says, to the room, to no one, to everyone. “I need a medic in here.
Now.”
The new safe house has a war room.
Of course it does.
Normal people decorate the main rooms of their summer house for seating, a little storage, and maybe some elegantly placed lighting.
If they’re feeling fancy, a fake fish over the mantle and a Ficus tree in the corner.
Lucian’s living room looks like the Museum of Art in Stockholm.
A Nordic palace, each piece of furniture uniquely designed from curved ash, birch, and white oak. The fireplace is made of the same jagged black stone as the foyer floors.
No plants. No throw pillows or blankets. Just cold, hard beauty. Like him.
And if there’s a basement?
Maybe a ping-pong table.
Lucian?
A war room.
He ushers us down there, now, wanting everyone secure till he feels the outer perimeter is clear. I get the feeling I may not see much daylight during our stay here.
Lucian has reinforced doors, encrypted screens, medical cabinets, and a table large enough to plan a military coup. He sits me down while barking orders at people who are already moving.
A medic arrives and properly cleans my hand.
The cut is shallow—ugly-looking, but shallow.
Lucian disagrees with this assessment on a spiritual level.
He stands beside me while the medic wraps gauze around my palm, every line of him silent and murderous, as though the rock itself is a suspect he intends to interrogate. I will not give him one more reason to feel like he’s failed me when he’s done nothing of the sort.
“Lucian,” I whisper, “Please go do something else.”
“No.”
“Two minutes,” I beg.
“Fine,” he pulls a cell from his pocket. “I’ve got a phone call to make.”
I look to the medic. “Thank you for helping.”
“No problem.” He flashes a grin. “You’re in good hands with Lucian. There’s nothing he wouldn’t do for the woman he loves.”
Do not look at Isobel, right now, Erin. Breathe.
“Yeah,” I joke, “I have a feeling he’s making a call to the interior designer right now. I’m betting the entire foyer will be torn out and replaced before our time here is over.”
A snort from the other side of the room. “That’s so Lucian. And he’ll probably take a pickaxe to the rubble before they clear it away.” Classic Cass.
“No,” Isobel says. “It’d be a jackhammer, knowing Lucian.”
I want to laugh. Kind of. Cass looks like she wants to throw something.
Cass sits on the sofa near the wall with Ryan tucked against her side while the men prepare their room. Someone has found him his blanket. Spider-Man, because apparently Lucian’s men’s reach extends to retrieving superhero textiles in crises.
Ryan’s eyes are open, but heavy. Cass strokes his hair and gives me a look that says she is holding herself together. She’s an 8 pm bedtime kind of girl.
Gregory stands near the table with his arms folded, glasses slightly crooked, staring at his screen. Waiting, as always, for Carlos.
Rafe enters the room. Lucian is behind him.
Rafe takes in the room, Isobel’s pale stillness near the far wall, Lucian moving to the chair at my side, and Cass pretending not to doze.
Then he sets a tablet on the massive dark walnut conference table.
“No breach,” he says. The room breathes out, but just as soon as we exhale, the tension returns.
“The perimeter was intact,” Rafe continues. “But Bayne’s men swept the grounds on arrival and found something.”
“What?” Lucian couldn’t possibly be tenser next to me.
“You got everyone here safely.” I put my good hand on his shoulder.
“You’re bleeding,” he growls.
I rub his shoulder. “We’re safe.”
“For now.” He eases a bit. “At least that murderous stone will be gone by dinner tomorrow.”
“What did you replace it with? Rubber padding?”
“Don’t tempt me,” he says. “But I did order something for you to wear. It’ll bring out the blue in your eyes.”
“What?”
“A bulletproof vest the same gorgeous color as your eyes.”
I groan. Then, I whisper, “But I’ll wear it if it makes you feel better.”
“Good. Because I ordered another renovation as well.” His hand wraps around the back of my neck as he lowers his mouth to my ear, lips brushing against my skin, “A room. For you.”
I’ve heard of these little rooms the Bachman men build for their women. Leather and velvet and all kinds of things my vanilla mind can’t wrap around. Things I desperately want to try but am too scared to ask for.
“Somewhere private I can take you when you misbehave,” he breathes against me. “And my men work fast. So you might want to rethink the stubborn act of yours.”
My body goes hot below the waist, flushed above. “Lucian,” I hiss. “Not here.”
“Publicly shaming you into submission,” he says, a little too loudly. “It’s the only way I know to keep you from crossing my boundary.”
Rafe taps an impatient finger on the tabletop. Gregory clears his throat.
Isobel looks on as Lucian turns his body towards me like a shield. The pink is rising in my cheeks. I have a dangerous thought.
He’s been like this with her.
The possession, the obsession, the dominance, the claim.
Do the things we do together belong to her because they were hers, first?
The thought threatens to break me. To break us. I push it away, telling myself she’s the one who made him this way.
This, is the after Lucian.
My Lucian.
I reach up and touch his face to prove it to myself as much as to her.
Smiling seductively, I smooth my voice. “Sounds lovely.”
He shifts in his seat.
Cass sighs. “Get a room already.”
“Moving on,” Lucian says. He takes my hand from his face and presses it to his thigh.
Rafe is eager to move on. He leans, both hands on the table. “It’s an old signal relay device, living in the property’s original wiring. Possibly installed recently — repurposed. Someone either preserved the access or knew exactly where to find it.”
Lucian’s grip tightens. “Meaning it could have been placed when the wiring was originally being installed?”
“Exactly.” He nods. “Or, not. And put in more recently.”
I’m sure we’re all thinking of the same name: Carlos.
“Meaning someone’s been listening,” Cass says.
“Meaning someone’s been watching,” Rafe corrects. “It wasn’t wired to do anything. No trigger, no charge. Just a line out.”
Gregory lifts his head. “An observation post. Not a weapon.”
Everyone turns toward him. He immediately looks regretful about having a mouth.
His timing is getting less guarded over time.
“Careful, there, Greggers.” Blaze smiles. “You might just be one of us, yet.”
“I am not volunteering to become whatever terrifying thing all of you are,” he says.
“You’re dangerously close, though,” Rafe says. “Hanging out with us is how it begins.”
“And he has the DNA. The name.” And most importantly, Blaze adds, “The handsome face.”
Gregory’s voice is soft. “I don’t have the thing that sets you apart.”
The ability to kill. It goes unsaid.
Lucian says nothing other than, “Moving on.”
Apparently, his hold over Gregory has loosened, while his control over me tightens.
I loosen my hand from his grip.
Gregory shoves his glasses further up the bridge of his nose. “I’m only looking at the system. Whoever left this here wasn’t trying to hurt anyone in this house. It’s not like it’s an explosive. They were trying to learn something about it.”
The word lands hard. The room feels desperate.
The medic finishes wrapping my hand. Lucian watches every movement.
Always watching…
“Isobel said Carlos likes to watch without being seen,” I say. “Always watching.”
The room contemplates. Isobel looks down at her hands. Lucian doesn’t look at her. It’s almost a conscious choice.
Right now, I almost wish I couldn’t read him as well as I can.
“He used to do it even before the warehouse,” Isobel says quietly. The word warehouse moves through the room like smoke under a door.
Lucian’s expression turns lethal. “Do not mention that place in my presence,” he says. “Ever again.”
Isobel flinches.
I hate that a part of me is glad he spoke so harshly. And the other part wants to reprimand him.
Rafe’s voice cuts through the pressure. “Let her finish.”
Lucian’s eyes move to him.
For one second, I genuinely wonder whether this will become a murder scene.
Rafe doesn’t blink.
Silence.
“It sounds like something he would do.” She sighs. “That’s all I’m trying to say.”
Blaze curses.
Isobel flinches.
Gregory closes his eyes as if asking God for patience.
Blaze looks at Isobel. “You are very committed to knowing almost enough.”
“I was kept in rooms,” she snaps. “Not board meetings.”
My stomach twists. “Are you saying Carlos knows where we are?”
“No one outside the family knows about this place,” Lucian says. He reaches for me, holding me in his arms before he turns back to Rafe. “We should have swept this house before we ever brought them into it.”
Rafe says nothing. Smart man.
“The place is impenetrable,” says Blaze.
“Aye.” Bayne’s voice is calm. Dangerous. Not soothing exactly, but steady.
“You’ve built a nest up here fit for a raptor.”
Blaze says, “Let them come.”
“Erin is here. Ryan, Cass—” Lucian stops short of saying her name. I feel it. She feels it more.
My throat tightens.
His eyes meet mine. They are terrible. Beautiful.
Ruined.