11. Luka
11
LUKA
A fter my door shuts on Leo, I press my forehead against the cool metal, allowing my eyes to close.
That was too close.
Way too fucking close.
A minute passes while I wait for my heart to slow and for the adrenaline to dissolve. Once I feel myself settle, I turn and make my way up to my loft where Lucia waits for me on the bed, her eyes downcast and body turned away. It isn’t until I sit down with her and go to take the tape off her mouth that I notice the bruises forming on her red, swollen neck.
My hand pauses mid-air while discomfort rears me back. Several seconds of staring pass before I recognize the discomfort as guilt. It feels like it’s been so long since I’ve felt the emotion.
Why didn’t I consider the possibility that he’d show up here unannounced?
I guess I hadn’t thought about it because it hadn’t occurred to me that it would matter. He was never supposed to know about Lucia, and even if on some freak chance he came to my apartment, she begged him for help, mentioned I’d murdered some poor woman who offered her a ride, there shouldn’t have been any reason my idiot brother would connect that to his girlfriend. But of course , Piper just had to have told him about Lucia. Of course , she couldn’t have just been offering the girl a ride without some ulterior motive.
Twisted fucking bitch.
Lucia’s angling away from me pulls me back into the moment, and I lower my hand to my lap, leaving the tape for now. It’s telling that she’d rather it be left on than ask me to touch her. She won’t even face me, turned on the bed with her black hair shielding the half of her face I might see if she wasn’t tipping her head forward to hide. I think I get the message.
Go away .
It’s fair. It’s more than fair. But it still bothers me.
“I’m sorry,” I say, relieved at the sincerity I hear in my own voice. I’ve been told I can sound cold and certainly insensitive. But right now, I truly am regretful. “I had no idea my brother was going to come here, but if I had, I would have warned you about his temper. He isn’t well.”
She turns to look at me, glaring at me through her curtain of wavy hair. She holds my gaze like she’s itching to say something, and though I know it’s a mistake, I lean forward to gently remove the tape from her mouth.
She flexes her jaw, anger etched into her expression. Anger, not fear. That strikes me as strange, yet oddly relieving.
“You're sorry about your brother’s temper,” she says, rolling the words on her tongue like she’s tasting them, and ultimately scrunching her nose like she finds them bitter. “You have got to be the most vile human being on this planet.”
I pause a moment, as if I’m taking that in. “Okay.”
“I watched you strangle that man’s pregnant girlfriend out of rage , then pull her body apart like a lunatic , and ever since you’ve been telling me how you’re going to kill me too, but … you’re … sorry about your brother’s temper.” She shakes her head, her shoulders trembling with anger. Or maybe it’s disgust. But it certainly isn’t fear.
Where did her fear go?
“I didn’t kill Piper because I was angry,” I carefully say, although the argument seems unnecessarily absurd when I say it aloud. Lucia doesn’t care why I killed Piper. But I feel the need to say it. “And she wasn’t pregnant. She was lying about her pregnancy to trick my brother into marrying her while simultaneously pumping me for abortion money. She was a snake who bit one too many times.”
The ridges between Lucia’s eyes loosen just a touch at the new information, but I can tell it isn’t enough.
“I don’t know if you were daydreaming during my conversation with Leo,” I continue, “but she picked you up just so she could take advantage of your vulnerability. So are you going to keep feeling sorry for her, or have you learned yet that when people look at you, they see a tasty lamb to slaughter?”
Looking away, Lucia pulls her knees closer to her chest. Seconds pass while she thinks.
“So that wasn’t a lie?” she asks. “Piper was planning on talking me into working as a prostitute?”
“ Talking you into is a generous way of putting it, but yes.”
Several seconds pass while Lucia says nothing. Never meeting my eyes, she shifts toward me awkwardly, her hands still tied behind her back. When I spot the water coating her irises, my lungs shrink.
Why do I like the anger more?
“So what do I do to make people see me differently then?” she asks. I can tell she tries to speak with strength, but her voice cracks at the end of her sentence, unveiling her despair even if her eyes didn’t.
I shake my head. “You don’t get it, Peach. There isn’t anything you can do.” I scoot up the bed and drag her legs onto my lap so I can bring her close to me. She tenses, but it’s surprisingly subtle. She wants to hear this. And oddly enough, this is a lesson I want to give. Like a fox teaching a hare to avoid predators… It makes little sense. “It isn’t just that you’re young and pretty and sweet that makes you so vulnerable. It’s that you’re quick to trust and far too naive. Everyone gets burned, but the people who thrive are the ones who put their faith in themselves and no one else.”
I lower my gaze to her neck as I trail my fingers gently over the wounded flesh. “I don’t know everything that happened, but I doubt my brother came up here without you alerting him. You saw him as a source of safety instead of the danger he was… You want to know what you can do to make people stop seeing you as prey, but you’ve got to start understanding that the whole world is your predator and your job is to survive it.”
Lucia’s teeth sink down on her bottom lip while I wait eagerly for her eyes to sparkle with the realization. With an aha moment that came too late.
But it never comes at all.
She lets go of her lip and shifts her legs on my lap. “Is that how you see the world?” she asks, her voice low. Careful .
I don’t respond, but … of course.
“Is that why you hurt people?” she asks, even quieter. “Because you’re afraid they’ll hurt you first?”
My eyes widen for half a second before I cool my expression and smile. “Do you think I’m afraid of you hurting me, rabbit?”
“I’m talking about your brother.”
When my smile falls, she bites her lip again while she works up the courage to go on.
“Maybe you can rationalize killing his girlfriend,” she says, her chest pulling in with a shudder. “But how can you rationalize having sex with her?”
My jaw clenches as my palms flatten on the mattress, itching to curl.
“I guess what I’m getting at is,” Lucia says, her bravery growing. “Maybe it isn’t that I’m too trusting or naive . Maybe it’s that you use your warped sense of the world to validate your sociopathic tendencies. Because if you accurately judged yourself for who you are and the things you do to those you’re supposed to love, you wouldn’t be able to sleep at night.”
“But…” she goes on, the sarcasm, while light, unmistakable in her tone. “I’ll keep what you said in mind.”
I stare at Lucia, and she stares right back at me with a challenge in her eyes I simultaneously want to quash and run away from. And I’m unaccustomed to running away from challenges.
Something shifts my gut, making me feel queasy, like my world tips slightly. Not enough to send me hurtling in any direction. Just enough to cause unease. I don’t know what it is, but something nags, like there’s some truth to her words, but I know for certain that they’re false.
Maybe the world once proved to Lucia that it will be there to comfort her fears, dry her tears, and scare away her monsters, but that world was an illusion. Carefully crafted by her overprotective father.
My childhood had different lessons to teach me. I learned the reality of the world young and feel grateful for it. I pity fools who live their lives with reckless abandon, fools like my brother, whose girlfriends whore around behind their backs.
It sickened me when she approached me in a bar we each frequented by chance one night, her hand slyly brushing my arm three cocktails in. I’d never liked Piper. From the day I met her, I knew she was full of ill-intentions, a rat looking to gnaw her way through someone else’s scraps.
I don’t know why I did it. I don’t. That night, I just wanted to see if she’d betray him so I could confirm for myself that she needed to be ridded of.
But it didn’t stop. And I have no idea why. That didn’t start bothering me until right now.
Anger lifts through my unease, bathing me like a warm, inviting blanket that I welcome with open arms. Anything to drown the emotion Lucia conjured.
Once again, this girl is fucking with my head. It’s time I stop letting her.
A small gasp sucks past her lips when I throw her legs off of me and stand. I roll my shoulders and flex my hands, already feeling relief at having made a decision.
I want her gone.
She’s cute. She’s sexy. But fuck , I want my head back.
“Arseni will be here to pick you up in a few hours,” I say, relaxing at the coolness of my tone, feeling myself come back. I don’t look back at her as I speak. “He’ll keep you for the remainder of your life, so do yourself a favor, and hold his attention better than you’ve held mine.”
With that, I descend the ladder, grab my keys, and leave, unable to stay in the apartment with the girl another minute.