15. Luka
15
LUKA
I t’s nearing midnight by the time my car pulls back onto the cliff.
Lucia sits beside me not saying a word, her arms wrapped tightly around the moth-eaten shirt. She stopped looking scared miles ago when it became clear her friends weren’t following us, despite her current company. In some ways, it’s fascinating, and in others, it’s chilling just how little her fear for me measures up to her fear for them.
My phone dings as soon as I put the car in park. It’s Arseni, asking for an update. I open up the thread and type “ No sign of her yet. Time to ditch phone. If you need me, call me off a burner .” before locking my phone and slipping it back into my pocket. When I shut the car off, the silence is deafening.
“So,” I start, glancing over at Lucia. She peers out the windshield seriously, her jaw clamped. “I guess you didn’t feel like introducing me to your boyfriend, huh?”
She says nothing in response, and after a beat, I face forward and just wait. I was sitting here quietly before I went to get her. I can sit here some more.
Minutes pass. Minutes .
At first, I glance at the clock on the dash to count them, but eventually, I relax back in my seat and close my eyes. When my phone dings again, I pull it out.
Do you know how much this thing cost?
Letting out a sigh, I text back. I’ll buy you a new one.
Not the point.
“You were right,” Lucia says at last, her voice barely above a whisper.
I put my phone away and turn to her, but she’s facing the passenger window.
“I’ve been trusting and naive, and it’s gotten me nowhere but here.”
Her voice trembles, and I realize she’s looking away so I won’t see her tears.
My lips dip into a frown. “What happened?” She doesn’t respond right away, so I prod. “Who were you running from?”
“He played me,” she whispers before clearing her throat. When she speaks again, it’s even but pained. “For almost two months, he’s been convincing me he was in love with me when all he really wanted to do was use me as a pawn.”
Lucia turns to me, her hand combing hair disheveled from the hat she tossed into the backseat. The tears in her eyes hold my gaze.
“You know those cartel guys your brother told you about?” she asks.
I nod.
“Well,” she huffs out a laugh. “His gut was spot on. They were cartel, but not the one I thought Mario belonged to, and not the one I was born into. They were from the Mendoza Cartel, my family’s rivals. By the way they were talking, Mario was taking me to them the entire time.”
Oh.
Oh .
“I assume Arseni told you about me and my family,” she says. I blink to refocus on her and note her eyes not meeting mine. Her face looks flushed.
I open my mouth to confirm, but Lucia cuts me off.
“I’m aware that you don’t care about any of this,” she says, facing forward and sitting up straighter. Her guard raising is like an invisible but palpable shield between us. I’m certain if I reached out, I could touch it. “You probably even think it’s funny. But since I’m about to die, I figured I’d give you the satisfaction of telling you I understand that you were right. I’m a fucking idiot, and maybe I deserve this. Maybe…” She closes her eyes at her cracking voice and regains her composure. “Maybe you’ll spare me a painful death and allow me to just jump off that cliff so my family can recover my body.”
My eyes follow hers to the same drop I watched Arseni take. It didn’t occur to me until now that she believes I brought her out here so I could kill her, even though that’s the only logical sense that this makes. This is where I brought Piper. It isn’t as if I can just take the kidnapped girl back to my place and pretend the highly dangerous men searching for her don’t exist.
But I didn’t bring her here to kill her. I brought her here because I didn’t know what to do. I still don’t.
I had planned to kill her, if I could get that lucky. If I had intercepted her before she got to the bar, I would have disposed of her as quickly as I could and prayed it never got back to me or Arseni. There was little hope for that, but it was the plan.
When I ran into her, I was stunned, and when she kissed me, my brain had iced over. I could feel the danger behind me, Lucia was practically buzzing with it, but that buzz felt so much like electricity against my lips that I’d almost been delusional about what was happening. I was no longer sure what I was there to do, and when I put her in my car, all my plans seemed wrong somehow.
I drum my fingers on the wheel, laying my head back against my seat. I don’t answer her for a while. I’m too busy considering her words.
“You know what’s funny?” I ask, pausing my drumming and laying my hand in my lap. “I’ve been agonizing over the shit you said to me earlier about me using my warped views of the world to justify my defects . And now you’re telling me I was right all along, but I don’t know, Peach…” I shake my head slowly as I sigh. “You are not an idiot , and I don’t think this is funny.”
Her arms slowly uncross, her hands tucking beneath her thighs as silence bathes the car. It doesn’t feel awkward to me, and I don’t take my eyes off her. It’s strange. I know it the moment I recognize it, but the betrayal she feels soaks into my skin, and instead of recoiling, it brings me closer. I realize that’s why I brought her here. Not to die but to feel at peace like I would because I can feel her betrayal as if it is my own.
And it’s painful. It stings. It draws my eyes to her hands, up her arms, her bruised neck, her face, and I feel as though there’s something removed from her now. She looks different. More revealed. Prettier .
Beautiful.
“I should’ve chosen you,” she says, her voice low as she stares straight ahead.
My brows pinch together as I wait for her to continue.
“All this time, I haven’t even been thinking of you by your name. I ruled you out from the start thinking that Arseni was the only empathetic one. When really, I had a better chance humanizing myself with you if I hadn’t said all that stuff.” Her eyes clench shut, and she breathes deeply through her nose. “Please, just tell me… Would it have made a difference?”
“Would what have made a difference?”
“If I had chosen you? If I hadn’t…” Her lips move as she stumbles on her words. “If I had spoken kindly to you?”
Would it have made a difference?
I’m quiet for several moments. Not because I don’t know the answer or because I don’t understand the question.
She wants to know if she could’ve convinced me to let her live. If only she’d been nice to me. Chosen me.
No.
And maybe that’s what she wants to hear. But for some reason, I don’t want her to know that about me. That I’m so removed from compassion there’s nothing someone could say to keep their life.
“Why would you not just threaten me?” I ask instead. “You could’ve told me who your father was and all the things he’d do to me if I hurt you.”
“And what would you have done?”
“I don’t know, but it seems like a better strategy than winning my good graces.”
She doesn’t respond to that.
“If you thought I was taking you out here just to kill you, why would you get in my car willingly?” I ask, twisting my body more toward her. “I get that you were more afraid of the other guys than you were of me, but why would you not try to get away from me too? You could’ve tried to get to a phone or?—”
“Did you know,” Lucia begins, cutting me off. “That this is the first lake I’ve ever seen?”
I close my mouth and try to follow her gaze but don’t understand her point.
“Your apartment is the first apartment I’ve ever been in. Arseni brought me to my first motel. The bar you found me at tonight was the first I’ve ever seen outside of pictures… As a prisoner who has been tied up for the majority of the last two days, I’ve still experienced more of the world than I have in my entire life.”
My head tilts as I study Lucia’s neutral expression. What she’s saying means something to her, I can tell, but her tone is even and her face shows nothing.
She turns to me. “In nineteen years, I left my family’s estate for the first time days ago. If I go back now, I’ll never step foot off the property again.”
“And you’d rather die than go back?”
“No,” she says, her voice finally betraying her emotion. Her chest shakes as she breathes. “I’d rather fight to really live.”
My stomach turns at the plea in her eyes, and I have to look away. Her earlier words come back, asking me to let her jump. That was just her fishing for a chance to get away.
“Luka…”
“Stop.” I pull my arm away when she goes to touch me, my skin crawling.
Why is this bothering me?
Why don’t I want her to beg?
“I can never go back to my papá,” Lucia says, her words thick with emotion. “And the men who are after me would do things neither of us could imagine, so I can’t run for help. I wouldn’t dare ask law enforcement.”
“I believe you,” I say, shifting in my seat, still not looking at her.
I can’t just let her go. I can’t .
She knows too much. If she did get captured, if she did talk…
“Luka, please .”
I close my eyes and breathe.
Why is this hard? This shouldn’t be hard .
“If I were to let you go,” I find myself saying, making my own ears grate, “How could I be certain you wouldn’t say something about me the moment you were caught?”
I open my eyes at the silence and look over at Lucia’s horror-stricken face.
“Let me go?” she asks.
When I’m slow to answer, she stammers. “They would find me. They know this city. I don’t . I don’t know anything . I just told you I’d never been in a motel before today, and you expect me to?—”
“If you aren’t asking me to let you go, what are you asking me to do?”
She closes her mouth and lowers her head. Her blushing cheeks ease my suspicion, bringing my coiled shoulders back down. I say the realization out loud.
“You want me to protect you.”
Her blush deepens as she wraps her arms around herself. “I just need a place to lay low for a little while.”
“My apartment is not the place I want anyone to find a cartel princess.”
Her eyes lift to mine. “Then tell me where to hide. Please , you know this city. Please .”
I pull my gaze away with a roll of my neck and try not to imagine her playing me. Somehow, this conversation has turned from me killing her to me helping her, and it’s another example of how successful she is at taking over my brain, like a fucking parasite. Is it intentional? Is she a sly vixen or am I just an idiot?
I should’ve chosen you.
Did she purposefully say that to get in my head, to lay the foundation of this manipulation?
Heat rises to the surface of my skin, but I let it fade. She’s just scared. She couldn’t fake the fear I felt when my body was pressed against hers, her lips hesitantly parting for me. If this is all an act, it would be a damn good one.
“What about Arseni’s motel room?” she asks, her voice low, uncertain. “Is he… I mean, he doesn’t live there, right? Maybe I could stay there, at least for tonight?”
“They’ll check the motels.”
“Then…” She stares off, her face pinched with worry while she thinks. It’s useless. There isn’t a spot in Vegas safe from a cartel with enough motivation to find someone.
But I do know one place no one would ever look.
I bring my hand to my jaw and stroke while the Petrov mansion comes into my mind, armed with guards, cameras, set outside Vegas and remote enough no one would be likely to stumble across it.
“Did you tell your boyfriend about me and Arseni?” I ask.
Lucia hesitates. Not a good sign.
“I told him I was taken and held by two men. I sensed something was wrong before I got around to saying your names, so he doesn’t know anything.”
“Did you describe me?”
“I didn’t even say your name. How could I have had time to?—”
“Did you tell him I was Russian?”
At that, she stares off, thinking. “I implied that you were American,” she says, blinking. “I said to him, ‘you were right, American men are dangerous.’ I said nothing about you being Russian.”
I watch her carefully, searching for the lie. I don’t see it, but that only makes me look harder. If she’s telling me the truth, then this could work. If she’s lying… Hell could rise.
It’s a minute before I’m satisfied.
“I’m gonna make you a deal, Peach,” I say carefully, my mind revolting against the idea while excitement zaps through me at the same time. “I do know a place I can take you where you’ll be safe for a little while, and to be honest, I’m a little frightened at the consequence for killing a cartel princess anyway.”
She sighs with relief, then asks. “What’s the deal?”
I sit up straighter and watch her face carefully before speaking, watch for any sign that she might be untrustworthy. But of course she is. Everyone is.
“I’ll protect you… But only on the condition that if you are ever found, you do not mention Arseni’s name. If someone insists that there were two men, say the other one was my brother, Leo. But leave Arseni out of it.”
As intently as I’m studying her, watching for some hint of deceit, she watches me right back with curiosity.
“You’re fine if I say your name?”
I lift a shoulder. “Somebody is going to have to pay for what we did to you. It was my fault, so it might as well be me.”
“What about Leo?”
“Leo isn’t exactly innocent,” I say, my voice infused with annoyance as I gesture to her neck.
She rears back. “But Arseni is?”
I open my mouth, ready to defend him, but hold my tongue. I don’t know what went on before she escaped, but I’m also not sure I want her to enlighten me.
I clear my throat. “That’s my condition. Take the deal or don’t.”
She continues to stare at me curiously but nods. “Okay… If I’m ever asked, I won’t say a word about Arseni.”
Letting out a breath, I nod, then start my car and back up to turn around.
“Wait, so where are you taking me?” Lucia asks, her gaze heating the skin of my neck.
I start down the narrow path, my lips curving slightly. I can’t fucking believe I’m about to do this. Never in my dreams did I think I’d take my sister up on her offer to use her fortress, and the idea of being around her or my brother-in-law for longer than anything required feels unbearable… And yet, I feel relieved. Maybe even excited.
“Ironic as it may be, Peach, I’m going to have to ask you to trust me.”