3. Lucas #3
The last thing I see is her face - pale, determined, nothing like the broken woman she was three years ago.
Something has woken up in her tonight.
Something dangerous.
Good.
I turn to face my brother.
He’s standing in the doorway in a silk robe, his hair slightly disheveled - probably from Elena’s fingers, I think bitterly. His expression shifts from confusion to suspicion as he takes in the scene: me standing alone in his study at 3 a.m., the desk lamp casting shadows across my face.
“Couldn’t sleep,” I say, leaning against the desk with practiced casualness. “Not after the scene at Elena’s. I wanted to be sure your wife hadn’t done something stupid on the drive home.”
“So you heard.” Something brittle moves behind Edward’s eyes. “I’d hoped to handle it before it reached you.”
“We’re family. Isn’t that what family does?”
The word tastes like poison in my mouth.
Edward’s eyes narrow. He’s always been able to tell when I’m lying - we grew up in the same house of mirrors, after all, learned the same survival skills under Victoria’s watchful eye. But he’s also arrogant enough to believe he’s smarter than everyone around him.
“Where is she?” he asks. “Lily.”
“Gone, I assume. I knocked. No answer.” I let it sit. “Can you blame her?”
“Maybe.” He doesn’t sound convinced. His gaze sweeps the study, looking for something out of place, some evidence of betrayal.
I keep my face blank. Three decades of surviving Victoria Burton have made me an excellent liar.
“Why do you care, anyway?” I ask casually. “You’ve barely looked at her in months. I’m surprised you came home at all.”
Something flickers in his expression. Guilt, maybe. Or just irritation at being questioned.
“She’s my wife,” he says flatly. “Of course I came.”
“Is she?” The words slip out before I can stop them. “Is she really your wife, Edward? Or is she just the placeholder you keep around while you play house with someone else?”
The silence that follows is deafening.
“Careful, little brother.” Edward’s voice drops to something dangerous. “You’re treading on very thin ice.”
“Am I?” I push off the desk, moving toward the door. “I’m just asking questions. Isn’t that what family does?”
“Family doesn’t sneak into each other’s homes at 3 a.m.”
“Family doesn’t lie to each other for three years, either.” I pause at the door, turning back to face him. “But here we are.”
His face goes still. Calculating.
“What do you think you know?”
“Nothing.” I shrug, the picture of innocence. “Just that you’ve been spending a lot of time at school plays lately. Sophie’s quite the performer, from what I hear.”
The color drains from his face.
“Bruce talks too much when he’s drunk,” I add pleasantly. “You might want to have a word with him about discretion. Or maybe you just don’t care anymore who knows about your real family.”
“Lucas-”
“Go home, Edward.” I deliberately throw his earlier words back at him. “It’s late.”
I’m out the door before he can respond.
But his voice follows me down the hall, sharp and dismissive and so typically Edward: “You’ve always been too soft. It’s why you’ll never amount to anything.”
I don’t respond.
I’m too busy thinking about Lily, slipping out the fire escape in her ruined gala gown, barefoot, carrying the proof of her husband’s betrayal against her heart.
I’m too busy thinking about the way she said nobody like she believed it.
She’s not nobody. She never was.
And one way or another, I’m going to prove it to her.
I make it to the street just as my phone buzzes.
A text from a number I don’t recognize - but the message tells me exactly who sent it.
I know what you just did. I know what you told her. Meet me at the Mandarin Oriental, Suite 1408. Bring yourself. Leave your brother’s lies at the door.
-M. Reid
I stare at the message for a long moment.
Then I look up at the penthouse windows. Dark and silent now. Edward’s probably searching the study for clues, trying to figure out what I told his wife, how much damage control he needs to do.
He has no idea.
He has no idea that his convenient, invisible, perfectly controlled wife just discovered she’s heir to one of the largest fortunes on the Eastern Seaboard. That the woman he’s been keeping in a gilded cage is about to have more power than he’s ever dreamed of.
Lily is about to discover she has a family. A legacy. A weapon.
And I’m going to make damn sure she knows how to use it.
I start walking toward the hotel.
The city’s gone still - that dead, in-between hour after the clubs empty out and before the first joggers appear. My footsteps echo on the pavement. The air smells like exhaust and possibility.
Somewhere in this city, Lily is out in the dark with a new understanding of exactly how much she’s been betrayed.
Somewhere in this city, Eleanor Maxwell is waiting for the granddaughter she’s spent twenty years trying to find.
And somewhere in this city, my family is about to learn that the woman they tried to destroy is stronger than all of them combined.
I smile into the darkness.
This is going to be fun.