16. Lucas
SIXTEEN
Lucas
After several hours of absolute chaos, I’m sitting in a stiff-backed armchair in a formal sitting room with Roman’s brother digging out a cigar from a box atop the fireplace mantle. I’ve learned that his name is Vitali, and he’s every bit as scary as Roman but in a very different way.
A black t-shirt now covers his tattooed torso, but the ink trails down his powerful arms to his hands, which are clipping the end of the cigar. He’s almost as big as Roman, and there’s a similar intensity and ruthlessness to his expression. But Vitali is colder, more calculating. Roman might be brutal, but there’s something vicious in Vitali. I can feel it.
But I can also see that his hands are shaking as he lights the cigar and tosses the silver lighter onto the mantle. He breathes out a stream of smoke as he studies me.
The woman guard with the long dark braid is standing at the door. The other, the man, is posted outside the room where Roman is sleeping. The doctor has remained in Roman’s room, just in case.
After they carried Roman into the house, with a lot of shouting about the smashed gate, about the doctor coming, about what to do with Roman, they took him upstairs to a bedroom where they laid him on the bed. I got pushed to the side and hovered uselessly as they took off his boots and cleaned his wounds.
Vitali kept shouting about all the scars on Roman’s body— what the fuck , who the fuck did this , where the fuck has he been —and at one point grabbed me by the neck and slammed me into the wall, screaming for answers. I couldn’t reply. I just kept blinking. My brain had shut down by then.
The female guard jabbed him in the back and pulled him off me. I tried to get to Roman on the bed, but Vitali shoved me out of the way with a dangerous gleam in his eye.
Part of me recognizes that he’s very upset about his brother, but part of me just wants to get away from him.
That, however, is obviously not an option.
When the doctor arrived, Vitali started pacing. The doctor said he suspected an epinephrine overdose. I didn’t understand everything that was said and everything that happened, but when the doctor was finished with Roman, he approached me and asked if I was hurt. I hate that I skittered back like a timid animal, but that’s what I did.
I don’t want anyone to touch me but Roman.
I want to be with him right now. I don’t like that the doctor ushered everyone out of his room. I don’t like that I got brought down here.
They let me wash up first, so I guess that’s something, but I still feel gross in these clothes. I want out of them. I want to be under the blankets with Roman.
Maybe it’s crazy or stupid, but I almost wish we were back in the cell. Just us, together. Quiet.
My eyes prickle. I widen them, hoping they don’t leak. I don’t want to cry in front of Vitali.
He exhales another stream of smoke. “So who the fuck are you and how do you know my brother?”
“I’m … Lucas. I’m, um, it’s complicated—”
“Then fucking explain it.”
“I don’t know where to start.”
“At the fucking beginning,” Vitali orders.
“Um. Okay. My stepfather took me to a fight. An illegal fight. He was in debt and needed money, so he paid a guard to drug Roman so he’d lose the fight—”
“Why the fuck was Roman in this fight and where the hell was this?”
“New York. Outside the city in an old warehouse. And Roman didn’t have any choice! He was a prisoner there—”
“Who the fuck was keeping him prisoner?”
I shrink back as Vitali comes stalking my way. “A man named Oscar Crowley, but Roman killed him tonight—”
“Is he the one who did that shit to my brother?”
“Some of it maybe. But he was a prisoner somewhere else before that because Crowley said he bought him—”
“ Bought him?”
“That’s what Crowley said. That he bought Roman from a prison or something. I think Roman was being forced to fight there too, but Roman doesn’t really talk about things. When I first met him, he didn’t speak at all—”
Vitali is looming over me. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“Vitali.” That comes from the female guard at the door. “Give him some room.”
Vitali’s lips are peeled back from clenched teeth. His dark eyes bore into me. He wants to kill me. Or kill someone.
But he steps back from the chair. He turns away from me and walks back to the fireplace. Keeping his back to me, he takes a drag on the cigar and exhales smoke. Then he says, “Go on.”
My thoughts cram together. Go on from what point?
Vitali prompts, “Tell me about Crowley.”
“He is, was, some kind of mobster—” I cut myself off. So much has been happening that I haven’t had a chance to think through anything. About where I am. About who— what —these people are.
Vitali looks over his shoulder at me. I take in his hard, handsome face that’s so similar to Roman’s but more elegant. Sharper. I take in the ink flowing down his arms and the contrast it makes to the opulent house. I think about the guns and the private doctor coming here in the middle of the night.
“Go on,” Vitali prompts again.
I tell him what I can about Crowley. He interrupts with questions I can’t answer. I don’t know when Crowley acquired Roman. I don’t know anything about where he was before Crowley bought him except that he was fighting there. I can’t tell the story of any but the most recent wounds on Roman’s body.
I start to feel lightheaded as the questioning goes on. Except for reading aloud, which is completely different, I haven’t talked this much in weeks. Months. My whole life.
Vitali questions me about my stepfather. I can’t tell if he believes me that Frank and I had been estranged for years and that I knew nothing about Crowley and his fighting ring before that night.
He wants all the details, so I tell him about when I first saw Roman in the locker room, about the shock collar. I tell him about Frank paying Briggs to drug Roman and getting into more debt when Roman won the fight anyway. I tell him about Crowley having me thrown into Roman’s cell to take care of him.
Vitali, who has kept his back to me up to this point, turns and regards me with narrowed eyes. For a second, I shrink back, then I catch myself. Vitali scares me, but I’m not going to let him make me ashamed if that’s what he’s trying to do. I stare back at him.
Vitali’s expression becomes thoughtful. He ashes his cigar and takes another drag. Blowing out a stream of smoke, he says, “So you’ve been with my brother for a while.”
“Yes, and I want to get back to him, so can I—”
“We’re not done here. I need to know how you got from New York to here, and I need to know everything about the assholes who came down my driveway tonight.”
I do my best. I tell him about the drugged food. I tell him how I woke up handcuffed to a bathroom sink in the hockey stadium. He wants the name of the stadium. At first I think I don’t know it, but then I recall seeing it painted on a wall as Briggs led me from the bathroom to the bleachers.
I tell Vitali how I didn’t see Roman until I was made to sit beside Oscar Crowley and spotted Roman unconscious in the team box. I don’t tell him how I started crying then, how I started begging, how Briggs hit me in the face.
I do tell him, however, that I learned Oscar Crowley was sitting beside his cousin Liam, that they had arranged the fight together. I tell him it was Liam’s men who were chasing us because Roman had killed Oscar.
Vitali snags his phone from the mantle, dials, and starts talking to someone about checking out the stadium, seeing what needs controlled, making sure the cops don’t come this way. He then talks to someone else about Liam Crowley.
“Get me every-fucking-thing on this fucker— now ,” Vitali snarls before ending the call and tossing the phone back onto the mantle. He collects his cigar, ashes it in the crystal tray, and focuses on me again.
“What did you mean about Roman not speaking?”
“I … it’s hard for him.”
Vitali scowls. “What do you mean it’s hard for him? His throat’s fucked up? He’s obviously been beaten half to—” Vitali cuts himself off and looks away, furious. His jaw bunches. Then his gaze swings back to me. “Tell me everything ,” he demands.
I don’t like his insistence. I don’t like his intrusion. Roman is mine.
I tell Vitali, “It’s none of your business.”
His expression is instantly furious. “None of my business? None of my business ?” He starts stalking my way. “I thought my brother was dead . He has been gone for four fucking years . I am going to kill every fucking person who had any-fucking-thing to do with it. And if I find out that you’re hiding the fact that you are one of those people? I will rip you the fuck apart.”