Chapter 22 – Lance #2
I started moving again, deep and hard, but this time I wanted to watch her face. I reached down between us, finding her clit with my thumb, circling it slowly while I thrust.
"Oh god," she gasped, her back arching off the bed.
I kept my rhythm steady, watching her chest rise and fall, her nipples still hard and flushed. Every time I bottomed out, she made these little broken sounds that drove me wild.
"You're so fucking beautiful like this," I said, pressing harder on her clit. "Spread out for me, taking everything I give you."
Her hands clutched at my shoulders, nails digging in. "Lance, please—I need—"
"I know what you need." I changed my angle slightly, making sure to hit that spot inside her with every stroke while my thumb worked her clit in tight circles. "You need to come on my cock again. Need me to fill you up."
She nodded frantically, her pussy starting to flutter around me.
I could feel my own control slipping, the heat building at the base of my spine.
The sight of her coming undone beneath me, combined with the pulsing heat of her pussy, sent me over the edge.
I buried myself as deep as I could go, groaning her name as I spilled inside her, my cock throbbing with each pulse.
She pressed a kiss to my chest. “I’ve missed you so much.”
I ran my hand down her back, still buzzed from the high of it. “Next time, I’ll go slower. Take my time. Worship you like I should’ve.”
“Lance, I’m not sure I can walk.”
“Gimme ten minutes, I’ll make it an impossibility.” I muttered, already half-hard again despite the crash.
The next morning, Gwen appeared in the doorway of our bedroom, tablet in hand as we were heading for the gym.
"The last diagnostics have run. I have a little to add to what we found this morning." she said without preamble, exhaustion evident in her voice. "Everyone's gathering in the dining room now. We should update them."
I looked at Morgan as she tugged on her gym shoes. She met my eyes and nodded, already standing. "Then let's finish this."
Fifteen minutes later, everyone had assembled in Atticus and Gwen's dining room.
The space had been a war room for days now.
Laptops covering every surface, cables snaking across the expensive mahogany table like electronic veins, printed documents stacked in neat piles with Gwen's precise color-coding and labels.
Atticus stood near the windows, arms crossed, his protective-big-brother energy radiating like heat. Pierce and Gavin flanked him, both in tactical assessment mode, scanning exits, evaluating threats, preparing for whatever came next.
Silas sat at the head of the table, my mother's ring resting on a velvet cloth in front of him. He looked older than I'd ever seen him, grief and determination etched into every line of his face.
Hector stood apart from everyone else, leaning against the far wall with that carefully controlled posture that meant he was either bored or deeply uneasy. I knew my brother well enough to recognize the latter.
Morgan sat beside me, her hand resting on my thigh under the table, grounding me, reminding me I wasn't alone in this.
"Gwen gone to the bedroom?" I asked, noting her absence.
"Putting Ava down," Atticus replied tersely. "She'll be right ba—"
The door opened and Micah walked in, pulling a sleek leather carry-on behind him.
He was dressed in expensive casual travel clothes, designer joggers and a fitted henley that probably cost more than most people's monthly rent, but his usually perfect dark curls were mussed, and deep shadows bruised the skin under his eyes.
Morgan immediately stood. "Micah! Your mum. Is she okay?" she asked, concerned.
"Fine. Completely fine, actually." He rolled his eyes, exasperated. "Turns out the 'emergency' was an ambush to meet her new boyfriend. Proper dramatics, that woman."
"You're joking," Morgan said, relief mixing with disbelief.
"Wish I was. Flew halfway across the world for dinner and a guilt trip about not visiting enough.
" He waved it off tiredly. "But when I rang to check in, Gwen told me you lot cracked the Monserrat file, so here I am.
" He looked around the room, taking in the tense faces and scattered evidence. "Now then, what's all this about?"
"The Monserrat file," I said simply.
The room went completely silent.
Micah straightened in his chair, exhaustion forgotten. "You cracked it?"
"We cracked it," Gwen confirmed. Despite the exhaustion evident in the dark circles under her eyes, her gaze was sharp, focused. "And it's... it's everything."
She moved to the head of the table opposite Silas, pulling up files on her laptop and connecting it to the large monitor mounted on the wall.
"Lance should be the one to present this," she said, meeting my eyes. "It's your family. Your mother's work. You start."
I took the tablet she handed me, feeling its weight like an anchor. Morgan squeezed my hand under the table.
Here we go.
"My mother spent ten years gathering evidence against My grandfather," I began, my voice steadier than I felt. "Financial records. Communications. Witness statements. Death certificates. Everything he's done, everyone he's killed."
Gwen pulled up the first file on the monitor. "Once we started digging in, we realized it was bigger than we thought."
"How much bigger?" Atticus asked warily.
I pulled up the financial records first. Numbers scrolled across the screen. Accounts, transfers, shell companies layered so deep it had taken Gwen days to unravel them.
"My grandfather has been stealing from his own brothers for twenty years," I explained, highlighting the key transactions.
"They've been bailing him out, thinking they're helping family.
Actually, he's been skimming their profits, undermining their operations, and building his own empire on their money. "
Pierce let out a low whistle. "How much are we talking?"
"Hundreds of millions of euros." I let that sink in. "The brothers think they're partners. They're actually victims."
"They'll be pissed," Gavin observed dryly.
"That's the point," Gwen added quietly. "When they see this, they'll turn on him. Family loyalty only goes so far when you're being robbed blind."
I moved to the next file, and my chest tightened.
"It gets tricky. There’s another player in the documents only ever referenced as S.D.
We still need to identify them, but they are high up.
Seem to have access to all things Dulac Uncles.
Primary job so far as we can tell is to undersell and undermine the Uncles’ businesses on behalf of Grandfather. Joy of joy, there’s more."
The temperature in the room seemed to drop.
"My father didn't die in a training accident." The words tasted like ash. "Grandfather killed him. He was asking too many questions about where the family money was going, about discrepancies in the accounts."
Hector shifted against the wall, but said nothing.
"There's more," I continued, pulling up another file. "Celene DuLac, our aunt. Lucien’s wife. She was young, twenty-three when she married him. Vulnerable." I paused, steeling myself. "Grandfather had an affair with her. She became pregnant with his child."
Hector spoke quietly. “Our cousin Sophie? Doubt we can leverage her. She’s not in the game. Besides, Uncle Lucien disowned her and her mother over a decade ago. She’s in the wind.”
“Don’t be so sure about that,” Gwen said as she hit a button to screen mirror her laptop.
Even I frowned as I stared at the family tree she posted. It was mostly straight forward until my grandfather’s arm. Lot’s of circles and disconnections. The most notable being Sophie Dulac. S.D. More importantly was the name she went by nowadays. The name that had me kicking myself.
"Amber," Morgan said, her face contorting into shock. “Amber is your cousin. Or Aunt. Whatever.”
"Yes." Gwen pulled up birth certificates, hospital records.
"When Lucien discovered the affair, he kicked Celene and the baby out.
But then Celene threatened him, said she'd tell the whole family what he'd done, how he'd manipulated her, that the child was his.
" I clicked to the next document. "So he had her killed.
Made it look like an accident. Brake failure on a mountain road. "
"Does Amber know?" Morgan asked, horrified.
I shook my head grimly. "No. She thinks Lucien killed her mother in revenge for the affair.
When my grandfather approached her years later and told her he was her father, she thought he was saving her.
Claiming her." I gestured to the communications on screen.
"She has no idea he murdered her mother to keep her quiet. "
"Bloody hell," Micah muttered, disgusted.
"There are seventeen more names on this list," I continued, scrolling through the files.
"Competitors. Family members who asked questions.
Witnesses. Anyone who crossed him or became inconvenient.
" I looked around the room at the faces of people I'd chosen as family.
"All dead. All made to look like accidents or natural causes. "
The silence was suffocating.
"Your mother documented all of this?" Silas asked roughly, emotion thick in his voice.
"Every detail. Dates, locations, methods. She even tracked down witnesses, people who saw things, knew things. She built a case that could destroy him." I set down the tablet carefully. "But she died before she could use it."
"So we use it," Atticus said firmly.
"We can't. Not yet," Gwen interrupted, pragmatic. "Charles has people everywhere, police, government, judges. If we go public too soon, the evidence 'disappears' and we become targets."
"Then what do we do?" Morgan asked reasonably.
"We give it to the brothers," I said. "We show them what he's done, the theft, the murders, the manipulation. We turn his own family against him."
"Will they believe it?" Pierce asked skeptically.