Chapter 20 And Then You
And Then You
Persons taking no active part in the hostilities… shall in all circumstances be treated humanely…
Itried not to think about Lucas when the soldiers left a couple of days later.
Devon and I held hands while he fretted for Isaac.
He didn’t know I was fretting too. I nearly cried when the first freed prisoners arrived wearing ragged clothes, dirt caked in their creases and under their fingernails.
They came in waves, shaking and weak, shuffling their feet, eyes downcast.
Pasting on a smile, I helped distribute small portions of food. I treated and dressed raw wounds from lashes. I organized a shower system so they could each wash themselves in private.
One girl stopped me as I cleansed a festering sore on her leg, laying a bony hand over mine. I glanced up to find tears sparkling in her eyes.
“Thank you,” she murmured.
Shame slithered through my chest, weighing me down. I didn’t want to be thanked for things that shouldn’t need to be done in the first place. Still, I smiled and nodded, then returned to my work.
When Theo entered headquarters, dark circles ringed his eyes.
I snuck up on him. “Did his plan work?”
Theo tilted his head back and forth, wishy-washy. “I had to modify it. We left some prisoners behind.”
My stomach fell. “What?”
“The last leg didn’t make sense. I suspect he was trying to lead us into a trap.”
Anger exploded. “What? He wouldn’t do that.”
“I don’t want to talk about it, Sophia.” He walked away, and I stared after him, shocked. What the hell? They’d curated that strategy for weeks, and Theo changed it on a whim? The plan had been flawless.
I couldn’t dwell on it long. The prisoners needed attention.
A count the next morning tallied two hundred and fifty-six freed people.
We celebrated. Hard.
Adam led the charge, and champagne was brought from some stash I hadn’t known existed. Most of the stunned prisoners avoided the ruckus, but those who joined us managed a few smiles.
As for the rest of us, we couldn’t stop smiling. It was our first major victory in a long, long time. We danced and drank and partied in a way we never had. Devon and I giggled drunkenly as Isaac reenacted his part in the rescue. Jayden tried to get me alone. I avoided him.
“May we live to see our glory,” Adam shouted, holding his glass high as he leapt atop a table.
Cheers rallied around him while I snorted. “An honest hope in a world gone mad,” I muttered to Devon.
“We’re going to win this,” he replied, expression resolute. “I’m sure of it.”
I smiled as he took Isaac into his arms, planting a long kiss on his mouth.
We stayed up late into the night and woke hungover to continue the celebration. By the time I left to meet Lucas again, I was exhausted but overjoyed. He’d helped us save so many. He deserved acknowledgement for what he’d done, even if only from me.
I bounded through the cracked front door of the Evanston house, grin in place, bolting the lock behind me. With only two candles lit, the room flickered with shadows. My gaze fell on Lucas.
He leaned on the table behind one couch, weight braced on both hands.
Next to his hand sat a lowball glass, a finger of amber liquid inside.
He wore the dress uniform of a Blood Colonel, but he’d shed the scarlet-shouldered jacket and tie.
His head lifted, and unsmiling, he traced my body from top to bottom.
“I see you’ve forgotten your lessons on how to be discreet. ”
I glanced at my shorts and crop top. In my haste to see him, I’d left behind my baggy clothes. “I’m sorry.”
He waved away my apology and took his cup in hand, eyeing me over the rim as he stole a sip.
“Where’d you get…whiskey?”
The edge of his mouth twisted, and he gestured to a sideboard I’d never noticed before, all heavy wood and decorative carvings, where an open bottle of liquor sat. “A gift. For services rendered.”
Ice water seeped through my veins. How could I have forgotten the executions? We’d rescued many, but some were left behind. Those people had been executed today.
By Lucas.
“The price of my soul is a fifth of fine whiskey,” he said with an acrid edge to his voice.
I advanced into the room. “Lucas, you saved so many—”
“I killed thirty-two innocent people today.” He hurled the glass at the wall, where it shattered in an explosion of glittery silver shards, leaving the liquor to drip down the dusty paint. “Why am I doing this? I should be dead by now.”
Despite his warning glance, I closed the distance between us. “You saved more lives than you took.”
He shook his head. “Christ. How are you still so innocent?”
“You make the hard choices no one else wants to.”
His gaze sharpened on me. “This isn’t a choice. This is obedience. This is exactly what they want. They’re punishing me for the misdeeds of my family.”
“Wh-what?”
He ignored me. “I am their servant on broken knees.”
“That’s not true.”
“It is.” His hand landed on my neck, his thumb stroking up and down the column of my throat in random patterns and shapes. Aquamarine eyes took me in, growing more curious, more intense. “And yet you’re still here. Why are you still here, Sophia?”
I pressed my palm to his cheek, rough with stubble. “Because you helped people survive, Lucas. It’s our fault we couldn’t save them all. You’re too blinded by the sin to see the good within.”
Stepping closer, he slid his hand into my hair. Fingers anchored until my neck arched and I was looking straight up into his face. “My sins are so vast,” he said, “that no amount of good could compare. It’s like a vat of poison with a drop of antidote.”
My lips parted as I gazed into his eyes, trying to follow his meaning.
“It still kills you. It just does it slower.”
An invisible fist reached inside and twisted, begging me to make that pain in his voice go away. His face was nothing but sharp lines and shadows—the arch of his dark brows, the cut of his cheekbones—but it was the fractured bits of teal in his eyes that captured my full attention.
“Nothing is killing you, Lucas,” I said.
His hand tightened in my hair, dragging us closer together. “What other way do you see this ending? There is no hope. No way out. Nothing but darkness with no clear direction.”
“We—we just keep moving forward.”
“Which way is forward?” he demanded, releasing me.
He dug his fingers into his hair and paced away.
“I had one reason to keep going, even though avenging her won’t change what happened to her.
I just wanted retribution, and I figured I’d do as much damage as I could before the NAO discovers I’ve betrayed them and executes me.
” He looked up and glared at me. “And then you.”
I froze. “Me?”
“Harrison threw you at me, and you couldn’t have been more destructive if you were a fucking grenade.”
My breath caught. “What?”
“I won’t survive this,” he said, making each word clear and sharp, like he thought I might not understand. “I can’t do this forever. I don’t want to do this forever. I can’t keep killing people like this, and I have weeks at most before they discover me.”
I needed to argue, to plead even, but the raw anger in his voice, the sheer agony in the cracks of his mask forced me to stillness.
“I was fine with it,” he snapped, eyes flashing. “I wanted to die. Until you.”
My throat ached with a fresh wave of tears.
“What’s going to happen to you when I’m gone?” he asked. “You’re untrained and reckless, and no one watches out for you.”
I swiped at a tear. “Then don’t leave. Stay here, with me.”
“I can’t stay, Sophia. There is no route of survival for me. It’s just all going to hurt a lot more now.”
Frustration built inside, at his unwillingness to seek another avenue. “You haven’t even tried—”
“What?” He prowled closer again, still glaring, his predatory steps silent in the expanse between us. “Tried what?”
My voice shrank. “I don’t know, but this isn’t fair to me. You’re mad because you care whether I live or die. I didn’t do that to you.”
He laughed then, bitter and angry. In a sure move that sent tingles spiraling down my legs, he hooked his fingers through the belt loops of my shorts.
I was tugged into the hard plane of his chest. “Yes, you did,” he accused.
Fiery hands gripped the bare skin of my waist, his fingertips creeping under the hem of my crop top.
His eyes were like gemstones—cracked under pressure, barely holding it together.
He dipped closer, and the graze of his lips near my ear woke goosebumps all along my spine.
“You make everything so much worse. You make me want to live.”
Heat blossomed in my chest, rapid and all-consuming, and I moved on instinct. Our lips met in a hard collision, half desire, half resentment. It was a sigh of relief and a scream of frustration all wrapped inside a powder keg. We needed but a single spark to light it, and the kiss detonated.
His arms circled me so tight I couldn’t breathe.
My hands clenched on his shirt until the fabric protested.
His tongue drew a line across my lower lip, and I opened for him, deepening the kiss beyond anything that was smart or sensible.
Reckless, he’d called me, and I’d never felt it so acutely as in that moment, with Lucas Scott’s deadly hands jerking me hard against his body, his mouth doing wicked things to mine.
I tugged at the buttons of his shirt as he pushed, pushed, pushed until my low back hit the sideboard where his execution prize sat.
He swiped the bottle aside, and it fell to the floor, spilling liquor onto the frayed carpet. The air grew thick with the fragrance of aged whiskey and bad decisions.