Chapter 53 Rae
RAE
NYC DEPT. OF FINANCE — PROPERTY RECORD
Borough: Manhattan
Owner: Lazarev, Lukas A.
Last Recorded Entry: March 2007
When the elevator doors close, I yank my hand from Lukas’s grip and whirl on him.
“What the hell just happened?”
He doesn’t answer. Just stands there with his hands in his pockets, watching me with those gray eyes.
“Lukas! You just— You… you gave up everything. For what? For me?”
Nothing. Not even a flicker of expression.
“Say something!” I’m close to losing it now. “Why would you do that? What does any of this mean?”
The elevator descends. Floor thirty-eight. Thirty-seven. Thirty-six. With each passing number, my panic rises.
He kissed me. He kissed me right there for the whole world to see; hell, I’d be surprised if the tabloids aren’t already mocking up tomorrow’s front page.
And he won’t explain a bit of it?!
The elevator deposits us in the lobby, and Lukas’s hand finds the small of my back, steering me past the security guards whose jaws have collectively dropped to the marble floor. I’m still firing questions at him, but he deflects every single one.
“Lukas, you can’t just—”
“Later.”
“But the company—”
“Later.”
“Kir—”
“Rae.” He sighs. “Later.”
His chauffeur is waiting beside a black Mercedes, engine already growling. He opens the back door for us without a word, and Lukas helps me inside before sliding in beside me.
We drive through Manhattan in silence. I watch familiar landmarks streak past my window and try to orient myself in a world that’s suddenly gone topsy-turvy.
When we finally stop, it’s not at the luxurious penthouse I’ve always imagined him living in. Instead, we’re in front of a stoic brownstone in Brooklyn, tucked away on a tree-lined street that feels like a secret the city forgot to share.
Lukas opens my door and offers his hand. “Come,” he says softly.
Despite every rational instinct screaming at me to run, I take it.
But I dig my heels in when we get to the door.
“Lukas, I really can’t… I can’t be here right now.
” I swallow down the surge of panic in my throat.
“I need to call Jillian. I need to figure out what this means for my job and for my brother’s treatment payments and for the inevitable press shitstorm that’s about to rain down on both of us—”
“Stay.”
I blink. “Huh?”
“Stay,” he says again.
It’s the change in his tone that gets me. For weeks now, he’s growled every single command at me in a way that makes my knees weak and my common sense evaporate. This is… not that.
This is a plea.
“You want to know something, Rae?” he asks in that soft, plaintive rasp. “I’m terrified right now.”
I actually take a step back.
“Not of Kir.” He shakes his head slowly. “Or of losing the company. I’ve lost things before. I know how to survive that.”
He rubs at his beard and gazes at the sky overhead.
“I’m terrified because I don’t know how to do this. I don’t know how to be anything other than what I’ve been for eighteen years. Cold. Controlled. Untouchable.” He reaches out to cup my cheek in his grizzled palm. “But you make me want to try.”
I stare at him in disbelief. The whole way here, I told myself again and again that I’m just collateral in this strange war between father and son. This doesn’t have anything to do with me, not really—I’m nothing more than a symbol, a proxy for the real thing.
Now, Lukas is standing here, telling me that’s false.
It is about me.
“I’m terrified of you,” I whisper back hoarsely, stunned by what is happening. “Of what you are and what you’ve done. Of what you make me want.”
His thumb traces my cheekbone. “You’re right to fear that,” he admits. “I’m not a good man, Rae. I’ve never pretended to be.”
“Then why am I here?”
“Because I’m a selfish one.”
My heart is spasming in my chest. “Lukas…”
“Stay,” he says again. “Please. Give me… give me one week.” He grips my hands hard in his.
“That’s all I’m asking. Seven days to show you who I truly am.
I’m not the monster Kir warned you about, Rae.
I’m just…” He trails off, searching for something he doesn’t seem to have the vocabulary for. “A man.”
I’m speechless. Couldn’t answer one way or another if I wanted to.
“Then you can decide,” he says. “If you want to run, I won’t stop you. If you choose to walk away and never see me again, I’ll still make sure you’re taken care of—your brother, your debts, everything. But give me one week first.”
I hesitate.
Then I nod.
It’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever done. Dumber than taking this job in the first place, dumber than sending him that photo in the red dress, dumber than this and that and the other thing.
But I nod anyway.
Lukas exhales a breath he’s been holding for a long time. Then he unlocks the door and leads me inside.
I follow him mutely, too confused to do anything but obey.
The brownstone is beautiful. High ceilings lined with original moldings ranging over hardwood floors that creak softly underfoot.
But it’s also untouched. Dust motes drift through shafts of pale winter sun.
White sheets are draped over furniture like shrouds. The air smells stale and preserved.
It’s a graveyard.
Lukas locks and bolts the door behind me, then leads me further in.
He moves through the space like a man returning to a grave.
His fingers trail along a sheet-covered chair, leaving tracks in the dust. He pauses at a mantle where photographs might once have stood, now bare except for a single dead flower in a crystal vase.
“This was my home,” he says quietly. “Before.”
“Before what?” I ask, though I think I already know.
Lukas moves to a window and pulls back a heavy curtain, letting gray light spill across the dusty floorboards. “Before everything changed.”
I wrap my arms around myself, suddenly cold despite the coat I’m still wearing. “You haven’t been here since?”
“Not once in eighteen years.” He lets the curtain fall and the light is snuffed out once more. “Not since the funeral.”
“Then why bring me here now?”
He turns to face me. When he does, he looks anguished. “Because it’s the only place no one will look.”
He disappears through an archway and returns with two crystal tumblers and a bottle of whiskey so old the label has faded to a total blank.
“Drink,” he says, pressing a glass into my hands and pouring some liquor into it.
I take it and sip, coughing when it burns my throat.
Lukas settles into a sheet-covered armchair across from me. He looks oddly out of place here, this enormous, polished man in his bespoke suit surrounded by ghosts and cobwebs.
“Why did you really walk away?” I ask. “From the meeting today, I mean. You didn’t even try to fight back.”
He swirls his whiskey and watches it climb the sides of the glass. For a while, I think he won’t answer.
“Last night,” he begins slowly, “I was in a negotiation. With dangerous men. The kind who’d gut you for looking at them wrong.”
I curl my feet beneath me on the dusty settee.
“Their leader thought he’d found leverage. You. He said your name and I… snapped.” Lukas’s jaw locks down.
Panic rises in my throat at the thought of violent strangers knowing who I am, but I swallow it down, because this isn’t about me right now. “What happened?”
His gray eyes lift to mine. “I put my boot on his throat and carved a reminder in his face that I am not a man to be fucked with. Rae… I almost killed everyone in that room.”
My jaw hits the floor. Lukas sees it and nods sadly.
“I’ve done terrible things, Rae. Worse than you could ever know. I’ve ordered men killed without a second thought. Sometimes, I’ve done the killing myself. But I’ve never—” He breaks off, shaking his head. “I’ve never lost control like that. Not once.”
He sets his glass down and leans forward, elbows braced on his knees, fixing me with a pale-eyed stare.
“You’re the only thing I’ve wanted in eighteen years that I haven’t taken by force, Rae Everett. Do you understand how much restraint that requires?”
I gulp. What’s coming out of my mouth next will change everything for good, but I couldn’t stop it even if my life depended on it.
“Then take me.”
Lukas goes still.
“I mean it,” I say, doubling down. “I’m tired of being careful. I’m so sick of being afraid of what I want.”
He’s on his feet before I can blink, crossing over to me. His hands close around my waist and he pulls me up, takes my place, then drags me onto his lap, so that I’m straddling him in that dusty armchair while ghosts watch from the shadows.
“I don’t know how to do this,” he rasps against my throat, “without breaking you.”
“Fuck it then.” I curl my fingers into the silver hair at his nape and tilt his face up to mine. “Maybe I don’t want to stay intact.”