Chapter 10
CHAPTER TEN
Erin
Once, this place had been a hidden civilization in the middle of New York.
A full city block sealed behind gray stone walls and windowless backs of Bachman-owned businesses.
Black gates tucked behind luxury shops. Secret closets in offices and storerooms. A second gate beyond the first. A private world no one entered unless a Bachman allowed it.
A little town hidden behind money. A completely hidden, right in the middle of it all, civilization.
Streetlights. Cobblestone. Bistro tables. Wine and bread and fruit. Couples kissing beneath soft lamps as if the city outside didn’t exist.
Now, it is scaffolding and snow. Fresh brick over old scars. Half-finished row homes where a secret kingdom used to breathe.
But I can see what it was.
Worse, I can see what Carlos wants Lucian to remember losing.
New black iron rises between stone pillars still dusted with construction grit. Floodlights cut through the gray winter afternoon, turning falling snow into silver ash. Open spaces in the stone wait for windows. Walkways are half-laid. Men move on rooftops like shadows with rifles.
It should be ugly and sad, but it’s not. It’s beautiful in the aching way messy things are before they are whole but you know they will be spectacular in the end.
Sometimes you have to wade down the muddy road to get to the rainbow at the end.
Our convoy arrives to our destination. We beat the cold, all rushing up the stairs to get a better view.
They’re calling it the watch tower.
A pub-slash-cigar bar with families housed in a building across the street from our battlegrounds. We stand in a line, soldiers preparing for battle, pressed to the windows, where we have a perfect view of the gates outside the new Village and what we can see of the rebuild.
We are watching and we are waiting.
Lucian stands beside me, silent. His hand is still wrapped around mine like he’s still scared I’ll let go now that I know about the baby.
He told me on the plane.
A tiny life that existed in the before world, with the before Lucian and before Isobel, then disappeared just before the couple were woven into Carlos’s web of destruction.
I thought today couldn’t get any weirder, with me, him, and Isobel loading up on the jet like some kind of time-traveling love triangle.
Then he told me about their baby. And I felt protective of them. All three of them.
Which I will not tell Isobel because today does not need to get any stranger.
Lucian watches the gates like they might breathe.
His eyes are trained forward.
Not looking at me.
Then, he says, “What you said in the car.”
“About the spider?” I ask.
His mouth almost moves. “No.”
“Oh.”
His thumb slides over my knuckles. “Thank you.”
Two words. Quiet. Rough.
Enormous from him.
I look at him. “You don’t have to thank me. It was a sad thing.”
He sighs. “I know many people who would be…different about it.”
“You have too little faith in people,” I say.
“Yes.”
I nudge him with my elbow through my coat. “Maybe stop doing that.”
“Working on it.” He gives me a shy peek over his shoulder. “Also, the other thing you said in the car…”
“When I told you that I can handle you loving anyone, but I couldn’t take it if you were still in love with someone?”
“Exactly.”
I’ve come to realize it’s okay for the before Lucian to love the before Isabel. And that’s what I told him.
Despite everything, I turn my face, stretch up on tiptop and kiss his lips. He smiles when I pull back. He grins back.
My smile quickly drops when Rafe’s voice comes over the radio. I press my hand flat against Lucian’s chest, feeling his heartbeat as we wait for the words we know are coming.
“Show time.”
Lucian’s entire body sharpens. Then, he says, “No one moves until I call it.”
The convoy waits outside, visible. Just as much a part of our plan as Isobel—Belle, to Carlos, and to me. He takes my hand, leading me out to the line of black bulletproof cars. Delicate flakes of snow stick to the dark threads of my hair.
Isobel walks ahead of us, looking every bit the Ice Princess as she glides through her winter castle.
Her long blonde hair hangs elegantly down her back.
She wears a pure white knee-length coat over black leather boots with stiletto heels, impossible in this weather, yet she moves with the grace of a ballerina.
She’s so beautiful to look at that sometimes even I have to stare.
The girl you want to hate because you wish you looked more like her. But I don’t. Lucian has made me feel so beautiful in my own skin that I no longer need his praise to know I’m every bit as lovely as she is.
Right now, I just feel sad for her.
She chose the white coat, the boots. “Carlos always liked me in white.”
She holds her head high, not even glancing at us over her shoulder as she climbs into her vehicle. Lucian ushers me into ours, the warm cab a surprise even though I’m expecting it. I run my hand over the luxurious black leather seats.
Snow taps against the wind shield making the cab feel like a snow globe. A snow globe that could turn into a beautiful coffin at any moment.
I squeeze Lucian’s hand.
The Village waits too.
Having heard Rafe’s call beyond the gates, men in dark coats move with a new urgency. They know we are ready. They know our plan. They know Carlos may be watching through something old, buried in the very bones they are rebuilding.
I take a slow breath. The plug is not there anymore.
Lucian removed it before we left Iceland, with infuriating patience and an amount of aftercare that made me feel softer than I wanted to admit.
But I can still remember it.
Not as a physical sensation exactly.
A reminder; My world depends on you making choices that keep you alive.
Shameful man. He found a way to make kink educational. And somehow, it is working.
Because right now, with the gates ahead and fear trying to turn me inside out, I am listening to my body.
My pulse is fast. My hands are cold. My stomach is tight.
But nothing in me says run.
Not yet.
“Still good?” Lucian asks quietly.
I look at him.
He didn’t ask if I was scared. Scared is obvious. Not one of us here is unafraid.
“Green,” I whisper.
His eyes flare.
It is wildly inappropriate that a safe word check across from a mafia construction site gives me butterflies.
Twisted. The both of us. We do make a pair.
Rafe speaks again, and every ear listens. “Positions. Vehicle one holds at checkpoint. Vehicle two advances to the new gate when I say. Vehicle three fans left. Vehicle four remains behind until I confirm visual exposure.”
Visual exposure. That means Isobel. The ghost. Me, the queen. Lucian, the king.
And we all pray Carlos will play the part of our pawn.
Carlos’s theater comes to life exactly the way he wrote it. But the Bachmans have an alternative ending. And we’d like a little time on stage.
Gah—he’s making even me dramatic.
Isobel’s SUV moves.
Then ours.
The tires crunch over snow and salt as we roll toward the first gate.
The gate. The one that has never opened. Not once since the rebuild began.
Our SUV stops ten feet from the gate.
Mack opens my door. Cold air rushes in. He’s here with us, instead of with Cass and Ryan. That alone should tell you how much danger we’ve put ourselves in right now.
Lucian is out before I can move, his hand extended and I take it.
The moment my boots touch the ground, every hair on my body rises.
The Village sees me. The cameras. The wires running through old tech lines, creating a feed we hope goes straight to Carlos.
I stand in the snow beside Mafia King Lucian Bachman straightening my spine.
I toss my hair over my shoulder for good measure so everyone here doesn’t mistake who his queen is.
Look. At. Me.
Blaze exits behind us, coat open despite the cold, one hand near his weapon. I know his first thought is of Cleopatra and if she’s safe in Norway, and if he’ll make it back to her in one piece. All humor is gone from his face.
Love is fun.
Rafe steps out near the lead car. Gregory stays half inside, laptop open against the doorframe. Mack positions himself two steps behind me and to the right.
Close enough that Lucian’s shoulders relax.
Isobel’s vehicle advances. The door opens. The two guards who have become her bookends step out first.
Then Isobel.
Beautiful, sad, vulnerable Isobel.
Carlos wants to know if queens burn better than ghosts. Here we are. Queen. Ghost. King.
Rafe’s voice sounds through the earpiece tucked beneath my hair. “Visual team in place. Gregory?”
Gregory answers, fast and focused. “Old credential is active but not moving. It’s watching for gate engagement.”
“We hope.” Lucian’s jaw flexes.
Everything is riding on one idea; Carlos is waiting for those gates to open.
Rafe says, “Gate one on my mark.”
My stomach dips. Lucian’s hand brushes mine. And I remember not to do anything stupid.
Gregory’s voice comes over for the first time, but I don’t think he means to speak out loud as he says, “Holy shit. We’re really doing this, guys.”
Despite himself, Lucian shakes his head with a curve at his lips. “He’ll learn.”
The new gate wakes. I wait for my cinematic groan, a rumble of thunder, the gates to part like the Red Sea. We get only a soft electronic click.
Then another.
Then the black iron shifts one inch.
Only one.
Blaze mutters, “Well, that’s unsettling as shit.”
“Is it supposed to do that?” I whisper.
Lucian stills. “I have no idea. We’ve never opened it before.”
Gregory’s voice cuts in. “Twelve-second delay initiated.”
Rafe says, “Counting.”
The gate holds half-unlocked. One second. Two. Three. My skin prickles.
Four. Five.
The cameras above us adjust in the wrong direction.
Six.
A lock inside the left pillar clicks, though no one touched it.
Seven.
Gregory says, “There. Secondary credential call.”
Eight.
Rafe: “Tracing.”
Nine.
Lucian’s hand tightens around mine till it hurts. I gasp, “Lucian.”
“God,” he says, relaxing his fingers. “Sorry.”
Ten.