Chapter 4
CHAPTER FOUR
LUCIAN
By the time we come downstairs, every man in the room knows exactly what happened upstairs.
No one says a word.
A wise choice.
The air smells of baked goods. Cass is at it again. She’ll be pushing her delicious blueberry muffins or cranberry-orange scones on me as soon as I set foot in that kitchen.
I swear I’ll gain fifteen pounds if we don’t get out of here soon.
Erin stops beside me at the bottom of the stairs.
She’s wearing fresh clothes now. Dark stretch pants. The kind she loves because they’re comfortable for curling up in. The ones I love because they’re easy to take off.
A soft cream sweater I’d love to pair with a nice bulletproof vest. I’m not a monster; I’d get it in black to match the pants.
Her hair falls loose down her back, still slightly tangled from my hands, and there’s a faint flush on her throat that belongs to me.
Mine.
The word moves through me with the same primitive satisfaction it always does.
Then she steps away from me.
Only a little.
Enough.
I feel the distance like a hand closing around my throat.
I stare at the woman who stole my heart when I thought I didn’t have one left. Heat rises in her cheeks, embarrassed by what everyone knows. Yet a secret little cat-got-the-cream smile tugs at the corners of her lips.
She loves the things we do. She loves how sexy I make her feel. I love how turned on she gets when I— Bayne clears his throat.
Back to work.
I drag my gaze from her and force myself to focus.
Blaze snickers.
They used to give me a hard time for being so obsessed, but they know just how much she is mine.
I’m not the only one whose skin she’s gotten under.
They’d kill for her, too.
One look at the men in this room pulls me back to earth by the gravity of our current situation.
Blaze lounges near the fireplace with the air of the New Yorker he was born and bred to be. He cares more about protecting his people than his own life expectancy.
He’s got one heavy boot crossed over the other, his expression carved into something between boredom and violence.
Bayne stands by the bay window, arms crossed over his chest, watching the thick line of trees beyond the marshy green land. A Scottish King at home, lording over our current corner of this wee Scottish island. He looks at the forest as if he’s hoping someone stupid enough to die wanders our way.
We’re all getting a little stir-crazy here.
Mack is near the door, silent and alert, his attention cutting briefly to Erin before returning to the outside.
Rafe sits to the right at the head of a long wooden table, his laptop open in front of him.
Gregory sits next to Rafe, sandy hair mussed, glasses slipping down his nose as he studies Rafe’s screen over his shoulder. He’s a softer echo of me.
I want him safe, which means anywhere but here, yet he still refuses to leave. I don’t allow my younger brother to be an active participant in what we do. He is a dry-humored, emotionally intelligent observer who gives advice when needed.
Loyal and steady, even after the gunshots and blood came out.
I don’t yet know whether that makes him brave or foolish.
Or a better version of me.
Possibly all three.
Gregory looks out of place here among weapons, scars, and men with blood under their fingernails.
He still wears the same tired dignity he had when Erin was bleeding and he was trying not to come apart.
There is a healing bruise along his cheekbone and a careful stiffness in the way he sits, but his eyes are clear.
Too clear.
He’s a man who has seen the curtain pulled back and decided to keep looking.
I built that Ivy League iron curtain with blood and sweat. I kept him swaddled in private schools and privilege after our parents died.
I’m still as pissed as I am grateful to Bayne for bursting Gregory out of his bubble, the one I put him in after our parents died in that car crash, to shield him from what he’d been born into.
Bayne has a younger brother, one he tried to shield from the mafia world, too. I believe he’s currently in LA, trying his hand at acting.
About as far from their wee Scottish island of crime as the kid could be.
Same as Erin and Cass bringing Ryan to New York, as far from their forgotten corner of Northern England as they could manage.
Clawing at stone to protect those we love.
We try. And sometimes we fail.
And now we’re all intertwined and in more danger than ever before.
“Report,” I say.
Rafe’s gaze flicks from Erin to me.
A question.
No. Not a question.
A challenge.
He wants to know if she is staying.
I want to tell her to sit with Cass. To check on Ryan. To be somewhere behind locked doors, away from old ghosts, new threats, and the part of my life that keeps trying to swallow her whole.
But upstairs, she looked me in the eye and said she would not be the girl outside the room.
And I told her I would try.
I despise trying.
It implies the possibility of failure. And with Erin, I’ve been failing a lot.
She wants to live her life. She doesn’t understand that everything I do is because I want that, too.
I swear I’ll get her the cutest little bulletproof vest money can buy.
I want to lock her up, small and tight and untouchable, like a fairy in a charm I wear around my neck. When we finally return to New York, the minute they open the doors of that freshly built Bachman’s Jewelers, I’ll call them up and place my order; one locket big enough to fit a girl.
Erin moves toward the table slowly enough to seem casual, fast enough to settle in before I’ve decided whether she stays. She pulls out a chair across from Rafe. The legs scrape against the floor as if issuing a challenge.
The war cry before the battle.
Every man in the room goes still.
She sits.
Then she looks up at me with wide, innocent eyes that contain absolutely no innocence.
“Sorry,” she says. “Was I supposed to wait for you to pull my chair out for me?”
Blaze coughs once.
It could have been a laugh.
I give him a look.
I walk to the head of the table and remain standing. “You can stay until I tell Mack to escort you out.”
She nods. “Which won’t be before this meeting ends.”
Her name in my mouth is a warning. “Erin.”
Unless it’s a cry of passion, it usually is.
Mine in hers is a dare. “Lucian.”
The air changes.
It always does with us. Heat slips in where tension should be. Even now, with Isobel’s name still hanging over the house and Carlos moving pieces, my blood responds to the challenge.
If she pushes me too far, we all know this gathering will end with every man in this room leaving to get some air outside while I lift her out of that chair, bend her over this table, and punish her until her voice breaks with need.
I stare at her across the table.
I don’t need words to remind her which of us gives orders.
She has just enough fire left in her to test me, holding my stare for one beat too long before turning back to Rafe.
Naughty little thing.
If I can’t get a locket, can I at least put her in a backpack?
Blaze, as loose-tongued as ever, says, “This should be fun.”
“It will be short if you keep sharing your opinions,” I tell him.
He grins. “There he is.”
Rafe clears his throat. “We have three points of confirmation.”
The room tightens.
My attention snaps to the laptop sitting ominously before him. Gregory’s shoulders tense beside Rafe.
Confirmation she’s alive.
“First,” Rafe says, turning the screen to face me, “a woman matching Isobel Vale’s description was seen outside an old Bachman contact point in Queens.”
The name hits differently out loud now that Erin is in the room.
I do not look at her.
That may be a mistake.
No.
It is definitely a mistake, because I sense the shift in her anyway. The small lean she does toward the other end of the table. The way her fingers curl around the cuff of her sweater.
Told you I’m failing.
But right now, I need to focus on the bigger picture, which is exactly why she shouldn’t be in this room. My attention will always be drawn to her.
Her safety will always be my first thought.
I force my gaze to the screen.
The clip is short, the image grainy, taken from a damaged, forgotten security camera still mounted across the street.
A woman stands beneath the broken metal frame of what was once an awning outside a shuttered storefront, her face turned just enough for the camera to catch the line of her cheekbone, the blond curtain of her hair, the shape of her mouth.
Slender frame. Pale coat. One hand on the wall as if she is steadying herself.
She looks up at the camera.
Like she wants to be seen.
My blood goes cold.
It’s her.
And she’s standing in front of a Bachman property.
Why would Isobel be there?
“It used to be an old Bachman contact point in Queens,” Gregory says. “The one your family converted to a jewelry store in the fifties.”
I glance at Erin and catch her frozen to her chair.
She knows Bachman’s Jewelers. Every woman in New York knows about those curling gold letters spelling out our family’s proud name across the front of a little red leather box.
Spotless glass counters behind shining windows, filled with cases of the world’s finest jewelry, and the only place we Bachman men would go to buy our girl a ring.
Four carats. Princess cut. Platinum band.
Yes, I’ve thought about it.
Ice creeps through my veins.
My past stands among the destruction of what I thought would be my future.
“Bachman’s Jewelers—” My throat tightens. Erin looks at me. “That location was burned in the attack on the Village.”
“When the smoke cleared and the debris was removed, we boarded up what was left. The storefronts were furthest from the explosives,” Rafe corrects. “Forgotten.
Left on the blocked-off streets. We haven’t touched it since the attack, still deciding what to do with it after the Morettis.”
Curious about our past, or maybe wanting to direct the conversation away from Isobel, Erin asks, “What kind of contact point was it originally?”
“Old courier drop,” I say. “Way back before the old landline phones even existed.
Money, weapons, and secrets were exchanged there.”