Chapter 23
Sadie
“Yes,” I reply. “I really want to know why.”
Lucan keeps his gaze on The Stranger’s cover. “I was trying to understand something.”
“And did you?”
“Eventually, yeah. It made me think deeply about feelings of guilt.”
Frowning at the book, I chew the inside of my cheek and think.
The story’s about a murder. Why does that resonate with him, particularly?
Juliette and Clara told me about rumors of Lucan flying in his jet to different cities to hunt and kill people.
Goosebumps prickle my back. That’s just a rumor though, right?
“Guilt about anything specific?” I ask.
I’m no longer sure I want to know, but I’ve opened this can of worms now. I need to look inside.
Lucan’s eyes bore into mine, as if he’s trying to decide how much to say. How much I can handle.
“Yes,” he says. “Guilt about something specific.”
Oh god, oh god, he’s a maniac. I knew it.
I gulp more whiskey before speaking.
“Do you hunt people for sport?” I ask.
The question hangs in the air like a sword, deadly and sharp.
He snickers into his tumbler. “No, Sadie. I don’t hunt people for sport.”
My shoulders release and the knot in my chest loosens. Of course he doesn’t. I’m ridiculous for thinking such a thing.
“Okay, good,” I say with a chuckle. “Sorry. And what did you learn about guilt?”
As I relax, my bag strap falls to my elbow. Maybe we can have a normal, enriching conversation like adults.
“Guilt’s a pointless emotion.” He swirls his drink around. “It achieves nothing except keeping us in the past.”
Snippets of my own past flash through my mind like a nightmare reel. Fire, running in the dark, sirens, hiding. Somewhere during that sequence, my engraved locket fell from my neck, which Lucan later found.
My guilt about that night is why I had mixed feelings about receiving the Darkbloom scholarship. An invitation to build a future for myself seemed too sweet to be true.
Death awaited me at Darkbloom though. Maybe that’s my justice.
“What if the guilt is deserved?” I ask.
“Pointless,” he repeats emphatically. “Guilt just tears holes in your spirit. Weakens you.”
“And if the deed was bad?” I hesitate. “Like really bad.”
“Same thing. Pointless.” His shoulders roll. “Learn from it. Do better next time.”
“I wish I could believe it’s that simple.”
Lucan’s eyes twinkle in his apartment’s low light. “Maybe you should borrow The Stranger.”
“Maybe I will.”
We share a long look, which somehow seems to say more than our words did.
He opened a little to me, I opened a little to him. Did I just have a cute moment with Lucan Hale, the evil Prince of Darkbloom? Wonders never cease.
“What did the wind mean in your poem?” he asks.
I sniff. “The poem you snatched from my hands and read aloud?”
“Yes, that one. I liked it, by the way.”
“I could really tell by your open hostility.”
“Come on. What does it mean?”
I fidget, feeling more shy than when he ordered me to give him head. “The wind is life. Grief. The things that come along and sweep us up.”
He nods slowly. “That’s beautiful.”
“Are you making fun of me?”
He gives a faint smile. “No, Sadie.”
“Oh.”
I think it’s confirmed. He might actually have a soul.
Then my brain blares another memory, surrounded by flashing red lights.
On my first day, when Juliette and Clara talked about Lucan’s reputation, there was that other rumor about him killing someone.
Ripping a person apart with his bare hands, to be exact.
He must be able to sense my shift, because his face subtly switches. His smile fades out and his eyes regain their laser focus, like he knows exactly which question I’m going to ask. Maybe he’s even been waiting for it since we met.
As I draw breath, he cuts in.
“Yes,” he says, his deep voice steady.
My stomach drops. “You—”
“Yes.”
“Ripped apart a person?”
“A man.”
Nausea rises in me. “With your bare hands?”
“That’s such a dramatic way to put it,” he says with a grunt, like he’s heard it a million times before.
“But accurate?”
He exhales. “I suppose.”
“You killed someone.”
“Yes, Sadie.”
Processing, I rub my temples. “Why would you tell me?”
“As you pointed out, I haven’t told you enough about myself. I want you to know who I am.”
“But why do you want me to know?”
“Because I want you. Have I not made that clear?”
My cheeks grow warm. “I guess you have.”
“You guess? Fuck, I’d better try harder.”
He goes to move closer, but I put my hands up.
“Stop,” I say. “I’m still on the ripping-apart-with-bare-hands thing.”
Lucan keeps his distance, swallowing the last of his whiskey. “What about it?”
“How are you not in prison? You were eighteen, right?”
He nods. “My father took care of it.”
“So the rumors are scarily accurate. Why did you do it though?”
He measures me with his eyes. “It was an initiation.”
“Into what?”
“I’m a member of a secret society that’s existed since the days of Benedict Darkbloom. Our lifetime members include multiple heads of state and CEOs of Fortune 500 companies.”
My blood tingles as I realize the stories are all true. Secret societies are real.
“They make you kill someone as an initiation?” I ask in hushed tones.
He shakes his head. “The task was to neutralize a threat to the company of a lifetime member. They were testing my loyalty, but also how I would handle the problem.”
“Did you pass?”
“Yes, but my actions were considered extreme. No one expected me to go so far. They thought I’d blackmail or threaten him.
And I was going to.” He rubs his hands together slowly.
“But when I went to his house, I discovered something unrelated to the mission that changed my plans. His wife was covered in fresh bruises.”
My nausea worsens. “From him?”
Lucan nods. “So I offered him what he didn’t offer her.
A fair fight. Just the two of us, no weapons.
The house was a mess afterward. Chaos. The wife called the police.
She said a madman had broken into her home and killed her husband.
I thought I did the right thing, but apparently not.
By the time I returned home, my parents had heard.
My father was on the phone, fixing everything.
But I passed the group’s initiation. No one could deny it. ”
There’s no pride or sorrow in his voice. He sounds contemplative, like he put this chapter to rest long ago. I envy his control over his thoughts and feelings.
I push out a breath. “You said your mother left when you were eighteen. Moved to Switzerland. Is this why?”
He snorts softly. “Clever girl. Yes. She said I was too much to bear, like there’s something wrong with me. My father was more businesslike. He said I clearly have what it takes to preserve the family legacy. That I’ll stop at nothing to do what needs to be done.”
I can’t fathom what it’s like to grow up in such an environment, but I try.
“Do you speak to your mother about it?” I ask. “Maybe she’s changed her mind.”
“Why would she change her mind? I haven’t changed my personality. I’ve only become more of who I am. Like you. You went through trials that forced you to learn who you are and what you stand for.”
Taken aback, I screw up my face. “How can you say that? You know very little about my life before Darkbloom. Only what I’ve told you.” I pause. “Right?”
The air between us grows heavy with something I don’t comprehend. It’s like Lucan’s potent, destabilizing presence strengthens and expands.
“Wrong,” he breathes.
My heart skips at the devilish look in his eyes.
“Wrong how?” I ask.
His every word is precise, like he doesn’t want me to miss a thing. “I was going to wait until the anniversary of the date to tell you, but since we’re sharing, I’ll tell you now.”
“What date?”
“February third.”
My brows draw together. How on earth would I know what that date means? It was a random day eight months ago.
Yet it does ring a bell somehow.
Lucan waits, watching as my anxious brain labors under this information.
February third. It wore grooves in my mind because I had been counting down to the date, out of nerves.
“That was the night I read my poem at the bar in Briarvale,” I say. “What’s that got to do with you?”
“I was there.”
My response is automatic. “You were not.”
I definitely would’ve remembered a six-foot-five, blue-eyed demon in the audience.
“I sat in the back, in the shadows.” The corner of his mouth tugs with amusement, or maybe the pure pleasure of proving me wrong.
“You wore a dark green dress with a black knit sweater, black stockings, and boots. Your hair was loose, which is my favorite style on you, and the silver polish on your nails glinted when you moved. I can recite your sonnet word for word, if you like?”
The whiskey in my stomach curdles.
“You were there,” I say, the words no longer a question. “Why?”
“I had your locket. I wanted to check you out. Turns out, I got fucking hooked on watching you. I wanted to know more. Then more. And more.”
Pushing my tumbler of whiskey onto the table, I scoot along the sofa away from him.
“You went beyond sending me a few gifts,” I say. “You really, properly stalked me.”
“In fairness to me, you’re very stalkable. I’m going to have to coach you on better cyber-safety. Fedora was going to be a big problem for you. Even from my place near the back, I saw him scrolling your social media after you left the stage.”
Fedora. The guy who heckled me during my reading. The guy who was mugged after the show. He lost several teeth in the beating, and the culprit was never identified.
“Oh god.” I stand, walking haphazardly backward until I run into his shelves. “You assaulted him in the alley?”
Lucan gets up and prowls toward me, making my pulse quicken.
“You wanted me to.” His voice is silky and dangerous, like he’s been wanting to have this conversation for a long time. “I saw it in your eyes.”
“You’re fucking deranged.”
“But am I wrong?”
He comes within arm’s reach, and a scream wells in my throat. Only the knowledge that nobody would hear me stops me from releasing it.
“Yes, you’re wrong,” I say. “I didn’t want him to lose his teeth.”
This is what I get for letting my guard down. I never should’ve come to his apartment. With all the good judgment of a first-killed girl in a horror movie, I let my curiosity win.
“I gave you what you wanted,” he says, “like you gave me what I wanted. A woman who matches me.”
“I’m nothing like you.”
But even through my terror, I know that’s false. We’re alike in ways that fill me with shame.
Does he realize I’m lying? He can’t actually know what I did to Russell, can he?
There’s no way, even for Lucan. I’ve never told a single soul.
Trembling, I inch my hand to my bag, keeping my eyes on his.
If I can stun him, maybe that’ll give me enough time to figure out how to escape this high-tech fortress.
But of course he notices.
Clicking his tongue, he pulls the bag from the crook of my arm. “I’m such a bad host for making you carry this.”
Without breaking my gaze, he slots it onto one of the shelves behind me.
“My friends know I’m here,” I say, my breathing shallow.
I try to recall the self-defense techniques Clara demonstrated for me.
Kick him in the balls. Gouge his eyes. Stamp the arch of his foot.
But Lucan’s like a bronze statue, except meaner. Can I slow him down at all?
He places his muscular arms on either side of my waist, caging me against the cold, hard stone.
“Lie to me.” His wintry, luxurious scent envelopes me, sharpened by something animalistic pouring off him. “Tell me it doesn’t thrill you just a little to know I’ve been watching you so closely. Tell me you’re content pretending your dark side doesn’t exist. Tell me you want me to stop.”
“I—”
The words catch in my throat.
As my chest rises and falls, my eyes move between his, back and forth, back and forth, as I try to make myself speak a lie.
Lucan is dangerous in more ways than one. He might really see me, including my bad side.
I need to get out of here. I need to run, and destroy my phone so he can’t follow. Probably quit my job too, change my name, leave in the dead of night on a bus to nowhere.
“Mine.” Lucan’s face drops forward, hanging over mine like a scythe. “You’re mine, mine, mine. Time to stop fighting it.”
My blood surges with revulsion, fear, defeat, and horrible arousal.
He bunches my hair in his strong fist and eases my head back, like he truly thinks I belong to him.