Chapter 20 #2
"I'm saying I can't do Position Tertia tonight," I blurt out.
"I can't do any more Positions. I can't do the altar, or the prayers, or the beautiful ritualized worship-sex you've got planned, because my entire nervous system is still keyed—pun intended—to a completely different operating system and I need to go home. "
The word cracks on the way out.
Home.
To a dungeon.
To a man who punishes me.
To rules I keep breaking, and notebooks full of my failures, and a throne where I kneel between his legs while he ignores me.
That's home now.
And I can see on Lorcan's face that he already knows what I'm about to say next.
"Lorcan, I—" I start, but my throat's doing that thing where it closes up when you're trying to say something important and your body's like actually, no, we're not equipped for emotional honesty right now.
Deep breath.
Try again.
"You helped me. Like—genuinely helped me.
Gave me space when I was unraveling, punishment when I needed it, aftercare that actually felt like care and not just...
strategy." My hands are shaking. "Last night was incredible.
You're incredible. Position Secunda is going to live rent-free in my brain forever, probably show up uninvited during every moment I'm trying to focus on literally anything else for the rest of my natural life. "
Lorcan's mouth quirks slightly at that, but his eyes stay sad.
"And the thing is—" God, why is this so hard?
"—you feel like a new best friend. Like someone I could actually talk to about books.
and mythology. and whether Declan Cross is secretly a hack who just plagiarizes better, smarter books.
You're good, Lorcan. Like, genuinely good in a way that should probably disqualify you from the mob entirely. "
"Em—"
"But I need the monster," I finish quietly.
"I choose Giovanni. I choose the chaos and the broken tumblers and the Tasmanian Devil destroying my house.
Because he doesn't make me better—he just makes me more.
More broken, more honest, more whatever the fuck I actually am under all the damage.
And I can't—I can't do the neat rectangles anymore.
You'll live in my fantasies forever," I blurt out.
"The chapel thing? The prayers? That's going in the spank bank for eternity. But—"
Lorcan doesn't argue.
Doesn't try to convince me Giovanni's worse for me, or that I'm making a mistake, or that I should give the healthy option more time.
He just looks at me with this profound sadness that makes my chest hurt.
Then he walks over and takes both my hands in his, cradling them like something precious and breakable.
"Luv," he says, and the word sounds even more devastating in Irish. "Let's sit down for a moment."
My entire nervous system goes into Red Alert.
"Why?" The word comes out sharp, panicked. "What is it? What's wrong?"
Lorcan guides me toward the couch, still holding my hands. "A stór." We sit.
He looks at me and I see it—the exact expression burned into my memory from seven years ago when the social worker sat me down in that hospital waiting room and explained that the car accident had been instantaneous, that my parents hadn't suffered.
"No." The word comes out sharp, defensive. I start shaking my head, pulling my hands back instinctively. "No, no—Lorcan, don't—"
Because I know this look. I've lived through this look. It's the look of someone who's about to tell you that the world as you knew it ten seconds ago no longer exists. It's the look that precedes words like "I'm so sorry" and "there was nothing anyone could do" and "you need to prepare yourself."
This look does not belong in Lorcan's living room.
This look does not belong on his face while my hands are still warm from his touch.
This look does not belong here, in this moment, when I just chose Giovanni—when I just claimed my monster and my chaos and my broken fucking future.
"Ya can't go home," he says quietly, his voice carrying that particular Irish softness that men only use when they're trying to cushion a blow that can't be cushioned.
Then he exhales—slow, controlled, the kind of breath someone takes before stepping off a ledge—and the sound of it makes my stomach drop before he even continues.
"Emmaleen." Not a stór. Not beloved. My actual name, spoken with the careful precision of someone handling explosives. "I just got word."
The room tilts.
"Word about what?" My voice comes out strange—too high, too thin, like it's being squeezed through a closing throat.
Lorcan's gray eyes lift to meet mine, and in them I see it—the terrible weight of knowing, the burden of truth he doesn't want to carry but can't put down.
"Giovanni… he…"
I stand up suddenly—so fast the room spins, edges blurring as blood rushes from my head.
The floor feels unstable beneath my feet, like the earth itself is rejecting my weight.
Lorcan moves with me, rising to his full height, and his hand finds my shoulder—large, warm, grounding—holding me steady when my knees threaten to buckle.
"He what?" My voice cracks on the words, fraying at the edges. "Spit it out! What the fuck is happening here!" The volume climbs with each syllable, desperation bleeding through. "He what?"
Lorcan's jaw works as he swallows whatever explanation he's trying to piece together.
"I don't even know," he says finally, and there's something raw in his voice—confusion, anger, grief all tangled together.
"I don't know what he was thinkin', girl.
I don't understand it myself." His hand tightens on my shoulder, anchoring me even as his words start to pull me under.
"Because I just got word from me Uncle Fearghus that Giovanni drove up to Luca LaRiccia's gate in Little Italy, demanding to be let in, and they—"
"They what!" The scream tears out of me before I can stop it, ripping through the careful quiet of his living room like shattered glass. My hands are shaking now—no, my whole body is shaking, trembling with the kind of terror that lives in your bones before your brain catches up. "They what!"
Lorcan's eyes close for just a second—half a breath—like he's praying for the right words or maybe just the strength to say them. When they open again, they're filled with something worse than pity.
Something that looks like mourning.
"All I know is that…" He stops. Starts again. His voice drops lower, softer, like he's trying to cushion the blow even though we both know there's no cushioning this. "They pulled him out of his car, he hit the ground, and then they dragged his body away."
The words stab me like a knife—one after another, each one deeper than the last.
Pulled him out.
Hit the ground.
Dragged his body.
My vision narrows to a pinpoint, the edges going dark and fuzzy. I can feel my pulse hammering in my throat, hear the roar of blood in my ears.
Lorcan stares at me for one long, brutal moment—his face carved from stone, his eyes holding mine like he's trying to will me to understand something he can't quite say.
Then he shakes his head, slow and deliberate, and the movement feels like a death knell.
"Ya can't go home," he says quietly, each word weighted with finality, "because we think he's… dead."