Chapter 14 – Lance
Fourteen
The Great Escape (In Reverse)
Lance
Getting Morgan back to the penthouse without anyone seeing us was like playing the world's most fucked up game of hide and seek.
Except the stakes were my life, her sanity, and probably the structural integrity of Atticus's entire worldview.
No pressure.
Getting her of the loft required me letting her walk out on her own since that’s how she’d come in. Micah had done whatever insane thing he’d had to to get up to the balcony of the vacant unit.
So to anyone watching, Morgan was unattended.
Granted I watched from the shadows.
The moment she was two blocks away though, followed closely in the crowd of pedestrians, then shuttled her to my car.
Getting back into the penthouse was old hat now. And now that she knew I’d been coming to her, she gave me a rueful smirk, watching me disable security protocols on my phone.
The service elevator smelled like industrial cleaner and bad decisions. Morgan hadn't let go of my hand since we'd climbed into my car, and her fingers kept tightening around mine like she was afraid I might evaporate.
Smart woman. I'd been doing a pretty stellar job of that lately.
"This is insane," she whispered as we approached the penthouse level. "If Atticus finds out—"
"He won't."
Lies. He absolutely fucking will.
But I wasn't ready for that conversation yet. Wasn't ready to explain why I'd let them all think I was dead while I played vigilante in the shadows. Wasn't ready to watch the trust drain out of Morgan's eyes when she realized exactly how deep this deception went.
I just wanted five minutes. Five minutes to pretend we were normal people.
Yeah, good luck with that, asshole.
The penthouse was dark and quiet when we slipped inside.
"I can't believe you're here." Morgan turned to face me in the dim light filtering through the windows in her room. "I keep thinking I'm going to blink and you'll be gone again."
Instead of answering, I cupped her face in my hands and kissed her.
Bad idea. Terrible idea. Spectacularly stupid idea.
But Christ, she tasted like home.
Morgan melted against me immediately, her arms coming up to wind around my neck as I backed her toward the couch. She made this soft, desperate sound against my mouth that sent heat shooting straight to my cock.
But focusing was impossible when she was kissing me like she wanted to crawl inside my skin and never leave. Like she'd been starving and I was the first meal she'd seen in weeks.
"I missed you," she breathed against my lips, and the raw honesty in her voice made something crack wide open in my chest. "God, Lance, I missed you so much it felt like dying."
Jesus. I kissed her harder, deeper, trying to pour weeks of apologies and explanations and desperate fucking longing into the press of my mouth against hers.
My hands found the hem of her sweater, started to push it up, desperate to feel skin against skin—
"What the fuck is going on here?"
We broke apart like we'd been electrocuted.
Gwen stood in the doorway, her face cycling through confusion, recognition, and then pure, unadulterated rage.
Well. Fuck.
"Gwen—" Morgan started, but she held up a hand.
Gwen’s gaze, full of fire and fury, never left mine. "No." Her voice was deadly quiet, the kind of quiet that meant someone was about to get their ass handed to them. "Don't. Just... don't."
My best friend was staring at me like she’d was seeing a ghost. Which, fair enough. I had been playing one for the better part of two months.
"Hey, Gwen," I said, going for casual and landing somewhere closer to utterly fucked.
"You son of a bitch."
Gwen crossed the room in three strides, and for a second, I thought she might actually take a swing at me. Instead, she just stood there, hands clenched into fists at her sides, looking like his entire world had just been turned upside down.
Again.
"Guess what?" I said, because apparently, I was incapable of keeping my mouth shut when the situation called for tact. "I'm alive."
The silence that followed could have choked a horse.
Then Gwen exploded.
"WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU?" She lunged forward, and I stepped protectively in front of Morgan and tried to restrain her as gently as I could. "Do you have any idea what you did to her? We had a funeral, Lance! A fucking funeral! We buried an empty coffin!"
"I know—"
"You KNOW?" Her voice cracked like breaking glass. "You know what we've been through? What my sister has been through?" she gestured wildly at Morgan. "She hasn't eaten a real meal in weeks. She can't sleep. She keeps having nightmares about watching you die!"
Fuck. Each word was a fresh slice to the jugular.
"Gwen, please—" Morgan stepped around me, reaching for her, but she jerked away, storming out of the room and down the hall into the living room.
"No. Don't defend him. Not after what he's put you through." She turned that blazing fury back on me. "You've been what, hiding in the shadows watching us fall apart?"
"It wasn't like that—"
"Then what was it like?" She was shouting again. "Because from where I'm standing, it looks like you decided to play god with our lives."
Christ. The worst part was, she wasn't wrong.
"There is no apology for this," she continued, voice cold now. "Nothing you can say that will make this okay."
And she was right. There wasn't.
Before I could respond, the elevator door opened and Atticus walked in through the foyer, talking over his shoulder to someone in the hallway.
"I told Pierce we'd meet him downstairs—" He stopped mid-sentence when he saw us, his eyes going wide. The grocery bags slipped from his fingers. "Asshole?"
Here we go again.
“Price."
For a long heartbeat, nobody moved. Then Atticus was crossing the room and wrapped his arms around me, in a tight bro hug that sent fire through every one of my healing injuries.
Atticus was not a hugger.
I should have known better. Because right after hugging me, Then he stepped back, and aimed a swing at me.
Fucker was quick. But I was quicker. Still, he managed to graze my cheek.
Morgan stepped between us. “Atticus! Enough!”
He just glowered at me. “Fuck you.”
"I know. I missed you, too."
"You look like shit."
I shrugged. "So everyone keeps telling me."
With a narrow eyes glare, he did a quick assessment of me. What happened to your face? And what’s coming for us?"
"It's a long story," I said. “And we need the whole team for what comes next."
"Lance—" Morgan started.
I took her hand and kissed it. Then pulled my phone out of my back pocket, more than aware of the tense looks Gwen, Atticus and Morgan shared.
Gwen like she couldn’t believe I was here.
Atticus like he was trying to figure out just how much shit we were in.
And Morgan, well she was staring at me like I hung the moon.
"No more hiding. No more working in the shadows." I made a quick call and waited for it to connect. "Silas? Bring Pierce. I’m done pretending to be dead."
I hung up and immediately dialed again, switching to speaker phone.
"Who are you calling now?" Atticus asked.
"Micah, can you head to the penthouse and bring our guest with you?”
"Wait." Atticus grabbed the phone from me. "You knew he was alive?"
"Suspected," Micah corrected. "Morgan made a good case. No one is more surprised than me how it turned out." He paused. "I’m on my way."
I looked around the room — at Gwen, who had moved from homicidal rage to cautious optimism; at Atticus, who was alternating between relief and fury; at Morgan, who was watching me with an unreadable expression.
I ended the call and looked around the room. The silence stretched between us, heavy with everything we still needed to say.
Finally, Gwen broke it.
"So," she said, crossing her arms and fixing me with a look that meant business. "What’s the plan?"
“We’re going to take down my grandfather.”
The rest of the team took the news in varying forms of ‘what the fuck’ and ‘glad you’re not dead’, and ‘I could kill you.’
No one was angrier than Gwen, obviously.
But she was mostly holding it together. For the most part, the knights took it on the chin.
Pierce, true to form got to the business of solving problems. Even though once Micah showed up with Hector, Pierce’s hand stayed dangerously close to his holster.
Not that it would do him any good. If Hector wanted any of them dead, it would have already happened.
Morgan did threaten to shoot him again if he tried anything. I was surprised that he looked at her with pride and offered to help her with target practice so her shot would be cleaner.
“Maybe we save teaching my wife to kill me for later.”
Gavin lounged by the window, stress squeezing one of Ava’s plush toys. “So what’s dragged you from the dead? You put us all through hell for a reason. So what’s brought you back? Or rather, what fresh hell is coming for us?”
Atticus lifted his brow at his best friend, but Gavin only shrugged.
“No, he’s right. Hell in the form of my grandfather. It’s no secret that he was going after Morgan with that bomb. We think his goal was to bring me to heel.”
Morgan chewed her bottom lip. “But I thought I was untouchable once we got married. You said that was some kind of rule, right?”
Hector sat up straighter and took a sip of the single malt Micah had poured for him. He’d opted for no pain meds for the bullet Micah had dug out of his arm. “That’s my fault. When I reminded brother-dearest of the rule, I didn’t have all the information at the time.”
Atticus sat forward. “Do enlighten us. After all, we have all day.”
"When I told Lance, I didn’t know that our grandfather had our mother killed," Hector said.
That stopped Atticus cold. “Fucking hell.”
Hector pulled out a flash drive and handed it to Gwen. “Everything you need to verify what I’ve said is there.”
Atticus snatched the flash drive and handed it to Pierce who had it up on the projector monitor in seconds. I knew what was on it. But it didn’t soften the blow any seeing it magnified on the wall.
Gwen’s voice was gentle but pensive. “What are we looking at?”
"There is an associate of our Grandfather’s called Francois Pernaut.
He is doing time for the murder of our mother in Marseille.
But he is dying. Cancer, stage four. Decided he wanted to clear his conscience.
" I looked between my brother and Morgan.
"He was paid to take the fall, but Grandad wanted her dead because she was gathering evidence against him. "
"This is..." Gwen’s voice trailed off as she kept reading, her expression shifting from skepticism to horror to cold rage. "God. Lance, this is—"
"Huge, I know." I ran a hand through my hair. "I've been working with Hector, trying to build a case that'll stick.”
"How long have you been working on this?" Gwen asked.
"Since I came out of my coma, which was a little over a month ago.”
“You were badly hurt,” Gwen said softly.
Lanced nodded. “I was only a few feet from the explosion. Hector pulled me out, patched me up, and we got to work. I reached Silas a few days ago. He’s less than pleased I didn’t tell him earlier."
Gwen frowned. "I still don’t understand how you survived. There was a body.”
Hector gave her a sheepish smile. “To be fair, I was on my way to save Morgan that day. So I had a body that would match her height and weight. Imagine my surprise when it was my brother I pulled from the rubble. If he didn’t know what that click of the engine meant, it would have been over."
"The explosion was real. Hector had maybe thirty seconds to get me out before the whole place went up."
"Even after you woke from the coma, you let us think you died."
The accusation hung between us like a blade.
" Grandfather has eyes everywhere. If anyone had known I was alive—"
"He would have come for me," Morgan finished quietly.
"Exactly. And I meant what I said. We are going to take him down before he hurts anyone I care about."
Micah scrubbed a hand down his face. “Right, we hear you. But how exactly are we going to do this?”
I leveled a gaze on everyone in the room. “With something called the Monserrat Files.”