CHAPTER 30
Lucien
She had retreated. Good. She needed space, she needed to feel the fire inside her, but I could not stop thinking about her.
Every corner of the estate seemed empty without her presence.
The offices, the halls, the terrace, they all ached with her absence.
I walked through them slowly, imagining her movements, her expressions, the way her hair fell across her shoulders, the tilt of her jaw, the fire in her eyes.
I could feel the city shifting beneath us. Belladonna’s operatives testing boundaries, rivals probing weaknesses, all beneath the calm surface I presented, however, none of it mattered, seeing as none of it compared to her.
I closed my eyes, imagining her rage, her grief, the raw edge of her shouting in my office. I had kissed her, tasted her fire, but she resisted, although, she had returned my kiss. That contradiction, that blend of fury and desire, consumed me.
Ronan moved silently beside me, ever vigilant, ever aware. “She is fragile,” he said quietly.
“Fragile?” I asked, a dark smile touching my lips. “She is fire.”
Ronan did not respond immediately.
He rarely did.
The man had spent years at my side, long enough to understand when silence served better than words.
We stood together on the terrace overlooking the dark city below. Marseille stretched endlessly into the distance, its lights flickering like stars against the night.
This city belonged to me.
Every street.
Every port.
Every hidden deal and whispered alliance, and yet, my thoughts remained fixed on one woman pacing somewhere inside this estate.
Sera Moretti.
Even her name carried weight.
Her father had ruled half the underworld before his death. His network had been vast, powerful, and carefully built over decades.
Now it belonged to me and she hated me for it.
I rested my hands against the cold stone railing, letting the night air settle around us.
“She will not forgive you,” Ronan said eventually.
His voice carried no judgment, only quiet observation.
“I do not require forgiveness.”
“That may be true,” he replied calmly. “But you want something else.”
I glanced at him.
Ronan rarely pushed conversations further than necessary. When he did, it meant he had already considered every angle.
“And what would that be?” I asked.
He studied me for a moment before answering.
“Her trust.”
A quiet laugh escaped me.
“Trust,” I repeated.
The word sounded almost absurd in this world.
Trust was a luxury few men in our position could afford, but Ronan was not wrong.
Trust would change everything.
If Sera trusted me, she would stop fighting the inevitable.
She would stop seeing me only as the man who destroyed her father and begin seeing what she could become beside me.
I turned back toward the city lights.
“And you are still obsessed with her,’” Ronan added.
Obsessed.
Perhaps that was the correct word.
Most men would have seen Sera as a threat. A liability.
The daughter of a rival family, raised in power, surrounded by secrets.
Many would have eliminated that threat quickly and cleanly, but the moment I first saw her after her father’s death, I knew she would never belong anywhere else.
“She is not fragile,” I said again quietly.
“She is wounded,” Ronan corrected.
That was true.
The loss of her father had carved something deep into her.
Grief like that changed people. It either broke them or forged them into something far more dangerous.
Sera had not been broken.
Even now, surrounded by my men and my empire, she still carried that fierce defiance in her eyes.
She challenged me, questioned me, resisted me, and I found myself wanting to see just how far that fire could burn.
Ronan shifted slightly beside me.
“You should give her time,” he said.
“I am.”
“You kissed her.”
“That was necessary.”
He raised an eyebrow.
“Necessary?”
I allowed myself a faint smile.
“She needed to understand something.”
“And what was that?”
I turned away from the city, looking back toward the dark windows of the estate.
Somewhere inside those walls she was pacing, thinking, fighting herself just as fiercely as she fought me.
“That she belongs here,” I said.
Ronan studied me carefully.
“And if she refuses?”
The question lingered between us, but the answer had never been uncertain.
“She will not.”
Because sooner or later, Sera would realize something inevitable.
No matter how much she resisted.
No matter how fiercely she hated me.
Our fates had already collided and there was no path forward that did not bind us together.