Heartless - Jade West Page 0,63
clear way out.
“My family can’t find out about this, Tristan,” I said. “If there’s any way in the whole damn world it’s possible, they can’t find out about this. You have to help me.”
“HOLY FUCK!” he yelled, but he didn’t say no. He couldn’t say no.
“Please! Please, Tristan! I have to find a way out of this. They can’t know Lucian Morelli saved me from Stephen by butchering him in a city dive while I watched.”
I daren’t tell him he fucked me in the ass. Even I couldn’t share that truth.
“People will know, Laine! Not unless he wipes out the whole damn party!”
He was right, but there was no way I could give up, not without trying. I’d be signing my own death warrant if I did.
But that wasn’t why I was doing it. That wasn’t why I was trying.
I wasn’t trying to find a way out of this mess to counter my own death warrant. My death warrant was already signed over to the Power brothers. I was expecting it.
I was doing it to counter Lucian Morelli’s.
Tristan was churning things over just like I was; I could see the cogs whirring in his brain.
“Blue knows,” he said after a quiet few minutes. “Blue who Lucian Morelli knocked unconscious after charging in like a maniac to find out where you were.”
“So if we shut Blue up . . . that would help, right?”
Tristan shook his head, jabbing a finger at me. “Nah, Elaine. Don’t you dare. Don’t you fucking dare. If anything happens to Blue, I swear to God, I’ll tell your family myself.”
I forced a smile, black humor in the despair.
“Seems you’re falling for him then. Who’d have thought it? Both of us losing our hearts to our lovers in the same crazy whirlwind around us.” I managed to laugh. A bitter laugh. “I wasn’t thinking about wiping him out, I was thinking of you talking to him.”
He didn’t force a smile right back, and he sure as fuck didn’t laugh.
“This isn’t the same crazy whirlwind, and Lucian fucking Morelli isn’t your fucking lover. He’s the man who wants to destroy you and your whole damn bloodline.”
I didn’t argue with him, because what would be the point? There was no reason that could possibly counter the fact that the Morellis despised the Constantines, and destroying us all meant more to them than a mountain of joy ever could.
Even so, with my ass still hurting, and my pulse still racing, I couldn’t believe Lucian Morelli wanted nothing more than to kill me.
It wasn’t my head that wouldn’t believe it . . . it was my heart.
It was my heart that believed Lucian wanted more from me than destroying every sliver of life in my body and my soul to match.
It was my heart that believed Lucian had saved me for a reason . . . more of a reason than saving my pain all for himself, which he did – he wanted my pain all for himself – but it was more than that.
It was my heart that believed that maybe, just maybe, Lucian Morelli could love me back. One day, in a whole other world, in a whole other time, maybe, just maybe, Lucian Morelli could love me back.
23
Lucian
My parents were eating when I sat myself down at the dining table. My mother gave me a smile, but my father barely looked at me, placing his cutlery down neatly at the sides of his plate as he cleared his throat.
“Leave us,” he said to the butler, and old man Michael scurried away with a bow.
It was then that he met my eyes, and they were as savage as I’d ever seen, even sheened with the chill of calm I’d come to know so well.
I returned his calm with a chill of my own as I pulled a foot up onto my knee and leaned back in my seat.
“I’m back in the office tomorrow,” I told him. “I had some unexpected events to attend to. Nothing more.”
My father wiped his fingers on his napkin, then dabbed his lips. The pause in him spoke volumes, and I looked at him afresh after years of barely registering the appearance of the man before me. Bryant Morelli was still a handsome beast, and I was the eldest in his footsteps. His dark features were deep enough to swallow everything around him, and his demands on those in his life were hard enough to cripple. They always had been. He’d taught me to be