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I was still shaking my head.
“Baron Rawlings is a sick fuck.”
“Watch your mouth!” she hissed. “Baron Rawlings is a fine man, from a fine family lineage.”
I did watch my mouth. It shut tight. Just as I always had done.
I was already walking away from her as she cursed under her breath.
“I mean it, Elaine,” she said. “Accept Christopher’s proposal or you’re done for. I’m not digging you out of the shit ever again.”
I didn’t want her to. Not anymore.
The sails of hope in me died their death for the last time. Finally. I was lost to everything. Even myself.
I’d never marry Christopher Rawlings. Never.
Power brothers, or Lucian Morelli, or Reverend fucking Lynch, it didn’t matter anymore whose hands were the filth that finished me. I wanted out.
My legs were still tingling from the cuts, and my cheek was tingling from the cold hard slap of my mother. My ass was still hurting from Lucian’s dick, and my heart was shrinking from years of disgrace and fear and self-hate, and I was ready.
I could never be with Lucian. I should never want to be. I could never dig myself out of the life I’d created, amongst the people who’d created me.
I let out a sigh as I took the final staircase back down to the garden party, leaving my mother upstairs with folded arms, cursing my name.
I had the answer.
This time, for myself, I had the answer.
If the Power brothers, or Lucian Morelli, or Reverend Lynch weren’t coming for me pretty soon, I’d be taking myself and saving them the trouble.
With the first shred of self-respect I’d allowed myself in years, I smiled. Fuck the Power brothers, and fuck the Morellis, and fuck the whole host of people aching to be a part of my demise.
My final breath belonged to one person only.
Me.
My end would be on my own terms, and soon.
Really damn soon.25LucianIt was an alien feeling to me. Failure.
I’d succeeded at every task and every mission that had been thrown at me in my life. But not this one. Not writing off Elaine Constantine as history.
I should’ve left her to the Power brothers and focused on Morelli Holdings and keeping my position in check as head of the Morelli empire. I should’ve heeded the oath carved into my palm and knuckled myself down to my roles, both criminal and corporate.
I didn’t.
I couldn’t.
I didn’t even bother heading back to city life, just headed over to the Constantine compound and stayed at the safest distance I could manage with a chauffeur.
Yet again, I was a fool risking it all for a bitch I should despise. I was a beast craving a filthy little goddess and her innocent soul.
Trenton tried to reach me on my cell, but I avoided the sonofabitch’s calls. I wanted nothing to do with him.
I tried to reason with myself. There should be nothing inside me that wouldn’t happily write her off as done. The Power brothers would take her, and that should fill me with joy. Conflict between the Powers and Constantines would only distract and weaken them both, leaving my own family line free to prosper and build. It should bring a smile to my face, cunning and sadistic.
It didn’t.
Morelli Holdings and keeping my position intact should be the only thing that mattered to me.
It wasn’t.
Seamus and Duncan would be waiting on the sidelines, and I knew it. I knew they would be waiting for any excuse to step in and attempt to infringe on my power and dominance in the Morelli kingdom. Again, I should’ve been determined to cast them aside and slam their efforts down as nothing.
I wasn’t. I was far too determined in pursuing Elaine and her beauty and her fears.
Elaine’s chauffeur left the Constantine compound early on Sunday evening. Just the smallest glimpse of her bouncing blonde hair as she slipped into the limo made my dick hard. I followed her back into the city, bailing out of my limo a block away from her apartment to make my way closer on foot.
I stood next to the tower and stared up at her suite windows on the top floor, and I wondered what she was doing up there, and how chewed up inside she was over my butchering of the London prick.
I blamed her, of course. I blamed Elaine. I blamed her for every stupid step she’d taken into her own chaos, and for dragging me along with her. I pictured her wide eyes, and her nervous shivers, and the abject terror in her stare whenever I looked at her.
I wanted more.
My cell was pinging, but I didn’t care enough to look at the screen. My gaze was fixed up high, watching the lights turning on in the top floor windows as the evening turned to dusk. I didn’t move. I didn’t have anywhere I wanted to go.
