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“The reverend says he doesn’t know what you’re talking about,” she told me. “He has no recollection of any appointment with you.”
I managed a light British chuckle. “That will be a shame if I’ve taken a whole flight over the Atlantic for nothing. I guess our arrangements have been lost across the months.”
We stared each other out. She was the one to buckle.
“I guess you should head in and speak to him yourself. He’s right up the hallway to the right.”
“Thank you,” I told her. “I’ll most certainly speak to him myself.”
The bitch didn’t hang around to watch me make my move. She was off in a flash as there was a clatter from the floor upstairs. I wondered just who was up there and whether he still had a whole host of pure, sweet girls being used for his fun.
I guessed I’d be finding out soon enough.
The knife was already in my hand by the time I knocked at the piece of shit’s door.
“You can enter!” he said.
Hell right. I’d be entering.
I stepped over that threshold with a smile.33ElaineHe was gone when I woke up in the middle of the night. A terrified part of me thought that he’d come to his Morelli senses somehow and walked out of my hopes and dreams. That’s what I was having – hopes and dreams that I hadn’t had since I was a little girl.
I may have joked about marriage and kids with my boyfriend, Lucian, but it wasn’t such a joke inside. I did want it all with the monster. The monster was everything I wanted and more.
I called out Lucian’s name before I switched on the bedside light and looked around me. He was definitely gone. I slipped out of bed and checked the bathroom but nothing. He wasn’t downstairs in the living room, and the kitchen was empty to match. I was reaching for a glass for some mineral water when I saw the note on the counter – scribbled, just like the one I’d left on mine. Only Lucian’s scribbled note was hilarious. It lit me up inside.
Be back soon, baby.
I could imagine the smirk on his face as he wrote it. I was getting to know his expressions so damn well. Smirk, frown, scowl—and sometimes, like a ray of sun through his dark demeanor, a smile. Only for me.
Going back to bed was an appealing option, but I couldn’t do it. My brain wouldn’t have switched off enough to let me sleep. I flinched as I dropped onto the sofa and curled my legs up tight. I was still hurting, my flesh sore from the monster’s touch. It was magical in the very best of ways. He’d made it feel as good for me as it could possibly feel.
The TV was full of crap that didn’t interest me. My mind was full of Lucian. Lucian and me, Lucian and life, Lucian and our future.
How the hell could we have a future?
We’d never be allowed to have a future. If anyone ever saw us together, they’d kill us for our betrayal.
I’d never really thought about just what was so unforgivable between the Morellis and the Constantines. I knew we’d hated each other since long before I was born, but the logic had never really been explained to me. I guess I’d asked when I was still young enough to ask such questions, but likely got the same universal response.
The Morellis are pieces of shit worthy of nothing. They are our enemy. They’ve been out to destroy us for all time.
I knew they had made every effort to undermine us in NYC life, and business, and deals. There was more to it, too. So many people believed it had been one of the Morelli pieces of shit that had killed my father. There was no doubt about it to any of my family – it must have been one of the Morellis. They’d been assholes at every opportunity – despising us as much as we despised them, enough to murder the man at the very top of the family tree – but why? I wasn’t sure I really knew why. It would have been so bad if the hate was based on the very first thing I’d ever heard of between us—one original act that caused a divide between two men and the one woman they wanted. My mother. But it was that . . . of course it was . . . both men had fallen for my mother to the point they’d destroyed everything else for the chance of having her. Two men, one prize, and no damn way of sharing it.
My father had won. Caroline Roosevelt had become Caroline Constantine, and Bryant Morelli had been unable to accept my father’s victory.
The battle must have been a rough one.
