Page 55 of Lucian

“Go, then.”

Jordyn didn’t need to be told again. She was out of the kitchen in a flash, making her way through the large home with no idea as to where she was going. The only thing she tried to do was get as far away from the echoing sound of voices as she could, flying up a flight of stairs and taking the first turn she came to. She needed to think.

Lucian was right behind her the whole time.

Eventually, she stopped in a hallway on the second floor.

“I’m sorry about Kate,” Lucian said from behind her. “Don’t pay her any mind.”

“I don’t care about that awful woman. She can go to hell.” Then, Jordyn winced. “Your biological father, he didn’t really hit her, did he?”

“From what everyone believes because of her penchant to tell lies when she doesn’t get her way, no. There wasn’t anything visible, and being his wife, she was always treated with respect, besides the whole mistress thing. And I remember him with my mother, too. He never even raised his voice. John wasn’t a heavy handed man.”

“You remember him?”

“Sure. Even though he wanted to keep me and my mother a secret from his wife, which meant he needed to keep it from everyone else, too, he spent a lot of time with me. John signed my birth certificate, which wasn’t known to his friends and family until after he died, so he must have been at the hospital when I was born, or shortly after. That was how Antony found out about me. He knew of my mother, but had never met her, and when he went looking for her, he found the documentation of me. John taught me to read, actually, and I got most of my understanding of Italian language very young from him. The few memories I have are very good ones. I know he loved me, and that’s what matters.”

“You’re right, it is. Kate isn’t important to that at all.” Jordyn paced the hallway, her emotions threatening to spill over. “Why is she that hateful and bitter, though? What could you have done to her when you were just a little boy?”

Lucian shrugged. “Frankly, I gained seventy-five percent of my father’s estate after his murder. As his wife, she only gained twenty-five. Maybe it wasn’t fair, but that’s how John had his lawyers set things up if he had any children to care for. I was a proven child of his when he signed my birth certificate. She couldn’t fight it, but she tried. From the time I was eighteen, I’ve had full and total control over my portion of the estate and money, while she is in her late forties and still needs to live off a restricted portion given to her monthly. Otherwise, she’d squander it like she has everything else.”

“Oh, well …” Jordyn didn’t know what to say to that. Something else was bothering her terribly. “If that’s what that meant, you should have told me, Lucian.”

“What are you talking about?”

Jordyn turned on her heel, anger simmering. “Principessa? It’s like someone just hit fast forward on double speed all over again. Talk about throwing it around. You didn’t even bother to tell me, but everyone else seems to get it just fine!”

“Jesus, don’t do that,” Lucian snapped back. “Don’t let all of that bullshit bother you. It’s just practicalities, Jordyn. Semantics for the politics of the family. It’s not important.”

“You’re lying. It’s important to everyone here. Isn’t it?”

Lucian raked his fingers through his hair, sighing heavily. “Yes, but that doesn’t mean it has to be to us. Okay? That’s all I want you to understand. You and me, we get to go at whatever speed we want. Slow, fast, or rewind. I need you close to me. That’s what matters to me.”

He kept saying that.

Jordyn just didn’t know what it meant.

“What does that even mean?”

“It means whatever the hell I want it to. It means I liked waking up to you this morning, because I haven’t slept properly in two weeks. It means I like the way you kiss me, and how it doesn’t feel strange for me to do it at all. I like fucking you, because it doesn’t seem entirely like fucking. I like you sitting next to me in church. I like providing you with beautiful things. I like keeping you safe with me. That’s what it means. Does it have to be any more defined right now?”

“No. But they—”

“Don’t matter to this. They don’t. It’s that simple, sweetheart. Nothing about us is ever going to be completely normal. That’s something you need to understand today if we’re going to continue on with this. I have to play a part, too. And if I want to tell everyone you’re the first principessa chosen by a Marcello son because it’s true, then that’s exactly what I’ll do.”

Jordyn was speechless. “But … what does it even mean?”

“It means a lot of things, but mostly, it means a future,” Lucian said, his tone turning a lot quieter than it was before.

“That’s it, a future?”

“Basically. That in itself carries a lot of weight.”

Yeah, it did.

Jesus.

Why did Jordyn have to like the way that rolled off his lips so casually.