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“You don’t need to,” Lucas replies, waving her off as he comes to sit on the end of my hospital bed. “I don’t need permission to come see my wife, do I?”
The orderly clears her throat and smiles. “Of course not.”
“And how are we doing?” Lucas asks, his eyes on me, and they’ve got that predatory gleam in them that I’ve come to know all too well.
“‘We’?” I ask, unable to keep the snarl out of my voice. “Last I checked, you’re not the one with a hole in your chest.”
“Ah,” Lucas says indulgently, patting my leg. “You’re out of sorts. I’m not surprised. I would be, too, in your shoes. Being stuck here all this time... It’s a shame things had to go the way they did, Vivian, but a breakdown like the one Theo had is unprecedented.” His eyes drift up to mine, a faint smirk on his lips. He’s baiting me, I realize, trying to goad me into a rage just to prove that he’s got the upper hand. “I guess it just goes to show you can’t plan for everything.”
“Guess not,” I say through gritted teeth. “Where is he, Lucas?”
“Who? My bastard of a brother?” My husband scoffs. “He’s taken care of. I told you that.”
“How?” I demand. “When?”
“Come on, darling,” Lucas says, his tone patronizing. “Why waste your energy on him? He’s out of the way. We can talk about the future now.”
Awfully rich saying that to me now, you son of a bitch, I think.
Six weeks and three days. That’s how long it’s been since my husband tried to shoot the man I love. In some ways, maybe I should have seen it coming; Lucas and I never had anything more than a marriage of convenience, arranged by our families to create the biggest mafia alliance London has ever seen. The red flags were there from the moment he sent Theo to keep an eye on me when he left on business the night of our wedding. They kept coming with every threatening phone call, every thinly-veiled attempt to control me—from when he tried to keep me from taking my dream job at the prestigious Sterling Gallery to when he forcibly kissed me when he finally got back. Through it all, Theo was there, confident and smoldering, and the sexual tension that had been building since our first encounter two years ago only continued to boil.
Maybe everything that came next was inevitable. Maybe it was inevitable that when Theo, the man behind the Emmerico dynasty, was about to be married off to my sister, he would come clean about our relationship and use his own leverage to break free of the machinations of his father, Victor. Maybe it was just a matter of time before Lucas found a way to manipulate the situation and make everyone believe Theo had gone mad, giving himself the perfect excuse to take out his rival once and for all.
Unless—
But I push the thought away as I come back to the present. It doesn’t matter what Lucas says he did. Theo would never try to destroy our families… right?
“I know this must be difficult for you,” Lucas says, putting a hand on mine. My entire body tenses up with revulsion, and I resist the urge to snatch my arm away. He gives a condescending chuckle. “God knows, it’s been difficult for me too. My own brother…” He sighs, shaking his head like a disappointed parent. “But Theo was always unstable, Vivian. You have to understand that.”
I level him with a furious look. “I bet you can relate, huh?”
Just like that, the mask of friendliness vanishes from his face, and his eyes go cold and dark. “I’ve only ever done what’s best for my family, Vivian,” Lucas says, his grip on my hand tightening. “That’s probably hard for you to comprehend, but one day you’ll understand. I’ll make sure of it.” His hold grows even tighter, so hard that it hurts now. I yank my hand back, but he hangs onto it, staring at me with all the aggression I know is ready to boil over. “You’ll understand,” he repeats. “Then everything will go back to the way it’s supposed to be.”
“Mrs. Emmerico?” the orderly asks, concerned, as she watches my heart rate reading increase. “Is everything all right?”
“Just fantastic,” I mutter.
Lucas lets go of my hand and stands abruptly up. “I’ll let you get back to it,” he says. “The quicker you’re ready to be sent home, the better.”
“It won’t be long,” the orderly says as she approaches to help me up. “A couple days or more before you’re ready to be discharged.”
A chill goes through me that has nothing to do with the cool hospital air. “That soon?” I croak. My mouth has gone dry. I can feel Lucas’s scrutinizing eyes on me. “I mean, my chest isn’t healed yet. I’m still in pain. I–”
“We’ll have you in occupational therapy for a while after that,” the orderly says, “but we wouldn’t want to keep you here any longer than necessary. You want to get back to your life, I’m sure.”
I’d rather stick needles in my eyes, I want to reply. The only thing worse than languishing in this hospital, not knowing what’s happened to Theo or whether I’ll even see him again, would be going back home with Lucas and letting him make me the wife he always wanted me to be. The thought makes my blood run cold, and it takes everything I have to resist begging the orderly not to send me back to him.
“Of course she does,” Lucas responds, before I can even open my mouth. He puts a hand on my shoulder and gives it a firm squeeze. “We have a married life to settle into, don’t we, Vivian?”
I press my lips together but say nothing as I return to my bed, my injured chest protesting as if in response. After a tense moment, my so-called husband retreats to the door and gives me a smug smile. “I’ll see you soon, sweetheart.” The urge to press him further on Theo is strong, but the urge to make him understand just how much I hate him for what he did is stronger. I keep my mouth shut, staring him down as he heads out the door.
“Awfully kind of him to come all this way to check on you,” the orderly remarks as she watches him go. She hands me the glass of water on the nightstand and gives me a well-meaning smile. “You’re a lucky girl, Mrs. Emmerico.”
I can only manage a thin smile in return; my stomach has already turned to ice. “‘Lucky’ isn’t the word I would use.”
ChapterSeventeen
My parents always warned me against making connections outside the family business—something about avoiding liabilities our enemies can use—and for the most part, I’ve tried to stick to that. But Callie, my best friend since grade school, is the exception, and right now, she’s the only thing keeping me sane.
