Page 78 of His Fatal Love

“What do you mean?”

Julian smiles faintly. “We had a plan. I wanted to tell you the other night, but I...I couldn’t. Anyway, I was never going to kill her. Jack spoke to her and told her we’d protect her, but that we had to make itlooklike I’d killed her.”

I stare at him with disbelief. “Protect her? You?”

“Yes.”

“Bullshit,” I say flatly. I know Julian. There’s no reason he would fuck around with my father, not when he wanted that information about his mother so bad.

“It’s really not,” he says gently.

I come up to the door of the cell. He stays where he is, in arm’s reach, though I’m not stupid enough to try and grab him. “Open this door.”

“I can’t.”

“Open the fucking door, Julian.”

“Look, I will, but not yet. Sandro said you had to stay in there until we figured out what to do with you.”

“Sandro?” I got knocked pretty fucking hard, but I start to put the pieces together now. “Ah,” I say. “So you’rehislittle bitch, huh?”

Julian’s jaw clenches and he takes a step forward. “I’m going to have to ask you to stop calling me that, Leo.”

“Or what? You’ll kill me?”

He’s about to say yes. I see it in his blank-eyed glare. But then those strange, pale eyes seem to liquify. “Seriously, Leo,” he says quietly. “I don’t like it.”

I step back from the bars. I don’t trust Julian, not for one second. But if what he says is true, then Roxy might still be alive, and my little brother won’t have his whole world turned on its head. And that’s all that matters to me right now.

“What do you want from me?” I ask, my voice low.

“We need your help.”

“Myhelp?” I scoff. “Why the hell would I help you?”

“Because if we don’t work together, your brother’s fiancéeisgoing to end up dead.”

I clench my fists. “So how are you protecting her?” I ask. “You stuck her in a tower somewhere like Rapunzel?”

“Of course not.” Julian seems legitimately surprised. “She’s here. Sandro thought it would be best.”

I stomp back to the bars. “You’re telling me you got Roxy locked up in one of these stinking boxes?” Julian’s hesitation gives me the answer, although I don’t like it. “Oh. I get it. She’s fucking swanning around up there, lady of the manor, huh?”

His apologetic look just pisses me off even more. “If you’d just calm down,” he says, “and bereasonable, I’ll let you out. We only put you in here because—well, because we feared you would act like this. But lions don’t belong in cages, do they?” He smiles, pleased by his own pun. “Also, you really need to be checked over again by the doctor, and then Sandro wants a word.”

I’m about to tell Julian where his brother can shove his words, when I pause and think it over. Ishouldbe dead. There’s no other reason Johnny Jacopo would’ve pulled his punch when he pistol-whipped me back at Roxy’s place,andnot finished the job. My father would be pissed if I died, but Julian could’ve cooked up some story to keep him happy long enough to spill whatever Dad knows about Caroline Castellani.

So they want me alive. And I guess that means I have to trust Julian when he says Roxy’s alive, too.

“Okay,” I say, and step back from the bars. “I’ll play nice.”

Julian brightens. “Fantastic!” he says, and pulls out a key. I let him unlock the door and open it, then I walk out of the cell and into the aisle, looking at the barred cells running right down the room to a reinforced door.

“What’s with the flowers?” I nod at the vase, sitting on what looks like a marble stand, set up next to my cell.

“It can be rather dreary down here,” Julian says, “and I wasn’t sure when you’d wake up. I thought they might cheer you up a little when you saw them, if I couldn’t be here when you came to.”

I reach out to touch the flowers, pretending to admire them. But as Julian smiles, I hoist the vase and throw it at his head. It’s heavy with water, but he ducks just in time, and it shatters against the wall behind him in a clatter of porcelain and water.

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