Chapter Twenty

CHAPTER TWENTY

Lucian

Iwas pacing like a madman when the cab finally showed up on the street outside Spirit Club. I was a charging bull when I leapt forward in my seat and told the driver who I was.

As soon as he heard the name Morelli, he put his foot on the gas.

Every second felt like a year on that journey. The tracker was in some house down on the west side. Another hovel on top of a hovel.

The tracker didn’t move a meter the whole journey.

“Come on,” I snarled at the driver. “Faster.”

He couldn’t go any faster. There were drunken assholes in the street singing and swaying across the road when we tried to pass them. So I did it. I used the Morelli title to get me what I wanted, regardless of the cost. I ordered the cab driver to run the assholes down, but he was a statue in his damn seat until I barked at him.

“Drive, you bastard. Drive even if you have to run them over.”

The cab screeched forward, and the men bailed out of the way. Good call, asshole.

“Faster!” I snapped again, and the driver nodded.

He pulled up outside the house so fast that the brakes slammed and sent me lurching forward. I didn’t care. I was already scrambling out of there. I threw some money into the front of the cab, and it pulled away at full acceleration.

It was a house party, and I went straight up to the front door of the shithole, elbowing my way past fools and storming my way toward Elaine.

Because that’s what she was.

She was my Elaine. My Elaine Constantine.

I barged my way through the final few partiers, plowing into a mess of a kitchen space, but she wasn’t there. There was a green-haired woman standing where the tracker was pointing me, and one shove of her aside told me all I needed to know.

Elaine’s clutch bag was on the sideboard amongst the beer bottles.

My blood froze in my veins.

I grabbed it and looked inside. Everything was still in there—phone, keys, and cash.

Where the hell was she?

I gripped that clutch tight and charged around that place like a maniac, looking in every single damn space and shadow on the ground floor. I grabbed people and barked out the questions, where is she? Where the fuck is she? until the whole place was on edge, looking at me. I didn’t fucking care. All I cared about was that pretty little fool.

I climbed the stairs, leaping over people fondling each other on the landing, shoving some of them aside. If she was up there…if she was up there and sucking his cock…my blood boiled at the thought.

The first bedroom I burst into had girls giggling on the bed with a wine bottle being slugged between them. The second had couples littered all over it, grunting and fucking. The third bedroom was in darkness, and I pawed for the light. No sign of my pretty fool, but Tristan was in there with his mouth around his loverboy’s dick.

He recognized me.

Tristan recognized me.

The Blue Hawk freak rocker let out a groan of a fuck you, fuck off out of here, but I was already on him, shoving him down onto the floor.

I was on Tristan in a heartbeat, my face right up to his as I held her clutch up high.

“Where the fuck is she?”

He knew who I was talking about. He swallowed hard but he shook his head. “Stay away from her. She can’t be around you.”

Turns out Tristan had bigger balls than I thought. “I’m not asking you again. Where is Elaine Constnatine?”

It was the Blue prick who answered. He answered in no time at all. “That little blonde is Elaine Constantine? Whoa, shit. She’s downstairs with Stephen Cannon.”

My teeth clenched. “If she was downstairs, I’d have found her. Where the fuck has she gone?”

“Don’t tell him,” Tristan said, but the Blue prick was staring at him with saucer eyes.

“That’s Lucian Morelli, of course I’m fucking telling him!” The guy shot his stare back to me, and he was shitting himself. He tossed me some keys from his jeans pocket. “She’s on Fifth Avenue, top floor of block twelve.”

The bass was still booming and people were still drinking when I charged back down into the kitchen. I tore my way through the drawers until I found what I needed. One hell of a knife slipped straight into my jacket, and then I pushed and shoved my way out of that hovel onto the sidewalk.

I didn’t have time to order a cab.

I didn’t have time to risk the cops showing up—even my Lucian Morelli get-out-of-shit-free card would take some time under this much commotion. Time I didn’t have.

I checked out my phone and looked up Fifth Avenue. A few blocks over. I could make it at a sprint, but it would take minutes at best. I just hoped Elaine Constantine’s pussy had minutes left to spare with a prick like that trying to get his hands on it. Even at a push it would be unlikely. Not if she was spreading her legs for him. And why wouldn’t she be?

Why wouldn’t she be spreading her legs for that asshole?

My stomach did a monster of a twist at the thought, and again I didn’t get it. I didn’t fucking get it. Why the fuck would I give a shit about Elaine Constantine spreading her legs for anyone?

The truth was there waiting.

I was desperate for her. Truly fucking desperate for her.

She sure as fuck didn’t belong to that loser, and if he’d taken her…if he’d taken what was mine…

The knife in my jacket was already crying out for his blood. Just a shame it wasn’t crying out for hers, too. Not anymore. Not until I’d taken every scrap of her soul and made it mine.

I set off at full speed, her clutch still clasped tight in my hand. I turned the corner at the bottom of the street, crashing into a couple walking up the other way, clearly ready to hit the party.

“Have you seen a girl with blonde hair? With some rocker asshole?”

They shook their heads, and the guy answered. “Nah, sorry, man. Ain’t seen anyone much this way.”

I was off without so much as a blink, scanning the street signs as I made my way closer. Fifth Avenue. Fifth fucking Avenue. I nearly got myself killed when a car came speeding the other way on Fourth Avenue, but it managed to brake just in time with a blare of the horn.

“Fucking asshole!” the driver yelled through the window.

My phone was directing me fast and clear, and my legs were carrying me with everything they had. My breaths were ragged, but not just from the sprint, it was from the rage. The challenge. And I hated to admit it. I hated to admit it with every piece of myself that I had. But it was fear.

I was scared to find Elaine Constantine taking another man’s cock.

When I turned the corner onto Fifth Avenue my blood was pounding in my ears. Block Twelve was down at the bottom end, and I was cursing all the way, still gripping that damn clutch under my arm as my damn knife bayed for his blood.

Block Twelve was a dive. The top floor had lights on in murky orange. I checked the main entrance but the keys didn’t fit the lock, and that’s when I saw it—the glimpse of a metal railing up by the top floor. The entrance doorway was up there.

I raced around to that staircase. I leaped up the rusty metal steps three at a time, and I could hear her. I could hear my Elaine inside there, and she was crying out.

Holy fuck, she was crying out. Crying out loud, crying out hard, crying out for help. My Elaine was crying out for help.

I’d never felt anything like the protective cesspit of rage inside me. It was scorching. Burning. Ready for the kill.

I didn’t need the key, just barged my way right in, and there she was, up against the wall with that asshole up against her, her dress hitched up high around her waist. He turned to face me with a sneer, but I wasn’t interested in his face, I was interested in hers. There were tears running down her beautiful cheeks, her eyes big and glassy as they saw me there…and the rage in me exploded. It exploded in liquid hate.

Maybe I could have let him live, if she’d been willing. Maybe.

But she looked high on something that wasn’t even cocaine. Had he drugged her? The fear in her eyes was unmistakable. He was forcing her. There was a reason I had a reputation that inspired obedience. I protected what was mine. And she was mine.

“What the—?” the fucker began, but he didn’t get the chance to finish.

In the quickest flash of my life I was up against him, slamming against him hard as my hand reached inside my jacket.

And in that flicker of a heartbeat the blade went into his guts.

Take it.

Once. Twice. Three times. I twisted that blade and fucked up his insides like the mess of a man he was.

His mouth opened, and he paled, and he knew it, even as he stumbled away with his hands to his stomach, he knew it. He was dying. He collapsed, and I stared down at him with a sneer of my own. The knife hung limp in my hand, blood splattered everywhere, including over my beautiful Constantine’s dress.

And that’s when she truly started crying.