Chapter Twenty-Four

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Lucian

My parents were eating when I sat myself down at the dining table. My mother gave me her patented Sarah Morelli serene smile. My father barely looked at me, placing his cutlery down neatly at the sides of his plate as he cleared his throat.

“Leave us,” he said to the butler, and old man Michael scurried away with a bow.

It was then that he met my eyes, and they were as savage as I’d ever seen, even sheened with the chill of calm I’d come to know so well. “It doesn’t seem like you even want the company.”

I returned his calm with a chill of my own as I pulled a foot up onto my knee and leaned back in my seat. “I’m back in the office tomorrow,” I said. “I had some unexpected events to attend to.”

My father wiped his fingers on his napkin, then dabbed his lips. The pause in him spoke volumes, and I looked at him afresh after years of barely registering the appearance of the man before me. Bryant Morelli was still a strong man, and I was the eldest in his footsteps. His dark features were deep enough to swallow everything around him, and his demands on those in his life were hard enough to cripple. They always had been. He’d taught me to be every part the monster I’d grown to be. And there was more. He knew the full extent of my icy coldness in a way that nobody else had ever seen.

He knew me. All of me. Even the deepest secrets. The deepest strengths and weaknesses, both entwined.

Secrets snake through the depths of every family bond, and ours was the very depths of the hiss and snare.

My mother looked unsteady as she picked at the food on her plate, caught up in our unspoken tension while struggling with her loyalty for both sides.

I was her son, but my father was her husband.

Besides, Sarah Morelli hated the Constantines almost as much as he did. Almost.

“You had some unexpected events to attend to, did you?” he repeated with a scowl. “Unexpected events such as Elaine Constantine by any chance?”

I didn’t lower my stare. “I know you’ve been speaking with Trenton.”

“Just as well. Trenton is concerned about family business and reputation. It appears that you haven’t been that smart.”

“Smart enough to double our profit margin in the past six months.”

That’s when my father got to his feet and cast his plate aside with a crash. He jabbed a finger at me across the tabletop, and his face was pure fucking spite. “With my resources. With my company. With my money. You would have been nothing without me.”

“Stop,” my mother said, but father gestured her away.

“This isn’t for you, Sarah. Leave. Now.”

She hovered, a maternal fear in her eyes as she looked at me across the table. Still, it didn’t stop her bowing to my father’s will when he cursed and pointed to the doorway a second time.

“Leave!”

I watched my mother’s exit and wished that I could somehow feel something inside me.

I wished I could feel more. I wished I could embrace a hint of love, or warmth for the woman who’d given birth to me and raised me to my place in this world. I wished I could look over at my father and his rage and feel the true belt of shame gripping me tight. But I didn’t.

I didn’t feel a thing…and Father knew it. I never had.

He walked around the table and kicked out a chair at my side. He turned it to face him and dropped himself down to straddle the seat.

“Believe me, Lucian, if violence were an option to knock some sense into you, I’d be taking it now. You’d be feeling my wrath with your skin and bones.”

I didn’t react, just kept my eyes on his until he spoke again.

“Trenton told me you’ve been asking questions about Elaine Constantine. He said that you met with her. That you’ve been fucking her.”

“You should know better than to believe someone who takes bribes.”

“Tell me now, boy. Have you fucked Elaine Constantine?”

I tipped my head to the side. “I met Elaine Constantine at Tinsley Constantine’s masked coming-of-age ball. I went there to find a wife. Something to make the board calm down.”

“A wife,” he says, his lips tight. “A wife at the Constantine compound.”

I give him a lazy smile. “As you say, I would be nothing without you.”

“I’m telling you now though, boy, you go anywhere near that Constantine again, and you’ll be dead to me. Do you understand?”

“What will you do now? Disown me? Fire me?” I snort. “Kill me?”

He smiled back, coldly, and for once inside I felt something. I felt a shiver of fear. “It’s not yourself you need to worry about. It’s that pretty little Elaine Constantine. If you go near the Constantines again, I’ll make sure she pays for your disloyalty.”

“You won’t touch her. Understand? Fuck you. And fuck Trenton Alto.”

“I can have you fired. Don’t ever doubt it. The board may play with you the way a cat plays with a mouse, but I’m the tomcat who fucks the cat every night.”

“Really, Dad?”

“You get the idea.”

“You were the one showing off a picture of Violent Delights in the goddamn boardroom.”

My father pulled his knife from across the table and offered it to me. “Swear it, then. Swear that you care more about the Morelli family than pussy. Swear to God and the Virgin Mother above.”

The Morelli oath meant less to me than ever. It was a means to an end. It was a lie.

I ran the blade down my palm, slicing deep and true. The blood dripped, running a vein of a river as I squeezed my fingers closed tight. I would do it to protect Elaine. My father was unpredictable. And violent. Would he hurt her? Would he hurt her in order to block the board from voting me in? Or would he simply hurt her because of spite, because he hated the Constantines? Because he wanted to hurt things that I cared about? “I swear to God above, on the Morelli name, I care more about Morelli Holdings than pussy.”

My father nodded at that and took the knife away. He cast a glance at my oath cut and tossed the knife on the table. “You cut too deeply with that,” he said, but I shrugged as I wrapped a napkin around the wound.

“I always cut too deeply. Greater blood makes a stronger promise.”

He stood up from his chair and went back to his side of the table. “You need to be more careful who you demonstrate that to,” he said. “If people for a second thought you were the man you are…”

I’d heard this before, so many times that I shrugged again. “I don’t make oaths very often. Not anymore. Nobody is going to see me for what I am. Not from one tiny slice on my palm.”

I was right on that. Nobody had ever seen my body for the beast it was, not even my mother. The secret was bound deep between me and the man who raised me to be his heir.

“Our empire was built on oaths,” he told me. “And so was the strength of our lives. Never forget that, and never stop investing in our family’s promises to the Lord.”

I looked at the painting of Jesus above his head at the rear of the dining hall, and I wondered just what it must be like to live in families built without the constant pursuit of godliness, tainted in a world based on lies and corruption.

Our past lineage was evil, and our present hierarchy never faltered from the same, so again, I didn’t understand why my father was so desperate to avoid conflict.

“I’ll be back at Morelli Holdings tomorrow,” I assured him and got to my feet.

I didn’t hang around to see my mother appear back in the room, just made my exit with the napkin still wrapped tight around my bleeding hand. I wished my palm was spitting in pain, just to keep my oath in my mind, but my promise was already lost to me as I left the mansion.

It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered, and I knew it. I knew it right there and then.

There was only one thing on my mind.

Elaine Constantine.

Her tracker was useless to me now.

I had only one thing left to use. Her calendar.

I called it up on my phone before I’d even left the grounds.