Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Four

Lucian

Pasta came quickly. We headed to the dining table, looking surprisingly like two regular people enjoying their dinner. It was probably the closest I’d ever been to a regular person enjoying their dinner—especially with a little doll to enjoy it with.

I told myself I didn’t like it. I watched Elaine picking at her food and told myself that I was going to take pleasure in wrecking her, but it was bullshit.

My mind was all on the sick fucks who’d messed with her.

No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t shake off the rage in me. I wanted to take them down. I wanted to look Lionel Constantine in his lecherous eyes and tell him I was there for his niece and then stab him in the gut and twist the blade.

It would be an action that could only be by my own hand. I could never get Alto involved in that, not now that he was a snake to my father. There’s no way I could get the cleanup team involved either; it would never stay silent. Which only left me.

My plan and my outcome. I’d be a fool for even considering it, so why was I planning on checking out the calendar for Constantine engagements? I had no fucking idea.

Elaine made casual conversation with me as we ate. I should have told her to shut her mouth and ignored her completely, but I didn’t. She was filled with questions about my life in Bishop’s Landing and what my life was like as a boy, through to what damn TV shows I liked.

“I don’t have time for TV. Never have.”

“Is that all you do?” she asked me. “Work constantly?”

“Work and fuck women.”

“Great. Clearly that relaxes you.”

It was the sass in her smile that I found so damn impossible to raise my hackles to. I was becoming used to her impudence, seeing it for the shield it truly was. I couldn’t help but wonder what woman she would have become if it wasn’t for the pieces of shit who’d spent years using her for their sick thrills. If she’d managed to take all that and still made it to this much of a vibrant version of Elaine, then who the fuck would she have been if she’d been allowed to grow in her own sunny garden without the sick fuck gardeners?

Still, that wasn’t my consideration and should never even enter my brain space. Elaine was my enemy. My enemy. She’d always be my enemy.

I cut through her bullshit small talk with a fresh question. “Who else did that shit to you?”

She was visibly shocked by my outburst. “Why does it matter?”

My scowl was instant. “Who gives a shit about why it matters? Just open your mouth and give me an answer.”

It seems she was becoming used to my ways too. She didn’t scowl or frown at my tone. “You must know who it was, Lucian. You know who’s in the fellowship. You said so.”

“Tell me then,” I said to her. “Just fucking say it.”

She picked at the last of her pasta then put her fork down. “Baron Rawlings,” she said. “He was one of them.”

I pictured the old man, parading his status. “Who else?”

She started picking at her pasta again. “Lord Eddington.”

I knew it. Eddington was a snide piece of shit. “Keep going.”

It took her a minute, and I let her have one, chewing over her answer until she was ready to spit it out. “Colonel Hardwick,” she whispered, and I knew why it had taken her a while. Colonel Hardwick was particularly close to her family.

I knew those socialite pricks were regular attendees at social engagements throughout the year. Lord Eddington and Baron Rawlings were from across the Atlantic, but visited often. I imagined they would use Reverend Lynch’s place as a stop-off point along with their bullshit social stays.

I also knew that Colonel Hardwick lived out on a rural estate past Bishop’s Landing.

Elaine laughed one of her sassy laughs at me as I pondered.

“What are you going to do, Lucian?” she asked. “Hurt them for me?”

I should have laughed right back at her. I tried. I managed a pathetic smirk and little else. I shouldn’t kill these bastards. Especially not as retribution for a Constantine.

Fuck knows why I headed to the bathroom once I’d finished my pasta and called up the Bishop’s Landing social event scene on my phone. Fuck knows why I looked up the charity presence of them over the next few fundraising events. I checked out the attendee list.

Lord Eddington was at the next one, in just a few days.

I was still brewing on it as I stepped back into the living room and found Elaine curled up on the sofa like she was right at home. Fuck knows why I hovered without cursing her for her ease, then sat down opposite her in the battered old armchair. I didn’t have the energy to do anything else. For once in my life my legs were tired, and my brain was tired to match. I had a whole load of spinning thoughts and deadlines and sensibilities I should be focused on—not on who started fucking Elaine Constantine in the ass when she was legal enough to technically invite them to. That’s what they’d been doing, of course. Coercing her to the point it would have been consensual, and she’d believe it so.

“Are you not heading back into the city, then?” she asked me, her voice tired.

“I will be.”

She shrugged. “It’s quite a way, back and forth every day. Aren’t you at least going to take some thrill out of being here? I’ll bare my ass for you, if you like.”

I shook my head at her. “Is that how you flirt?”

She rolled her eyes at me. “You’re Lucian Morelli. Lucian Morelli doesn’t need offers. Lucian Morelli takes whatever the fuck he wants. And you want my ass again, right?”

I wanted nothing more than my bed upstairs. Fuck heading back into New York City; it would have to wait until morning. I looked at the clock and it was already far later than I’d imagined. The Elaine effect, no doubt, turning the minutes into hours with her chatter. “Get up to bed,” I told her, and gestured to the doorway. “Fuck off and take your snarky mouth with you.”

She hovered in her seat. I stared at her from across the room.

“I mean it,” I said. “Don’t hang around until I change my mind. My temper is fucking short.”

I guess she came to her senses. She was up like a shot and straight on past me, only stopping to turn around in the doorway and fix me with those pretty blue eyes. “Thanks,” she said, and walked away.

I didn’t know quite what the fuck she was thanking me for, but it didn’t matter. The way my stomach did a lurch at her smile was all I needed to know.

Elaine Constantine was no fucking good for me. I should stay the damn hell away from her and drive back into New York City where I belonged.

Fuck knows why I climbed the stairs anyway.