Chapter One

Chapter One

Elaine

For all the weirdness in my life, nothing felt weirder than waking up in bed next to the man I’d grown up believing to be my worst enemy. Weirder still was being madly in love with him. The world was upside down. I was consumed by the devotion I felt for Lucian Morelli.

It felt even more bizarre for the fact there was a body buried in the backyard…and I felt happy about that. Relieved about that. Loving life with a passion I thought I’d never feel.

The Morelli monster had killed the monster who’d abused me.

He killed Reverend Lynch. For me.

It was early morning. The light was barely showing outside. I snuggled closer to Lucian and took a breath, enjoying the steadiness of his.

He was a deep sleeper. Beautiful.

I don’t know how long I lay there at his side before he moved and turned toward me. It felt like hours of perfect bliss, but in reality it was barely more than minutes. The light was shining brighter outside, but not by much. The day was still only just beginning.

Lucian’s arms were around me before he woke, holding me with the kind of strength that made my heart sing. He was possessive, even in a dream state.

His eyes focused on mine just as soon as he opened them.

Neither of us moved. Our faces were barely inches apart, breaths matching.

His heat was divine.

It was his cell phone that broke the spell. He fumbled a strong hand to the nightstand and looked at the screen. “It’s my cousin. Elliot Morelli.”

The word was a slap, even as I sat there, even as he took the call.

I thought of him as Lucian. I thought of him as a monster. I didn’t mind that he was a Morelli, not anymore, but the world would mind. The sound of the other person on the phone was tinny and indistinct. I couldn’t make it out, but I could feel the way Lucian tensed. He pushed up to sit down, revealing a strong, muscled back and the barest hint of his ass. He was unselfconscious, which made sense, because he was perfect. Sculpted by Michelangelo. I couldn’t enjoy the view, because tension spread like a virus.

He gave a couple terse responses, but I still didn’t know what was happening.

I only knew that it was bad.

He hung up with a muttered curse word.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, almost afraid to hear the answer. But he’d heard it. He’d heard it with a stoic courage that I wanted to match.

“Someone put out a hit.”

A hit. It took me a long second to understand what he meant. Not a hit of cocaine. Not a hit like a punch to the face. He meant a hit like murder. “On me?”

“On both of us.”

I gasped. “Why?”

“You know why. It was okay when we were fucking. But now that we care about each other, they’re worried. And they want it to stop.”

I sat up with him, struggling to make sense of things. A few minutes ago I’d been luxuriating in a love-drenched haze. Now my heart beats a million miles a second. I knew we were forbidden, of course. Star-crossed lovers, our families at war. But I thought that meant fights over the dinner table. I thought that meant being ostracized or cut off. I thought that meant angry actions taken through business leverage. I didn’t know it meant assassination. “Who?” I manage.

“I don’t know, and I’m not sure it even matters. My father, probably. Though it could be your mother using her resident fixer Ronan Byrne. And that’s to say nothing of the Power Brothers.”

He was right. It wouldn’t make any difference who’d given the order when we were dead. Nothing could stop the truth. We were in danger with every passing second.

Out there in the big savage world beyond Bishop’s Landing, and the diamond of a house we shared, our families were part of one hell of a war.

Constantines vs Morellis, just like always.

Only now the Power Brothers were up against the Constantines too.

Blamed for my disappearance and kidnapping.

Yeah, it would be getting seriously damn bad out there, and if anyone should find out that it wasn’t the Power Brothers who had taken me from my NYC apartment…that it was Lucian Morelli I was with… “It can’t be my mother. She doesn’t know it’s you.”

“Then it’s only a matter of time until she wants my blood, too. They’ll find out it was me, eventually. Maybe all of them will put out hits on us. They’ll kill us again and again until there’s nothing left. No children to betray the family pride.”

My thoughts were in chaos.

I had nothing to say, so I didn’t say a word, I just kissed him.

That was the only answer I had to give.

I kissed the beautiful monster, and he kissed me back. Hard. Really damn hard. Love and lust are a heady combination, an ocean more welcome than thoughts of our doom.

His hands pinned mine above my head and he ravaged me, flesh to flesh. My legs parted and wrapped around his waist and his movements were raw. Fierce.

I was still sore from where he’d taken me the night before. He’d played me like an instrument into the early hours of the morning, teasing, tempting, hurting. Loving me.

I was more than ready for him when his cock pushed inside me on a fresh new day. My moans were as raw as his thrusts, my hips pushing back up to meet his.

We were still in the rhythm when his cell rang again. He ignored it. It sounded out again. He ignored it, but I felt him flinch. I knew he was hearing the danger as loud as I was.

He hit the spot just right inside me when it sounded out again and I was coming for him, just as they were out there coming for us. I was squirming under him while he slammed, slammed, slammed, but it was more than the want. It was the fear that had my pulse racing along with my desperation for the man I loved.

He came at the height of my crescendo, breaths ragged when he let his weight crush down onto mine. His cell sounded out again and we were both feeling it. Both scared.

It terrified me even more to sense Lucian’s fear than it ever would to feel my own.

“Are you going to get that call?” I asked him.

“I’m going to have to very soon.” He rolled off me with a sigh and took my hand. “That was a lovely distraction but we really are fucked, you know. Maybe your family and the Power Brothers will wipe each other out and we won’t have to worry.”

“Maybe,” I said, but my voice was weak.

His eyes spoke more than words. Heavy. “We both know that’s not going to happen,” he told me. “We’re in serious fucking danger.”

The thought stabbed me in the stomach.

The idea of the carnage happening in the world outside was a hard one to take. Families at war, over me, over us. People thinking they were lashing out to rescue me from kidnapping or death—if they didn’t believe I was dead and gone already.

The warfare outside was because of me.

I let out a sigh. “Maybe they won’t actually find out it was you. Maybe we can stay holed up here forever and nobody will ever think to look in Bishop’s Landing. Maybe this can be the Lucian and Elaine paradise, immune from the world.”

“I love your stunning optimism. I wish it had a scrap of a chance of being true.”

The Morelli god got out of bed and slipped on some sweatpants as I watched him. I’d never seen him so casual and it suited him. His body really was a masterpiece, sculpted to perfection. His pants sat down low on his hips, the V of him proud.

There was no protest from him today as I dipped straight into his closet and pulled out one of his shirts. I slipped it on over my head as he watched me right back.

“You really are a beautiful creature,” he said, and it made me glow.

I could have flicked on the TV on our way through to the kitchen. But I couldn’t face the barrage of news about my abduction. I couldn’t face seeing my sisters crying, begging people to contact the authorities with any news of my disappearance. I didn’t want to see the speculation, and the stories, and the hotlines for reporting information. I had too many feelings swirled together—guilt, fear, and irrepressible love.

Lucian had his phone with him but he wasn’t looking at it. That’s when I got a sense of it again—that simmering tension under his skin, knowing even better than I did just how the world would be coming for us.

We headed right through to the kitchen for coffee, neither of us acknowledging the calls he was trying his best to ignore.

I shot a glance out of the window, and my mind was right back on the body buried out there under the flower beds.

“What you did to Reverend Lynch, Lucian…I don’t even know how to say thanks for that. Is it even right that I’m happy he’s dead? Does that make me a bad person?”

“Of course you’re happy he’s dead,” he told me, deadpan. “If I could have prolonged his suffering any more, I’d have done it. As it is, the ground is soaked in his blood.”

I knew I was blushing. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” he said, and he meant it. I could see it in his eyes.

I chose to face up to the obvious. “How long do you think we’ll be able to stay here?” I asked him, and he shrugged.

“Days, tops. Questions will start needing answers. Bullets will start flying. Every scrap of the war will lead them closer to the core.”

Even the thought of it had my stomach twisting. “Then we run?”

“You would really do that?” he asked. “You would run away from everything you’ve ever known?”

My nod was frantic. “I’d run right now. Together.”

He was quiet, pondering. Staring out through the window as I stared at him. “I haven’t a damn clue where we would go. Our families have reach in every place we could run to. They’d be after us, chasing us down every single day for the rest of our lives.”

I couldn’t hold back my flood of emotion. “And every single day would be worth it.”

He leaned against the counter. “You might not be saying that when we’re running around the globe like a couple of escaped convicts, living from a suitcase.”

“What’s the alternative?” I asked. “Waiting here until they find out you were the one who took me and hunt us down? We could always try the double suicide option.”

“The alternative is that you head back into the city,” he said. “You tell them the Power Brothers did this, or some random criminal on the street, or whatever the hell you want to tell them, and go back home. Regardless of how pissed your mother is, she won’t let you stay on the streets. She won’t let you die. You’d be back home safely.”

My reply was instant. Strong and fierce. “This is home. With you.”

The stare between us was intense. My heart thumped, hard. I meant it.

This was home. He was home.

His thumb brushed my cheek as he stepped up close, and my body was alive with the scent of him, the touch of him, the heat of him. “I’m glad to hear it,” he said. “Just remember that I gave you the option once you have a gun barrel in your face, saying your holy goodbyes.”

“That wouldn’t matter,” I whispered. “Saying my holy goodbyes, I’d still be happy that I’d spent the last of them with you. With you inside me. Loving me.”

That’s when the beautiful monster surprised me more than ever. “It’s not just your body I want to be inside. I want to be inside your mind, your hopes, your fears. Your quirks and your laughter. Your whole fucking soul.”

It slammed me, right in my heart. I felt like a little girl again, praying that I’d be good enough for someone to love me one day.

We were kissing when his cell started up again.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” he cursed, finally pulling away far enough to take hold of the phone. “It’s the devil himself. Bryant Morelli. Well, he was always a brazen son of a bitch.”