Epilogue

Epilogue

Lucian, one year later

It’s a beautiful thing, having such ultimate power over somebody so powerful. Enough evidence to destroy them if they so much as step a threatening foot onto your turf.

My father accepted my engagement to Elaine Constantine, realizing it wasn’t worth the risk or the fight. Elaine and I had enjoyed our engagement very happily in our Morelli-Constantine manor in Bishop’s Landing.

I was surprisingly nervous as the day began, waking up alone in bed with a strange rush of flutters in my stomach, still scarred after all these months from taking the bullet. Leo, Tiernan, and Carter were downstairs in the breakfast room, still looking groggy from my bachelor party as they guzzled down black coffee. Devon was telling them about his insurance empire when I joined them. All three of them let out a mocking cheer as I sat myself down at the breakfast table, giving them a smirk that matched my mood. A happy one.

“Here comes the groom,” Carter said, reaching over to punch me in the arm. “Never thought I’d see you getting hitched. Never thought it would be to a Constantine.”

“There must be something in the water,” Leo said, his voice dry. Over the past year I’d learned that he’d fallen for his own Constantine. She’d attend the wedding with him.

“Elaine is worth it,” I said, my voice sober.

Devon nodded. “My wife absolutely adores her. Has since the moment they met.”

We still had a few hours before the ceremony. The guys started on the whisky as soon as we were dressed up ready for the service. Tiernan was more gruff than the other brothers, but even he had shown up to support me. It touched me more than I thought it would.

We got ready together, a photographer there to document the occasion. Surreal as fuck.

The caterers and wedding planners had already been at work on the manor for days. It looked even more incredibly grand than I’d expected as we set off in the limo for the church, and it should. I’d invested the very best into the very best celebration life could offer.

The church only had a few guests in their seats when the four of us arrived and made our way inside. My brothers took their positions at the entrance, ushers standing proud, and I gave them a thankful nod as I left them to their duties.

It was Devon I’d chosen to be my best man, his place feeling very natural at my side as we stepped into the front pew. My brothers were there next to him, and my sisters in the pews.

“I’m weirdly fucking nervous,” I confessed to Devon, and he laughed.

“Never thought I’d see you nervous, Lucian. It’s a damn novelty.”

The nerves only heightened as the benches filled up with associates, as well as some of my old business acquaintances who’d flown in.

My family sat in the front rows of the groom’s side. My mother, looking severe with her begrudging approval of my bride.

Bryant Morelli had been cleared of the worst of it when it was revealed that Elliot had masterminded the plot to kill us. We were a bloodthirsty family, when it came down to it, but I was actually glad that my father hadn’t done it. It hadn’t been the worst betrayal.

Now the company was mine, and he was only a figurehead over the family.

Elaine’s friends were filling up her side of the aisle just as mine were filling up mine. I recognized many of them from local events she’d been attending, all of them giving me a wave as they saw me standing there.

Yes, the room was most certainly filling up.

It was almost full when I saw them. Elaine’s sisters. Vivian and Tinsley, looking spectacular in pastel gowns. My heart lurched, thumping like a fucking train, hardly daring to believe they’d shown up for the sister who’d seemingly betrayed their family name. My heart thumped even harder when I saw Harriet, her cousin, stepping in to join them. The cousin that Elaine had cried about missing when we were in London, desperate to see again.

And there was Winston Constantine, along with his new bride. The patriarch of the Constantine family, came to show his support of the union.

Still, my thumping heart had nothing on the fucking speed it thumped when Caroline Constantine, Elaine’s mother, came into view and took a seat alongside them. My eyes met hers, staring hard in disbelief. Total, utter disbelief.

I expected nothing but hatred on her face as she stared at me, but it wasn’t there. There was nothing but…grace. Grace and…thanks, and holy fuck I felt it. Jesus Christ above, she offered her imperial approval with a small nod of her head.

I’d have stepped right on over to begin dialogue with her if the harpist hadn’t started up the beautiful music for the bride’s entry. My whole body heated up in the most incredible of ways as I strained to get sight of the church entrance, because even now, after months of imagining it, I couldn’t quite believe it. I couldn’t believe my love, Elaine, was walking up the aisle.

She’d taken my breath away countless times since the very first moment I’d laid eyes on her, all the way back at Tinsley’s ball, but my breath was ripped right from my chest as I saw her there, nervous, her blonde curls swept up behind her, and her white veil positioned so perfectly underneath her tiara. White, because she was pure. Regardless of the sex. Regardless of her history. She was pure in every way that counted.

Her dress was the most intensely beautiful thing I’d ever seen on her. It framed her figure in such a way that would burn itself into my heart forever, flowing around her feet in the most divine of ways with every step.

Elaine was walking up the aisle. To me. My love was walking up the aisle.

Every step was getting closer.

Every step had my whole soul desperate, insane.

It was the guy who utterly despised me that was standing next to her with his arm in hers, all set to give her away. The best friend she’d known since she was a teenager, who I’d knocked out cold when I was hunting her down a year ago. Not exactly the best of introductions to your future wife’s bestie, but it was what it was.

As it turned out, Tristan wasn’t glaring at me when he delivered her to my side. He managed a smile, and I managed the briefest of smiles back. Her bridesmaids, Francesca, Raven and Cara were grinning bright as they took their seats, but I barely saw them. My eyes were fixed all on Elaine. She was shaking like a leaf as she joined me at the head of the aisle, her beautiful blue eyes, pools of perfect love.

“I have no words,” I whispered to her. “None that could do you justice right now.”

That’s when her innocent smile lit up her face even brighter. “Ditto,” she said.

Elaine was so focused on me that she had barely cast a glance around the guests before the service started. The ceremony started right up, every word etched into the fabric of time, vows of declaration that people had lived by and loved by, for hundreds of years before us.

I took Elaine to be my lawfully wedded wife with a lump in my throat because it meant so much to me.

She took me to be her lawfully wedded husband with a lump in her throat to match, eyes welling up because it meant so much to her.

Devon handed me the rings when they were called for and I slipped the gold band onto Elaine’s finger with surprisingly shaky fingers of my own, to which she returned the favor, and there we were. Officially declared. Husband and wife.

“You may kiss the bride,” the vicar said and how I fucking kissed the bride.

I took her face in my hands and I kissed her with all the love in my heart, except it wasn’t all the love in my heart. Not anymore. Not now there was the slightest hint of a bump under her wedding dress.

The room cheered, and the exit song sounded out, ready for us to walk back down the aisle as a couple, and that’s when Elaine stopped in her tracks, mouth dropping open as she first caught sight of the blonde row of family members, her mother positioned right on the end of a pew.

Her mother, who had tears in her eyes as she clapped for her daughter.

I coaxed Elaine forward but she struggled to look away from her family. There was a whole fresh set of tears in her own eyes as we reached the church porch and the confetti started up around us, a whole new set of cheers sounding out loud.

It was when we were in the back of the wedding limo that she turned to me with those saucer-wide eyes of hers and a billion questions dancing behind them.

“It was you, wasn’t it?” she asked me. “You invited my mother here?”

“I did more than that,” I told her, and the glee was bursting free as I finally got to tell her exactly what I’d done. I’d sent her mother a recording of the Eddington and Rawlings confession, delivering it straight into her hands through one of my very closest contacts.

I’d sent her undeniable proof that her beautiful little girl has been abused by the sick fucks she’d sent her to spend her weekends with, at the hands of her cunt of an uncle.

I’d sent her undeniable proof that every time her little girl was sobbing and trying to ask for her help and had been cast aside as nothing but a naughty little liar, she was no damn liar. Not in the slightest.

Clearly it had done its job, since she was here, to watch her daughter marry a Morelli.

Elaine cried. Hard. She cried and thanked me and held me tight, trying to gather the courage to step out to our marquee and see our guests all over again, knowing her mother would be there.

She didn’t have to step out very far before Caroline was there to meet her, crying too, giving a declaration that would begin a very long road of forgiveness.

“I’m sorry, Elaine. Please, believe me, I’m so sorry. I never knew…believe me, please, I never knew…I’d have killed that evil bastard myself. I’d have killed them all.”

From the very tone in her voice, I believed her.

She held her daughter tight.

Elaine held her right back, sobbing to match, taking a few long minutes before the two of them managed to drag themselves apart enough that I could walk my bride through the manor grounds to our wedding reception and the waiting crowd.

“Let’s do this,” I said, and she nodded with a smile.

“Yeah, let’s do this, husband. I’m ready.”

It was time to toast champagne with the hip, hip, hoorays, and give the speeches and cut the cake. We did it. We loved it. We enjoyed every fucking second of it, and then finally, eventually, after the greatest day of my life, I took my wife for her wedding night.

I loved her right through until morning, every little part of her, my wife and my lover.

I loved Mrs. Lucian Morelli-Constantine right through the night until morning, smiling with a whole new smile as I kissed her belly—knowing our little baby was in there.

*     *     *

Thank you for reading the Starcrossed Lovers trilogy!We hope you loved Lucian Morelli and Elaine Constantine’s dark and sexy story. Find out what happens next in the Midnight Dynasty world with Lucian’s brother, Leo.

The beast hides a dark secret in his past…

Leo Morelli is known as the Beast of Bishop’s Landing for his cruelty. He’ll get revenge on the Constantine family and make millions of dollars in the process. Even if it means using an old man who dreams up wild inventions.

The beauty will sacrifice everything for her family…

Haley Constantine will do anything to protect her father. Even trade her body for his life. The college student must spend thirty days with the ruthless billionaire. He’ll make her earn her freedom in degrading ways, but in the end he needs her to set him free.

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