My phone slips from my hand and lands with a thump on the rug. The room closes around me. Oh God. Matteo is dead. Someone killed him. Brutally. Execution style. How did this happen? Who did it? Did Lucien? Was he pushed too far? Did I push him too far? Lucien swore he would handle Matteo legally. Did he break that promise? Did he destroy everything for me?
I can’t look away from the screen. Matteo’s face flashes in a photo taken before his arrest several years ago. I recognize the image immediately as I’m the woman with his arm around, but thankfully cut out of the broadcast. I shake my head, staring at Matteo’s arrogance. Now he is lying in a body bag.
The elevator door opens and Lucien steps into the loft. His coat is dark and damp from the weather. His expression gives nothing away. He doesn’t look at me. He walks straight past, his shoulders tense, his jaw locked.
He disappears into the bedroom without a word. I sit frozen on the sofa, hating that there had been no hello. No recognition at all. The shower turns on and I debate going to him. Did he kill Matteo? Am I in love with a man capable of murder? Have I become part of a world I swore I would never return to? What do I do now? How do I ask him? How do I breathe?
I stare at the closed bedroom door until my vision blurs.
I have never felt so alone.
TWENTY-FOUR
LUCIEN
I return to the loft.Late.
Briar is on the sofa, and she looks at me. Her eyes search my face, looking for something I can’t give her right now. I can’t talk.
I stride straight to the bathroom, ripping off my jacket and hoodie, shucking out of my pants before I even have a moment to shut the door. My movements are jerky, rushed, like if I slow down even a second my mind will catch up and drag me under.
I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror. My eyes are dead, with dark rings under them. There’s a tightness about my jaw that has not been there for many, many years, and I know the reason why.
Tonight I slipped into a person I promised myself never to be. I was never clean. I never pretended to be so. My father had ensured that when I was but a child, doing deals here and there, ridding people that dared to go against the Moretti name. But I had fought so hard to change. To do better. To become better. I lean on the counter, staring down at the sink.
I hate what I have done. But I couldn’t allow Matteo Romero to continue his threats against Briar.
My Briar.
He would’t stop. I had no doubt of that, and tonight I had taken this issue into my own hands and dealt with it. Seeing her meet with him, seeing the bastard run his thumb over her jaw, had set an unstoppable determination to kill. He dared to touch her again.
Not that she was wholly innocent. What was she even doing there? Was she playing some kind of game? Did she think she could talk sense into Matteo? I scoffed. The man was nonsensical. There was no reasoning with a madman.
The memory flashes in my mind. The alley. The sound of bone breaking under my fists. The final echo of the silenced gunshot. The way everything went quiet and loud in my mind afterward. There had been no pleasure in what I did. Only cold purpose. Only the ugly, familiar calm that comes when a threat is finally removed.
I reach over and flick the shower on, waiting for the water to be hot before stepping inside. The stream cascades over my body, through my hair, and I quickly wash the night away. Or at least I try. I feel dirty. I want to sweep away the filth of my past that has touched me a second time.
What is more, and even more troublesome, is the knowledge of how easy it had been to rid the world of Romero. How simple it was to step back into the life that I had been born into and fought to escape. It should have been harder. It should have cost me more. Instead, it felt like slipping on an old coat that still fit perfectly. That terrifies me more than the blood on my hands.
People would no doubt try to connect that I was involved. The Moretti and Romero families were never lifelong friends, and the fact that I’m dating his ex-wife would put me in a prickly position.
But I had been careful, just as I had been trained to be all those years ago. Silent movement. No witnesses. No trail that couldn’t be redirected. I rub a hand over my face. I don’t knowwhat this will mean for Briar and myself. At this point, I’m not even sure if I should tell her that I have been involved at all.
You can’t start a relationship with a lie…
I had promised her I would deal with Romero the legal way. That I had made inquiries and started that process could possibly put me in a better light with the law, throw some heat off me, since they could see that I was trying to be rid of him in the legal sense at least.
And there was no doubt that Romero had other enemies. I was but one of many.
The cops will build their theories. Rivals. Old grudges. Debts unpaid. My name will be one of many on a list, and I have spent a lifetime making sure there is never enough to make any accusation stick. But Briar is different. She won’t look at me as a detective would. She will look at me as a woman in love with a man she believes is better than her past. That is what twists in my gut.
I wasn’t better than her past. I was exactly the same.
The bathroom door opens, and Briar walks in. She is dressed in a T-shirt, an oversized one of mine. The sight of her, bare legs, wet hair from her earlier shower, soft curves outlined in cotton, makes my cock twitch. I know I need release. I need to slake my desire. I need to fuck her, until Romero is nothing but a past memory for us both.
“Is everything all right” she asks, shutting the door behind her.
She stands near the shower, watching me. Steam curls around her as her pretty blue eyes trace my face, my shoulders, as if she can see the pieces I’m barely holding together.
