Page 14 of Deception

“Bring her back,” he tells Emin, nodding down at Lucy before turning to me and stepping closer. I’m taller and broader, but he holds my stare like it could be enough to make me submit to him. “This time, finish the job you start, or I’ll finish it for you. We don’t do weakness either,son. Ponimat’?”

“Sure.” I understand him, but this isn’t his game anymore. We both know that he’s the boss in title and age, not much else.

Taking Vanya with him, he walks out of the room, allowing me to focus back on Emin.

“The girl needs to go to the hospital.”

“No.”

“How do you want me to save her?”

“You’re the doctor, aren’t you?”

With a shake of his head, he curses. Dialling his son, he gives Niko a list of what he needs him to bring to the house. In the muted light, the girl looks cold. Frozen, even. Draping a blanket over her, I can’t stop my grimace at her pallor.

“Niko is on his way,” he tells me as he goes through his bag and goes about treating her with the bare essentials he has with him.

All I do is watch every move he makes. I take in the way he touches her. Meanwhile, I wait for her to come back to life. I wait for the fight that she’ll come back with because if there’s one certainty between us, it’s that mercy isn’t a weakness either of us knows.

6

LUCY

“May luck always be on your side, child.” Grandma smiled sadly as she stroked the circumference of the small coin with the tip of her finger, pressing it harder to my chest. “God knows you’ll need it.”

The sad smile faded slowly when her eyes met mine. The light in them dissipated the longer she held her hand to my heart, and as though her touch held some special power over me, it raced. Every etched line on her face darkened as she puckered her lips in thought. The discord of voices filtered in from the garden party out on the lawn as she continued in deep contemplation.

“You hear me, my girl? Never forget who you are. What you are.”

“I won’t.” The retort left my lips in an attempt to pacify her and be done with the conversation. That wasn’t what I was expecting for my twentieth birthday, especially since we were also celebrating my early graduation. Political Science wasn’t my first choice for a degree. It was a whim to make my father look at me the way he looked at my sister.

He never did. Laura was always the apple of his eye. A meek little darling that knew the perfect time to smile and nod. Everyone adored her. Everything was about fucking Laura until he needed me. Turns out that pretty blue-eyed blondes are a dime a dozen, but freckled redheads are more of a delicacy. Enough that he finally looked at me. The prime minister finally had a reason to look at me and pause.

He needed me. The centuries-old society that held crown and politics together. The brotherhood that controlled the distribution of power made me something worth looking at.

“A role doesn’t define your destiny,” Grandma murmured, something between disgust and anger twisting her normally stoic features.

“Grandma…”

“Don’t interrupt.” She silenced me with a finger to my lips, looking around the room like the conversation was forbidden. “You do what you have to, but you never let a man determine your fate.”

“Mother—”

“Hush, Sarah!” she snapped at my mother, instilling silence between us again. “She has to know that her duty isn’t to a man or a cause…whatever it is they’re calling it these days.” Focusing back on me, she took a moment to breathe in a steadying breath before she told me, “It’s to yourself. Remember that because this world is too fickle for honest love. Always pick power. Always pick what will strengthen you. Do you understand me, child?”

“Yes.” The whispered reply caught at the back of my throat, making me choke on my lie because I did love.

As though the world were taunting me, the sun twirled its rays behind him. The cause of my heartache. The one person who I felt like I might actually die if he never loved me—Frederick fucking Emsworth and his glorious scowl.

His eyes found mine, and my already racing heart picked up a notch or two, winding me in such a way that the world faded to nothing but an uneven drum pounding through my veins and a heat that made me want to smile despite the sadness it constricted my chest with.

How can you love someone so much when you know they’ll never love you in return?

“Lucy?” Grandma stepped directly in front of me, blocking my view. “Child.”

“Yes!” I snapped before adding a little quieter, “I understand. Alright? I know that you don’t want me to…to…”Love him.

“No, you don’t.”

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