Page 84 of Captured Fantasy

“Good,” Lucien said. “And the arms?”

“All weapons are secured and will be here come November,” I said.

Lucien jerked his chin in answer. I caught the faint shifting of his weight and his gelding shot forward. I had a split second to dig my heels into my mare and follow him. The wind was cold on my face as we pounded across the open field and down the rocky hill behind it. Lucien pulled to a stop a few dozen yards from the steep drop-off overlooking the valley. In the distance, the city loomed like a gray smudge across the horizon. The sun split over it, hazy and pink and gold.

Lucien dismounted and dropped his reins. “Follow me, Barone. And leave your phone with your horse.”

I shifted to make sure my gun was strapped to my ribs beneath my jacket and did as he asked. He took his phone from his pocket and tossed it on the ground beside mine and took off striding to the cliff’s edge. I followed him, every nerve in my body on high alert.

“Cigarette,” he said, offering me the pack.

We smoked in silence. Lucien ran a hand over his hair, smoothing it back. I shifted the cigarette to my other hand and pushed my cold, cracked knuckles into my coat pocket. Fuck, the wind was icy.

“I’m going to kill the boss,” Lucien said.

A wave of shock moved through me, but I concealed it. A million thoughts hurtled through my mind and it took me a minute to organize them into coherent words.

“You’re going to kill Carlo Romano?” I said slowly.

Lucien fixed his cold eyes on me, washed out in the sunrise. “Going to fucking kill him and take his place.”

“Why?”

“Because he’s an evil cunt. Do I need more reasons?”

I drew in a lungful of smoke. “He is an evil cunt, but if you kill him, you don’t have the support you need to take over.”

“Will I not?” Lucien turned to me. “Who would you support? Me? Or the man who tortured me, who lords over us all while we do his dirty work. I might be a bastard, but I’m not above getting my hands dirty.”

I met his gaze head on and there was something burning there that sent a cold chill down my spine. Lucien was going to kill the boss, come hell or high water, and there was nothing I could do to dissuade him. He’d already made his choice. What I didn’t understand was the disgust, the burning, roiling hatred in his tone when he spoke the boss’s name.

“This isn’t just about what he did to you,” I said.

Lucien’s blinked slowly, raising the cigarette to his mouth. “He touched her, he violated her body. And I’m going to kill him for hurting her.”

There was a faint roaring in my ears.

“Who? Who did he violate?”

“Olivia.”

I wasn’t sure what insanity gripped me in that moment, but suddenly I was on the ground with Lucien pinned beneath me, my fist contacting his jaw. We struggled for a moment until Lucien flipped me off his body and scrambled, panting and bruised to his feet. In a flash, he had his pistol out and trained on me. But his finger was off the trigger—he was giving me a chance to back away.

“This is your fault,” I spat. “Fuck you. She was in your care and you let him do that to her.”

“I take responsibility,” Lucien said. “I failed her and it’ll never happen again because I’m killing Romano.”

“You weak fuck,” I breathed.

We stood there for a long moment, our panting breaths visible in the cold air and then Lucien put his gun beneath his jacket.

“I’m going to move against him this winter, I have the firepower to take him down,” he said. “If you’re loyal to me, when it’s said and done, I want you as my right hand.”

So that was it. That was why he’d taken such an interest in me and pushed me so hard over the last year. I took a long minute to reply, allowing my anger to ebb away. I needed to see my sister to speak with her and make sure she was alright, but I doubted she wanted to see me. That fact left me unable to blame Lucien. We had both failed her and it was time to fix our failure. Lucien was right that the best course of action was calculated revenge.

“Why do you want me as your right hand?”

Lucien lit another cigarette. “If I overthrow Romano, it’s going to destabilize us. I want every man in my inner circle solid. Bound to me.”

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