After I Got Out, He Begged Me to Keep Him

Chapter 4

I needed to survive. I needed to keep Lucian's fragile body from giving out, and I needed money for the stomach medication he could not afford to miss. So I gritted my teeth and took a job at an upscale bar called the Gilded Room.

I worked as a bottle-service promoter.

To put it bluntly, I was a bottle-service girl.

I survived on the tips customers chose to throw at me.

On my first day, the floor manager, Rita Walsh, called me aside.

She pinched my chin and turned my face from one side to another, as if examining a product.

"You're pretty enough, but those eyes are too sharp. You look like you want to eat someone alive. Remember this. Here, the customer is always right. If they tell you to smile, you smile. If they tell you to drink, you drink. Don't bring that spoiled heiress attitude here, or you'll pay for it."

I clenched my fists until my nails dug deep into my palms.

For Lucian, I endured it.

"Evie, you are home so late tonight."

At three in the morning, I dragged my heavy legs back to the basement room and pushed open its creaking metal door.

Lucian was still wearing that thin shirt, sitting under the dim light and waiting for me.

On the table sat a steaming bowl of spaghetti with a golden fried egg on top.

The moment he saw me, he brightened like an overgrown puppy seeing its owner come home. He hurried over and skillfully took the coat I had removed, the one reeking of cheap cigarettes and alcohol.

But when he smelled the mixture of tobacco, liquor, and cheap perfume on me, his movements clearly paused.

His beautiful brows drew together almost imperceptibly.

"How many bottles did you sell today?" he asked with his head lowered. There was no emotion in his voice.

"Ten bottles of Ace of Spades Champagne." I coldly shook off his hand and sat down at the table. "Enough for your medicine next month, Blackwell heir."

My tone was full of sarcasm.

I hated him.

I hated this obedient, patient, gentle version of him.

It made everything I had done a year ago, and the year I had spent in prison, feel like one cruel, ridiculous joke.

What I wanted was a Lucian Blackwell who would resist, struggle, and be forced into a corner by me.

Not this... this useless man clinging to me like a parasite.

Lucian turned around. The dim light fell across his face, and those beautiful, charming eyes were somehow bright with tears.

As if he had been terribly wronged, he slowly walked toward me one step at a time.

Then he crouched down with a soft thud and looked up at me.

"Evie, did you... did you fall for those rich men at the bar?"

His fingers lightly, tentatively tugged at the corner of my clothes. Even his voice trembled.

"I am useless now. I can't give you the life you used to have. If you are tired of me..."

"Shut up!"

The look on his face instantly set something dark and violent burning in my chest.

I grabbed him by the hair and forced him to raise his ridiculously handsome face.

"Lucian, stop acting pitiful. Do you think I want to go to a place like that? Isn't all of this just to support a man like you, who lives off me?"

I suddenly lowered my head and bit hard into his collarbone.

I showed no mercy. My teeth broke skin, and the thick taste of blood spread through my mouth.

I wanted to hear him scream. I wanted to see him struggle. I wanted to tear apart that false, weak mask of his.

But he didn't.

He only drew in a sharp breath, his body trembling slightly from pain.

Then he reached out and gently stroked the back of my head, as if trying to soothe me.

"Evie... that was such a good bite."

He closed his eyes in enjoyment. His voice was husky from the pain in a strange, seductive way.

"A mark from Evie looks so beautiful. Now those men at the bar will know I am yours."

I suddenly let go and stared at the blood-soaked bite mark on his collarbone. It was so deep I could almost see the bone. Pain lashed through my heart.

'Madman.'

He was more of a madman than I was.

His soft expression, his endless obedience, and the pleading in his eyes wrapped around me like a suffocating net, gnawing away at my sanity and my need for control.

I realized I was becoming less and less able to hurt him.

When I saw him bleed, a strange, sharp ache tightened in my chest.