Blood & Silk

Chapter 6: The Plan

They didn’t sleep.

Lucien pulled his clothes back on with the same controlled efficiency he did everything else. Isabella sat on the edge of the examination table, still naked from the waist down, his shirt draped loosely over her shoulders. The air between them had changed. It was heavier now. Charged with something that couldn’t be taken back.

He handed her the sweatpants without looking at her body.

“Get dressed. We move in twenty minutes.”

She didn’t take them immediately. “You’re shutting down.”

“I’m thinking.”

“No. You’re putting the wall back up because you just f****d your best friend’s daughter on a metal table and you don’t know what to do with it.”

His head turned. Slow. Eyes dark. “Careful, Bella.”

“Or what? You’ll bend me over it again?”

The silence that followed was sharp enough to cut. Lucien crossed the room in three strides, braced both hands on either side of her hips, and leaned in until their faces were inches apart.

“I will do a lot worse than that if you keep testing me while men are preparing to cut your father’s other hand off.” His voice was low, almost gentle. “We do not have the luxury of whatever this is right now. Do you understand?”

She held his stare. “I understand you’re scared.”

Something flickered behind his eyes. He pushed away from the table and dragged a hand down his face.

“There’s an old shipping yard on the coordinates they sent,” he said, tone flat again. “Abandoned. Wide open sight lines. Perfect for an ambush. They want me focused on you so I’m not focused on the exits.”

“So we don’t go.”

“We go. But not the way they expect.” He opened a metal cabinet and pulled out a black duffel. Inside were weapons, earpieces, a second set of plates. “Mara has two men she trusts. They’ll take overwatch positions before dawn. I go in with you. You stay within arm’s reach at all times. If I tell you to drop, you drop. If I tell you to run, you run and you do not look back.”

Isabella slid off the table and finally pulled the sweatpants on. “And my father?”

“We extract him. Alive.”

“You sound very sure.”

“I’m sure of one thing only.” He zipped the duffel. “They don’t get to keep either of you.”

She stepped closer. The shirt hung open; she hadn’t bothered with buttons. Lucien’s gaze dropped for half a second before he forced it back up.

“What happens after?” she asked quietly. “When he’s safe. When this is over. Do you disappear again for another six months?”

His jaw tightened. “That depends on whether you still want the man who just took you like he had any right to.”

“I wanted you long before tonight.”

The admission hung in the air. Lucien’s hand rose as if to touch her face, then stopped short. He let it fall.

“Put the vest on,” he said instead. “We leave in ten.”

---

The drive was silent except for the low murmur of Lucien coordinating with Mara’s men over an encrypted channel. Isabella sat in the passenger seat, the tactical vest heavy over her borrowed clothes, watching the sky lighten from black to bruised gray.

The shipping yard appeared out of the fog like something from a nightmare—rusted containers stacked in uneven rows, broken cranes, weeds growing through cracked concrete. Lucien parked a quarter mile out and they covered the rest on foot.

He stopped her at the edge of the final row of containers.

“Earpiece in. You hear me at all times. If the channel goes dead, you run for the secondary vehicle and you do not stop until you reach Mara.”

Isabella nodded. Her mouth was dry.

Lucien’s hand came up and cupped the side of her neck, thumb brushing once over her pulse. The touch was brief. Possessive.

“Stay alive,” he said. “Everything else we can fix later.”

Then he stepped out into the open.

A man was already waiting in the center of the yard. Silver at the temples. Expensive coat. The same smile from the photograph. Two armed men flanked him. A third stood behind a metal chair where Isabella’s father sat, head bowed, one hand wrapped in bloody bandages.

Isabella’s breath left her in a sharp rush.

Lucien’s voice was calm when he spoke.

“Let him go. You get me instead.”

The silver-haired man laughed softly. “Still so noble, Lucien. But I didn’t ask for you. I asked for the girl.” His eyes found Isabella. “Come here, Miss Vale. Let’s finish what your father started fifteen years ago.”

Lucien’s hand twitched toward the gun at his side.

Isabella took one step forward.

Then the first shot rang out from the overwatch position.

Chaos erupted.