Chapter 3: The Second House
1062 Words
They left the loft in silence.
Lucien drove with one hand on the wheel, the other resting near the gun on the center console. Isabella sat in the passenger seat wearing his shirt and a pair of his black sweatpants that she had rolled at the waist. The fabric still smelled like him—clean soap and something darker, like smoke and winter air.
“You’re quiet,” he said after twenty minutes of empty highway.
“I’m calculating how many people I need to fire when this is over.”
A low sound left his throat. Almost a laugh. “Still thinking like a CEO.”
“I am a CEO.” She turned her head toward the window. “And my father is missing. And the man who’s supposed to be protecting me keeps looking at me like he wants to pin me to the nearest surface.”
Lucien’s grip tightened. “Careful.”
“Or what?”
He didn’t answer. The car turned off the highway onto a narrow road that cut through dense trees. No streetlights. Only the sweep of headlights over wet leaves. Eventually the trees opened onto a long gravel driveway and a low stone house set back against the woods. No neighbors. No lights on the road. The kind of place that swallowed sound.
He parked in a garage that sealed behind them with a heavy mechanical thunk.
Inside, the house was colder than the loft. Sparse. Functional. Another weapons cache. Another reinforced door. A single bedroom with a large bed and a bathroom attached.
Isabella dropped her bag—his bag, really—onto a chair. “How many of these do you have?”
“Enough.” He locked everything, checked the windows, then turned to her. “You need to sleep. Real sleep. Not the kind where you lie there and plan speeches.”
“I don’t take orders from you.”
“Tonight you do.”
She stepped closer, chin lifted. “You don’t own me, Lucien.”
His eyes dropped to her mouth, then lower, to the open collar of his shirt where her collarbone showed. “No. But I will keep you alive. Even if you hate me for how I do it.”
The air between them tightened.
Isabella’s voice came quieter. “Why did you never… before?”
“Because your father is the only man I ever called brother.” His jaw flexed. “And because you were seventeen the last time I let myself look at you too long. I walked away. I stayed away. I told myself it was enough to watch from a distance while you built your empire.”
“And now?”
“Now the distance is gone.”
He reached past her and opened the bathroom door. “Shower. There’s hot water. I’ll be outside the door.”
She didn’t argue this time. The bathroom was small, all dark tile and glass. She stripped the borrowed clothes off and stepped under the spray. Heat poured over her shoulders, down her back, between her breasts. She closed her eyes and tried to breathe.
The door stayed closed, but she could feel him on the other side of it. Waiting.
When she stepped out, wrapped in a towel, he was leaning against the opposite wall, arms crossed. His gaze moved over her once—slow, deliberate—before he looked away.
“Bed’s ready,” he said. “I’ll take the chair.”
“There’s only one bed.”
“I’m aware.”
She walked past him into the bedroom. The towel slipped slightly at the top. She didn’t fix it. Lucien’s eyes tracked the movement before he forced them up again.
Isabella sat on the edge of the mattress. “Lie down with me.”
“No.”
“I’m not asking for s*x, Lucien. I’m asking not to be alone while people are trying to cut pieces off my father.”
Something in his face cracked. He exhaled hard, then crossed the room, toed off his boots, and lay down on top of the covers beside her. Fully clothed. Rigid. Leaving a careful foot of space between them.
She turned onto her side, facing him. The towel had loosened further. One shoulder was bare. The upper curve of one breast. He stared at the ceiling like it had answers.
“Talk to me,” she whispered.
“About what?”
“Anything. The first time you met my father. Why you never married. Why you look at me like you’re starving.”
His voice came rough. “I met your father when we were both twenty-two and stupid. He pulled me out of a fight I was losing. I pulled him out of one the next week. After that we stopped keeping score.” A pause. “I never married because the only woman who ever made the idea make sense was already someone else’s daughter.”
Isabella’s breath stalled.
Lucien turned his head on the pillow. Their faces were close enough that she could feel the warmth of his breath. “You want honesty, Bella? Fine. I’ve wanted you since the night of your twenty-fifth birthday, when you walked into that garden in a black dress and looked at me like you already knew. I left the party early. I stayed gone for six months. It didn’t help.”
Her hand moved before she could stop it, resting lightly against his chest. His heart was beating hard under her palm.
“You’re still my godfather,” she said.
“I’m also the man who’s going to put a bullet in every person who touched your father.” His hand covered hers, pressing it harder against him. “And if you keep looking at me like that, I’m going to forget every reason I ever had for keeping my hands to myself.”
The words hung between them.
Then the lights in the house went out.
Complete darkness.
Lucien was on his feet in less than a second, gun already in hand. Isabella sat up, heart slamming.
A soft electronic beep sounded from the front of the house.
Then another.
Lucien’s voice was pure ice. “Stay behind me. Do not make a sound.”
Somewhere in the dark, glass whispered as it was cut.
They were no longer alone.
- Writer
