Chapter 12 - Choose
1690 Words
Lucian took the phone from my hand so carefully it frightened me more than if he had smashed it against the wall.
He stared at the photograph.
His mother’s face was swollen on one side. Blood marked the corner of her mouth. Her wrists were tied to the arms of a wooden chair, but she was sitting upright, chin raised, staring into the camera as though she refused to give whoever held it the satisfaction of seeing her break.
Lucian had the same eyes.
Now I understood where he had learned to turn pain into a weapon.
“When was this sent?” I asked.
“Three minutes ago.”
“Can you trace it?”
“They will have routed it through several servers.”
“That is not what I asked.”
His gaze snapped to mine.
There was no warmth left in it. No trace of the man who had kissed me into forgetting my own name.
Only the monster remained.
“Yes,” he said. “I can trace it.”
“Then we find her.”
“No.”
The word struck the room like a gunshot.
I pushed myself up from the bed, gathering the loose fabric of my dress around my shoulders.
“What do you mean, no?”
“I mean you are staying here.”
“They are demanding that you bring me to them.”
“And I am not going to.”
“Lucian, they have your mother.”
“I can see that.”
His voice was quiet.
Too quiet.
I moved closer. “Then you know we cannot simply ignore them.”
He turned away and reached for his shirt.
I caught his arm.
He froze.
His skin was still warm beneath my fingers. His chest still bore the faint marks of my touch. Minutes ago, he had been looking at me as though I were the only beautiful thing left in his ruined world.
Now he would not even face me.
“You are not leaving me here.”
“That is exactly what I am doing.”
“You promised you would stop sending me away.”
“That was before they put a knife against my mother’s throat.”
“And this changes what?”
“Everything.”
He pulled his shirt over his shoulders, jaw tightening when the fabric dragged across his wound.
I stepped in front of him.
“You said you would always come for me.”
“I will.”
“Then why do you expect me to let you go alone?”
“Because I can survive alone.”
The words should have sounded arrogant.
Instead, they sounded practiced.
Lonely.
“And you cannot survive with me?” I asked.
His hands stopped on the buttons of his shirt.
“That is the problem.”
I looked at him, waiting.
He lifted his eyes to mine.
“I do not think I can survive without you anymore.”
The confession was not soft.
It came out raw and furious, like something torn from him against his will.
My breath caught.
Lucian moved suddenly, closing the distance between us. His hand curved around the back of my neck, not hurting me, but leaving no doubt that he needed to feel me beneath his palm.
“To them, you are leverage,” he said. “A bargaining piece. Something they can use to control me.”
“And to you?”
His thumb rested over my pulse.
His stare dropped to my lips.
“To me, you are the first thought in my head when I wake and the reason I cannot sleep.”
His fingers tightened slightly.
“You are every door I check twice. Every shadow I turn toward. Every sound that makes me reach for a weapon.”
His mouth hovered near mine.
“You have become an obsession I cannot cut out of myself.”
Heat moved through me, slow and dangerous.
“Perhaps I do not want to be cut out.”
“You should.”
“But I do not.”
His breathing deepened.
“Do you know what I thought when I saw that message?”
“That you had to save her.”
“No.”
The answer chilled me.
Lucian leaned closer until his lips brushed the shell of my ear.
“I thought I would burn every person in that room alive before I allowed one of them to touch you.”
A shiver ran down my spine.
I should have stepped away.
Instead, I turned my face toward his.
“Then take me with you.”
His mouth found mine.
The kiss was not gentle this time.
It was anger and terror and possession.
His arm locked around my waist, pulling me hard against him. I felt the brutal rhythm of his heart through his shirt as his mouth moved over mine, taking every argument I had and turning it into breathless heat.
I gripped the back of his neck.
He lifted me onto the edge of the table without breaking the kiss.
The phone and first-aid supplies scattered across the floor.
I barely heard them fall.
His hands moved along my thighs, stopping beneath the hem of my dress. He did not push farther. He simply held me there, his fingers burning against my skin, his body caging mine without taking away my choice.
“Tell me you are afraid of me,” he murmured against my mouth.
“I am afraid of what you make me want.”
His eyes darkened.
“What do I make you want?”
I wrapped my legs around his hips.
His breath broke.
“You.”
The word came out almost soundless.
“All of you,” I whispered. “The lies. The scars. The man. The monster.”
His forehead pressed to mine.
“You do not know what the monster wants from you.”
“Then tell me.”
His hand slid higher along my thigh.
“He wants to lock every door.”
My pulse raced.
“He wants to erase every name from your memory except his.”
His lips grazed my throat.
“He wants to leave his touch on every part of you so no one can look at you without knowing you belong to him.”
The words should have angered me.
Instead, they ignited something shamefully deep.
I tightened my legs around him.
“And the man?” I asked.
Lucian lifted his head.
The hunger in his face softened into something far more dangerous.
“The man wants to belong to you too.”
My heart surrendered before the rest of me could defend it.
I cupped his face and kissed him slowly.
Not because we had time.
Not because danger had disappeared.
Because it had not.
Because his mother was still tied to a chair somewhere, and people were waiting to trade her life for mine.
Because this might be the last quiet moment we were ever given.
Lucian’s hand slipped beneath my hair. He kissed me deeply, but the violence had gone from it. What remained was devotion sharpened into need.
I felt it in every careful movement.
Every breath he tried and failed to steady.
Every place his body touched mine while he still held himself back.
“I am going with you,” I whispered.
He closed his eyes.
“No.”
I kissed the corner of his mouth.
“Yes.”
“They will kill you to punish me.”
“Then do not let them.”
His eyes opened.
“You trust me that much?”
“No.”
His expression changed.
I smiled faintly. “I trust us.”
Something passed over his face.
Pain, perhaps.
Or hope arriving where it had no business being.
He helped me down from the table, then reached beneath the bed and removed a black duffel bag.
Inside were weapons, passports, cash, and enough ammunition to start a private war.
“How romantic,” I said. “Most men keep spare blankets under there.”
“Most men are poorly prepared.”
“For hostage situations or women refusing to obey them?”
“Both.”
The corner of his mouth lifted, but the smile vanished almost immediately.
He opened a small laptop and connected the phone.
Lines of code flooded the screen.
I stood beside him, watching coordinates begin to form.
“An abandoned estate outside the city,” he said. “It belonged to my father.”
“Your father?”
“He died there.”
The way Lucian said it made me certain death had not arrived peacefully.
A progress bar crawled across the screen.
Forty percent.
Sixty.
Eighty-five.
Then the laptop emitted a sharp tone.
A live video replaced the code.
His mother sat in the same chair.
A masked man stood behind her, one hand resting on her shoulder.
“Lucian,” he said through the speakers. “I know you are watching.”
Lucian went completely still.
The masked man leaned closer to the camera.
“You have one hour.”
His mother looked directly into the lens.
Then she spoke.
“Do not bring the girl.”
The man struck her across the face.
Lucian lunged toward the screen as if he could reach through it.
I caught his wrist.
His head turned sharply.
The look he gave me was almost inhuman.
But beneath the rage, I saw it.
Helplessness.
I laced my fingers through his.
The masked man pulled Lucian’s mother’s head back by her hair.
“One hour,” he repeated. “Or she dies.”
The feed went black.
Silence swallowed the room.
Then another message appeared on the phone.
This one was addressed to me.
COME ALONE, AND BOTH OF THEM LIVE.
Lucian read it over my shoulder.
His grip crushed the edge of the table.
I looked at him.
He looked at me.
And we both knew the truth.
They did not want a trade.
They wanted to see which one of us would betray the other first.
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