There were secrets, and then there were things that just couldn’t be spoken out loud, and Jack Montgomery’s name was one of those things.
“It’s probably in an offshore bank account somewhere,” Lucien murmured distractedly.
She sighed. “If it is then I don’t know where, let alone the account number.”
“Your father never—no, obviously he never talked to you about any of this, if it all came as such a shock to you and your brother,” he accepted ruefully. “I’m going to need a name, Nicky.”
She frowned her puzzlement. “I just told you my father’s name was Michael Bennett.”
Lucien gave a humorless smile. “I wasn’t referring to your father’s name.”
“I don’t—no, Lucien,” she protested as she realized exactly what he was asking her. “I can’t do that.”
“Why not?”
She gave a sigh. “Believe me, the less you know about this man the better.”
“How can I help you if you don’t tell me the man’s name?” he reasoned in that mild voice.
A voice Nicky found as unsettling as his calm demeanor. “I don’t want you to help me.”
Lucien frowned his displeasure. “That’s ridiculous, Nicky, and you know it.”
She gave a shake of her head. “You can’t fix this, Lucien. No one can,” she added heavily.
“I can,” he said with certainty.
Nicky stood up, far too agitated to remain seated any longer. “This man is just too dangerous, Lucien. He had my father killed, for goodness sake! But not until after he’d had him tortured to try and get him to tell them where he put the money,” her voice broke emotionally. “And his goons threatened to do the same to Neil and me, the morning of the funeral, if we didn’t cooperate.”
“That will stop once he has his money back—”
“I told you I don’t have it!”
“But I do,” Lucien reasoned.
Nicky gave him a startled look. “What...?”
“We’ll just give him back his ten million pounds.” He shrugged. “It doesn’t matter where it comes from, only that it’s returned, and I wouldn’t miss it—”
“No!” Nicky protested loudly. “Absolutely not!”
“Pride is all well and good, Nicky—”
“It has nothing to do with pride, and everything to do with the fact that I don’t want that sort of help. That I don’t want your money.” Nicky didn’t know why she hadn’t seen this coming. She should have. Lucien had already dealt very effectively with that situation regarding Lionel Jenkins, and the two of them were so much closer now than they had been then.
Even so, ten million pounds was…well it was an obscene amount of money.
She gave a shake of her head. “I’d need to live to be a thousand years old to ever be able to repay all that money.”
Lucien’s expression softened. “I’m not expecting you to repay me—”
“I told you, I don’t want your money!”
He shrugged. “My money. My choice.”
“My debt. My—”
“My lady.” Lucien stood up to take her in his arms. “Nicky, we’ve come a long way in the last few hours, don’t shut me out now,” he urged huskily.
She held out against his closeness for several seconds, and then relaxed against him with a sigh, the love she felt for him at that moment totally overwhelming. “I really don’t want you to be involved in any of this.”
“I’m already involved because you’re involved. Anything that threatens you is my concern now.” And Lucien had no intentions of allowing Nicky to continue carrying this burden alone. Or to continue living in fear for a day longer than she needed to.
No matter what the personal cost might ultimately be to him.
A cost that had absolutely nothing to do with money...
Nicky’s tears began to fall as she clung to him, her head against his chest, and her arms about his waist. “I couldn’t bear it if anything happened to you because of me.”
“Nothing’s going to happen to me—”
“You don’t know that.” She gave a frantic shake of her head. “I have no doubts you’re a rich and powerful man, Lucien, but this man—his power has nothing to do with his wealth and everything to do with the fact he’s a very dangerous man to cross.” She gave an involuntary shudder.
“I need his name, Nicky.”
“No,” she refused stubbornly.
Lucien’s arms tightened about her. “Dimitri Markovic or Jack Montgomery?”
Nicky tensed in his arms before pulling back slightly to look up at him, her eyes wide with shock. “How—how is it you even know the names of men like that?”
He shrugged. “Anyone who wants to stay in business in London needs to know the names of the two men who really run this city.”
Nicky moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue. “How well do you know them?”
Lucien closed his eyes briefly. “I was hoping you wouldn’t ask me that.”
“Why not?”
“Because you aren’t going to like the answer,” he assured grimly.
Nicky pulled completely out of his arms before taking a step back, a sick feeling roiling in the pit of her stomach. “You’re frightening me now, Lucien...”
“I don’t mean to.” He ran an agitated hand through his hair as he moved away. “For the record, Dimitri Markovic is seriously ill at the moment. His son Gregori will take over on his death, and he’s nowhere near the bastard his father is. I’m sure he would be more than willing to negotiate a settlement.”
“And Jack Montgomery?”
“Is another matter entirely,” Lucien bit out hardly.
Nicky’s nervousness deepened at the easy way in which Lucien talked about the two men who ran the criminal underworld of London. “Lucien...?”
Lucien’s gut clenched at the increasing wariness he could so clearly see in Nicky’s eyes. Soft and beautiful hazel-blue eyes, he now realized. “You aren’t wearing your colored lenses.”
She grimaced. “There didn’t seem to be much point when you know my eyes aren’t really brown.”
“They’re beautiful, Nicky.” He gazed down into those soft hazel-blue eyes. “You’re beautiful.”
“Please don’t try and change the subject, Lucien.” She frowned.
“The subject being Dimitri Markovic and Jack Montgomery,” he bit out tightly.
“Yes.”
“You haven’t told me which one of them it is yet.”
“And I’m not going to,” she assured him stubbornly.
“I can easily find out for myself.”
“How?”
“By asking them,” Lucien admitted reluctantly.
She drew in a sharp breath. “You know them both well enough to do that?”
Lucien’s mouth thinned. “Yes.”
Nicky felt completely disorientated, had no idea what to think about a respected businessman, like Lucien Wynter, knowing the two men who ran London’s shady underworld well enough to actually talk to both of them.
She swallowed down the nausea rising in her throat. “You can really do that?”
“Yes.” His jaw was tight.
“I don’t—” Nicky gave a dazed shake of her head. “You aren’t actually involved in business with them, are you?”
He gave a humorless smile. “My business interests are completely legitimate, I assure you.”
She breathed a heavy sigh of relief. “Then does knowing them have something to do with your tattoos?”
“My tattoos?” Lucien repeated quizzically.
“Well I love them, but they hardly fit in with your sophisticated businessman image. Isn’t it usually people in gangs that have tattoos?” Nicky knew she was babbling, but she wasn’t sure she was ready to hear the truth just yet. The truth about how Lucien knew dangerous men like Dimitri Markovic and Jack Montgomery.
“Or arrogant teenagers wanting to make a statement,” he bit out dryly.
“Which one
were you?”
“Both,” he admitted hardly.
“Lucien—” Nicky broke off as his cell phone began to ring. “You’d better take that; it must be something important for someone to be ringing you at eight o’clock on a Saturday morning.”
“Probably Finn reminding me he’s getting married today,” Lucien drawled wryly as he took the cell phone from his jeans pocket and checked the caller ID. “You’re right,” he nodded tersely. “I need to take this call.”
And Nicky needed a few minutes in which to try and sort out the thoughts rushing and falling over themselves inside her head.
Lucien’s lack of shock when she told him of her father’s embezzlement and subsequent murder.
The fact that he knew the two men who ran London’s criminal underworld.
That Lucien didn’t just know of those two men, but admitted to knowing them both well enough to contact and speak with them.
It was...frightening.
More so, almost, than these long years of running and hiding her identity, in the hopes that Jack Montgomery wouldn’t find her and Neil.
A secret she had just confided in Lucien.
A man who seemed far too familiar with the two men who were usually only spoken of in whispers, behind closed doors, and then usually with fear.
“So I’ve just discovered, Dair.” Lucien kept his gaze fixed on Nicky as he answered his cousin. “Yes. Yes, I had a feeling that you might. No, I haven’t— Because it’s hardly the sort of thing you talk about in bed or share over coffee and croissants,” he bit out harshly. “No, you can let him go, Dair,” he dismissed hardly, listening to his cousin’s reply for several seconds before answering. “Set up a meeting for this morning— Just do it, Dair,” he bit out impatiently. “I’ll want you there too— Yes, I thought you might.” He ended the call before the other man had a chance to speak again, the intensity of his gaze remaining locked on Nicky as he slipped the cell phone back into his jeans pocket.
She moistened her lips before speaking. “Is there something wrong?”
Lucien gave an inward groan as he saw the way Nicky was now looking at him. Just as he had felt the emotional distance stretching, and then yawning between the two of them, the longer he spoke with Dair. Just as he could see the wariness, and fear, now shining in those beautiful hazel-blue eyes.
What he was about to tell Nicky was only going to increase that wariness and fear.
And there wasn’t a damn thing Lucien could do to stop it.
Whatever relationship had been developing between himself and Nicky would soon be over.
His only consolation was that she would be free from living in fear, for her own life and her brother’s.
Which was a double-edged sword, when he also knew that freedom meant she wouldn’t want to see him again.
Lucien had spent years distancing and shielding himself from the life he was about to re-enter. He had placed a necessary barrier about his emotions too. Nicky had not only broken down that barrier, she had stomped all over it, leaving him wide open. In a way that could totally destroy him, when the wariness and fear she felt now turned into disgust.
But what choice did he have if he wanted to protect her?
No choice at all, damn it.
Oh he could try lying to her, but what would be the point? This would sit between them like cancer, eating away at Lucien, chipping away at any trust in their relationship, until in the end Lucien wouldn’t be able to keep the truth from her a moment longer.
Better to just get it over with, to lose Nicky now, before—
Before what?
Before he became too involved?
That would be funny if it wasn’t so damned tragic.
The first woman he had allowed to get close to him, or himself to get close to, and she was also the one woman capable of opening a Pandora’s box for him that he would never be able to completely close again.
Just as he was the one man capable of closing Nicky’s own Pandora’s box.
The Fates must be laughing themselves silly, knowing how deftly Lucien had avoided all emotional involvement for so many years, and that he was now about to lose the one woman he wasn’t sure he could live without.
“Lucien...?” The longer the silence stretched between them the more nervous Nicky became. The more worried. The more uncertain.
She had thought Lucien looked grim and a little pale in the face before, but since talking to Dair his cheeks had taken on a grey tinge, and there were dark shadows in his eyes that hadn’t been there before either.
Perhaps, now that the truth had finally sunk in, he was more affected by what she had told him than he had claimed to be? After all, it wasn’t every day that your girlfriend—lady—told you that her father had been murdered—
“The man you’re running away from is Jack Montgomery.”
Nicky tensed, barely breathing as she looked up at Lucien apprehensively. “I— How did you—” She cleared her throat. “You can’t possibly know that,” she denied challengingly.
He gave a humorless smile. “I can. As it happens, Dair apprehended one of Montgomery’s men outside earlier. A little questioning gave us the answers we needed.”
“Questioning?”
He gave a humorless smile. “Believe it or not, not everyone resorts to violence to get answers.”
She swallowed. “What was the man doing here? What did he say?”
Lucien shrugged. “Enough for us to know we need to talk to Jack Montgomery. Let’s sit down again, hmm,” he encouraged as he could see she was now leaning heavily on the breakfast bar for support. “I need to tell you something.”
Nicky was too numb still to resist when Lucien sat her down on one of the bar stools, before pouring them both a fresh cup of coffee and sitting down opposite her.
Lucien’s hands, those long and elegant hands that she loved to stroke and caress her, were both wrapped about his coffee mug, as if he needed the warmth. Or as a way of stopping them from shaking? “Do you remember the feeling you had that someone was following you?” he began softly. “And that someone had been into your apartment while you were out?”
“Of course I remember it.” It had only been a week ago, after all. “You aren’t going to confess it was you, after all?” she attempted to tease. “Using your lock-picking skills?”
“No, it wasn’t me,” he drawled ruefully. “But apparently it did happen because of me.”
She shook her head. “I don’t understand...”
“You will. Oh believe me, you will,” he grated. “The real tragedy of it is you were doing so well, keeping your head down, staying under the radar, quietly getting on with your life. And then you came to my office a couple of weeks ago and asked me for a job.”
“What does that have to do with any of this?”
“Everything.” He stated flatly. “You would have been seen that first time, and then again the second time, and after that...” He grimaced. “After that it was just a question of time before enquiries revealed you weren’t who you said you were.”
“Seen by who? Before who realized I wasn’t who I said I was?” So far this conversation wasn’t making a lot of sense to Nicky.
“Jack Montgomery’s men— Stay where you are, Nicky.” He reached out and placed a restraining hand on hers as she would have stood up agitatedly. “Running away isn’t going to help. Not anymore.”
“But you said—if—why would—how would you even know any of that?” she prompted frantically. “Who are you, Lucien?” She snatched her hand determinedly away from his as she looked across at him accusingly.
The moment of truth.
A truth Lucien would have had to share with Nicky one day. Just not now. Not yet.
And certainly not under these circumstances.
He drew in a ragged breath. “I’m Jack Montgomery’s son.”
Nicky felt the world tilt on its axis before everything went completely black.
Chapter 15
“What sor
t of sick bastard are you that your own son needs protection from you—” Nicky’s outburst was brought to an end when Lucien grabbed her about the waist as she would have lunged forward and—
Lucien wasn’t sure what Nicky intended to do to his father, he just knew it was better for everyone concerned if he kept Nicky restrained until she had calmed down.
If she ever did.
There had been no easy way earlier for Lucien to tell Nicky who his father was. None at all. He was who he was. Much as Lucien might have tried to forget that fact himself these past fifteen years.
It hadn’t been easy, at eighteen years of age, to walk away from his father and the only life he’d ever known. Even if that life was one of violence and power after his mother died, rather than roses around the door. But Lucien had done it, and so had Dair, the two of them having made a pact together to make a different life for themselves than the one they had both known so far.
Dair had gone into the army, and then into the English Special Forces, and finally into owning his own security company.
Lucien had changed his name and gone to New York initially, with several thousand pounds in his pocket and little else. It had taken a couple of years of working dead-end jobs, but he had eventually discovered that he had an uncanny ability to invest in stocks and shares. From there it had been a natural progression to begin buying failing companies of his own, streamlining them, and then selling them on as profit-making concerns.
Eleven years later he had felt safe enough in his identity to return to London as Lucien Wynter, billionaire businessman, jet-setting all over the world, half a dozen different homes in different countries, able to buy anything he wanted, and bed any woman he wanted too.
He just hadn’t realized how lonely he was until Nicky entered his life.
How could he have known, even attempted to guess, that his own father was responsible for having Nicky’s father killed?
What he had known earlier, when Nicky woke up from her faint and looked at him with wary and closed off eyes, and remained uncharacteristically silent as he explained his connection, and incidentally Dair’s, to Jack Montgomery, was that he had already lost her. That the distance he could see in Nicky’s eyes meant she would never be able to reconcile herself to who he was.
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