by Lannah Smith
“What?” I asked grouchily.
“You can keep looking, babe.”
“I wasn't looking.”
He shook his head to tell me I wasn’t fooling anybody.
“Leon's body was much nicer to look at,” I said with a smirk.
“Have you seen Leon's body lately?” he said with a smirk of his own. “He's got a belly after working long hours in his office. He doesn’t do field work anymore because Sophia.”
I couldn’t give a proper retort because his wonderful scent, a mixture of soap, cologne and probably aftershave, was pervading my senses, distracting me, making me unable to focus and hold on to my anger.
Damn it.
I knew it was time to retreat. This was too much. I couldn’t endure this.
Violently tugging the door open, I took a step out, stiffening when I heard his burst of laughter. I looked back to throw him a cursory glare but then he lifted his arms to put on his shirt and I caught myself staring at his abs. His phone rang on the bed and he turned while pulling the shirt down.
I jerked back at what I saw.
My blood ran cold.
My lungs constricted.
I’d seen it for only a second before he completely pulled his shirt down but I knew what it was. I’d seen it countless times before.
There was a mark on his chest. Where his heart was.
A circular skin laceration.
A bullet wound scar.
I’d only heard about it but I knew what it meant.
A wave of dizziness hit me and I braced myself against the doorframe, holding onto the wood tight, gasping. Tears welled up as a growing feeling of disbelief, devastation and terror overtook me.
I shook my head, trying to deny what I had just seen.
It wasn't true.
A sob escaped me and I covered my mouth with shaking hands.
This couldn't be true.
"April?" he took a step towards me. "What's wrong, honey?"
"Why?" My voice shook, fighting to get the words out around the lump of tears clogging my throat. "When?"
He realized what I was asking about. My heart lurched in agony when he didn’t even mask his expression.
It wasn't true, it wasn't true, it wasn't true—.
His eyes were tortured and pained when they looked at me.
It was true.
April gripped the frame of the door tight, squeezing her eyes shut like she was trying to shut him out, like she was trying to shut the truth out. Yet tears continued to spill over, running down her ashen cheeks. She was crying so hard, there wasn't even a sound coming out of her mouth. Completely obliterated.
Christopher grasped the back of his neck with both hands.
Completely fucking obliterated.
And he did that to her because he hadn’t been careful. She wasn't ready for the truth. He couldn't help her get ready for the truth.
April let go of the doorframe and turned to look at him. She looked so pale, her breathing was ragged, her body shaking, and for a brief moment, Christopher was afraid she'd faint or have a panic attack or worse, a heart attack. He tried to hold her but she woodenly stepped back into the hall until her back met the wall, her shoulders heaving with every intake of breath.
"When?" she repeated in a voice wretched with tears. "When, when, when?"
He tried to hold her again but she pushed him roughly away.
“When did you join the underworld?” she shrieked, the sound echoing throughout the hall and the house. "Why?"
"April," he murmured low, trying to get her to calm. "Let me explain."
She flung herself at him and slapped him. Hard.
His head whipped to the side and he looked at the carpet, clenching his teeth. Then he returned his gaze to her, exhaling a breath.
"Calm down."
Her fist came down on his chest.
"Why?" she sobbed, gut-wrenching sobs that tore through his heart. "Why?"
Alec had run to them at the first scream, Jaehyun behind him, and they stopped to stare at them both in alert bewilderment. Christopher shook his head.
“Leave us,” he commanded them and Alec hesitated, his gaze on April pounding her fists on his chest. “Now!”
It was Jaehyun who moved first to obey his order, his hand on Alec’s stiff back, guiding him to the stairs. Christopher grabbed April’s wrists to stop her from hurting herself and pulled her to his bedroom, closing the door.
“Please calm down, honey,” he beseeched her, holding her face, trying to comfort her in whatever way he could but she couldn’t feel it.
"Who are you?" she whispered, her wet eyes searching his, trying to pull his hands off her skin but he didn’t relent, not even for a second.
"I'm Christopher. Your Christopher."
"No, you're not."
"I'm me, April."
She pushed him and screeched at his face, "No, you're not! You're one of them!"
He flinched.
"You're one of them now," she punched his chest. "Just like my father. You're just like my father."
He wrapped his arms around her, barely controlling her struggles while whispering, "You have to let me explain, honey."
"What would you say if I let you?" she kept shouting, kept pushing, kept pummeling her fists on his chest, "That you were blinded by money? By power? You wanted to rule the whole city and then the world?"
"I did it for you."
All the breath escaped her and she tried to recoil from him but he wouldn’t let her.
"No."
He nodded. "Yes."
"No," she pleaded, her fingers grasping fistfuls of his shirt. "No, don't say that. I can't be the reason. I can't always be the reason."
"Honey..."
"Why does it always have to be because of me?” Christopher sucked in a breath at the devastation in her voice. “Everyone dies because of me."
"That's not true." His fingers curled around the back of her neck. “It’s not your fault.”
"It is," she stammered, tugging on his shirt in an effort to make him understand. "I bring Death with me. He's always beside me, ready to snatch everyone who gets close. I don’t deserve this. They all don’t deserve this. You don’t deserve me.”
fucking hell, she was far too gone to listen.
“You got too close to me. I told you not to get close to me. I told you to just leave me alone!” she ended with a scream.
She couldn’t hold herself up any longer and she went limp in his arms. He picked her up and carried her to his bed, placing her down on his lap, holding her closely. Her fingers were still fisted around the fabric of his shirt as she continued to sob on his chest. He held her as tightly as he could, knowing there was nothing he say to her to make everything alright until she was ready to be alright. So he just held her like he always did every time she had her nightmares.
Christopher kept his hard gaze at the darkening sky outside his window
Broken.
He’d broken her.
He couldn't tell her of all the things she ought to know about him. He couldn't force the ugly truth from his chest.
Now he had to live with the consequences.
After several minutes, her tears began to wane but they didn’t stop.
Lifting her face off his chest, she asked, "Were you even going to tell me?"
Christopher brought his gaze down to her and said, "If you had asked, I would. But only if you were ready for the answers."
She stared at him for a long moment.
Then her head fell back on his shoulder and she continued to cry.
Chapter 51
Christopher refused to leave April alone. And April refused to budge from the chair next to the balcony windows of his bedroom.
Her eyes were staring vacantly out the darkness. Her knees were to her chest, the soles of her feet in the seat, curled in a protective ball, back in her shell.
Christopher wished he had a glass of whiskey in his hand, or maybe a fucking whole bottle. But that would only
court more of April’s terror so instead, he sat on the bed, staring at her, wishing she’d speak to him again.
A legacy.
The Lawrence family legacy was not their lands or their real estate business but it was of criminal nature.
Who would have thought there were two sides to his family's business?
Who would have thought they owned half the city and had connections with the fucking mob?
Who would have fucking thought that his father, before his untimely death, was a leading underworld figure?
Not Christopher. When his grandfather had told him, he had straight out laughed at his face, earning a direct punch to the mouth from the incensed old man.
They weren't of old money, his great-great grandfather had grown up in poverty and turned to a life of crime at an early age where he quickly rose to prominence. At his peak, Wright Lawrence was one of the most powerful and dangerous criminals in the country. Then he soon built a criminal empire, making use of street gangs, and became the head of a powerful crime group in the city, with ties and the protection of the Sicilian Mafia.
fucking hell.
Christopher rubbed his face wearily then ran his fingers through his hair.
They'd lied to him all these years.
He’d seen some of the signs, heard some things but his grandfather had somehow managed to keep everything from him. His grandfather hated how much his wife coddled Christopher but as the old woman was going crazy over losing her only son, he allowed her. His grandfather had let his grandmother made Christopher believe that he was just another rich heir.
Christopher wished he hadn’t allowed it.
He could have prepared for it. He could have had all the necessary skills and knowledge for it. Even now, he was still trying to learn and keep up and without Alec by his side, he would have already fucked up a thousand times. A fuck up meant death. He’d learned after the first fuck up. And until now, the memory still tortured his brain.
Christopher’s eyes returned to April.
She was no longer crying. But she hadn't wiped the tear stains away from her face. When she felt his eyes on him, she slowly turned her head to face him. He felt a painful clutch in his chest when he saw the expression on his face.
She was already grieving him.
"Who's Alec?" she asked in toneless voice.
"My right-hand,” he answered quietly. “My adviser."
She waited some more knowing he wasn't done.
He exhaled and went on in a quieter voice, "My shield."
Her whole body jerked and emotion flashed in her eyes. "Why would you need a shield?"
Carefully, he approached her chair and crouched by the side. "What do you know about the scar, April?"
"That you're a criminal," she whispered. "And you're the boss."
His jaw clenched. "What makes you say that?"
Her eyes darted to his chest before she met his gaze again. "That was an initiation, wasn't it? To prove that you're fucking worthy?"
"Where did you get the information? Nobody outside the family knows about this."
"I'm tired," she turned her head away, her lips trembling, "I want to go to sleep—," she paused then looked at him again in bewilderment, "what do you mean nobody outside the family knows about this?"
She didn't know everything.
The tension in his shoulders eased but it didn't completely leave him. Because from the fire in her eyes, she wasn’t going to let this drop.
"What the hell do you mean nobody outside the family knows about this?" she snapped, leaning into him. "Who shot you then?"
His jaw clenched. “You don’t need to know, April.”
“Who?” she screamed.
He stared at her for a long moment. She stared back, her lips pinched in suppressed anger.
“My…” he hesitated. “My grandfather.”
It was different in their family. Before he could inherit the family's criminal enterprise from his grandfather, before he could become the boss, he had to earn everyone’s trust and respect.
So he had to take a bullet to his heart like his father before him, like his grandfather and the rest before him.
To be the boss, he had to enter dead and would have to get out dead.
So in front of everyone, he was shot by his grandfather point blank in the chest.
And he did it without flinching.
April blanched and her eyes grew wide.
“Your grandfather?” she breathed. “He did that to you?”
"He knew what he was doing," he told her quietly. “He’s a skilled marksman and he merely incapacitated me.”
"Y-You could have…" she began to stutter. "You could have died."
"It was surgery at best, honey. Like I said, he knew what he was doing."
Christopher watched as more pain scored across her features.
Then he watched as she bent her head down and closed her eyes, inhaling deeply and shakily.
“Can you leave?” she said on the exhale.
He shook his head. He wasn’t leaving until they sort this shit out.
“I need space,” she whispered. “I need time alone to think and come to the terms that I might have gotten away from my criminal father yet still, I somehow managed to land in the arms of another. I need time to deal. So please give me that.”
He straightened, bent into her and wrapped a hand around the back of her neck. Then his face got into hers. “I would never do anything to harm you,” he whispered back, looking into her eyes with complete seriousness and promise
She gave him nothing. She pushed his hand off her and twisted her neck to look out the window.
Christopher pressed his lips together.
Then he gave in and left her alone.
Alec was waiting for him outside the door.
Christopher leveled his eyes on his right-hand, his advisor, his friend. Alec's expression was stony. A clear sign that he did not like this situation as he did. Jaehyun and Klay were standing on either side of Alec, waiting for orders.
“Stay and at the first sound of noise, check in on her,” Christopher told Jaehyun and Klay in a commanding low growl. “Alec, meet me in the study.”
Christopher didn’t look back to see if Alec had followed him. April’s cries pierced his brain and it was all he could do not to let out a bellow from the agony ripping his heart apart. Arriving in the study, he closed his eyes and put a fist on his forehead, exhaling angrily.
He deserved this pain because he’d done that. He made her feel all those things because he hadn't been careful. He'd forgotten to be cautious. He'd forgotten about the damn scar on his chest that was nearly invisible to the naked eye but still, she saw it. She unraveled because of it.
He'd never be able to wipe her beautiful tortured face from his mind. It was burned there, probably for all fucking eternity.
“What happened?” Alec bluntly asked the moment he entered the living room.
Christopher poured a small amount of whiskey in a glass. Then he threw back the glass and slammed it down on his desk, saying, “She found out.”
“About you?” Alec sounded incredulous.
“Yes, about me. Now what were you going to tell me about John?” Christopher asked him severely, not wanting to talk about April anymore.
Alec’s eyes glowed with fury when he promptly answered, "John's going to New York after Christmas."
shit.
Christopher sat on his desk chair, leaning forward to ran his hands roughly through his hair, thinking about how he’d have to deal with this mess too.
"They know everything now, sir. Everything they weren't supposed to know."
He took in a long, slow breath but he did not speak.
Other crime organizations had been trying to expand their influence into his territory. He managed to beat everyone else single-handedly except for Edward Locke. The man was resilient as a cockroach, backed by the Russian mob. That was why he needed the support of the New York Familia and its b
oss.
The head of the New York mob wasn't keen on this allegiance as Christopher's family had made the mistake of burning that bridge by siding with their rivals two decades ago, resulting in numerous deaths But with the Russians closing in and Edward Locke in their midst, leading the way, the head had finally agreed that for peace to be an option, they had to get rid of Edward Locke.