Heartless

by Jade West

  Tristan carried on pushing, striding around with his hands in his hair.

  “He killed Stephen Cannon, didn’t he? Just fucking tell me!”

  So I did. I did tell him. I looked him square in the eye, and I gritted my teeth and I told him.

  “Yes, Tristan, he killed Stephen Cannon. He stabbed him in the guts and watched him bleed to death on the floor, and I wanted that. I wanted it, too.”

  His jaw dropped, and he paled, and he staggered away from me. “You wanted him to? Why the fuck would you want him to?”

  I forced the words. “He was trying to rape me. That asshole Stephen Cannon was trying to rape me. He was hurting me, and I was begging him to stop, but he wouldn’t listen, and Lucian saved me. Lucian Morelli saved me.”

  Tristan was shaking his head. “No. It can’t be. No, Elaine. Don’t you dare fucking lie to me.”

  I kept my stare hard on his. “I’m not lying. Stephen Cannon was trying to rape me, and the monster saved me from him. I was saved by the so-called monster.”

  My best friend cursed and put his head in his hands, and then he cursed to himself, over and over, because he knew it as well as I did. The whole damn situation was a cesspit full of shit with no clear way out.

  “My family can’t find out about this, Tristan,” I said. “If there’s any way in the whole damn world it’s possible, they can’t find out about this. You have to help me.”

  “HOLY FUCK!” he yelled, but he didn’t say no. He couldn’t say no.

  “Please! Please, Tristan! I have to find a way out of this. They can’t know Lucian Morelli saved me from Stephen by butchering him in a city dive while I watched.”

  I daren’t tell him he fucked me in the ass. Even I couldn’t share that truth.

  “People will know, Laine! Not unless he wipes out the whole damn party!”

  He was right, but there was no way I could give up, not without trying. I’d be signing my own death warrant if I did.

  But that wasn’t why I was doing it. That wasn’t why I was trying.

  I wasn’t trying to find a way out of this mess to counter my own death warrant. My death warrant was already signed over to the Power brothers. I was expecting it.

  I was doing it to counter Lucian Morelli’s.

  Tristan was churning things over just like I was; I could see the cogs whirring in his brain.

  “Blue knows,” he said after a quiet few minutes. “Blue who Lucian Morelli knocked unconscious after charging in like a maniac to find out where you were.”

  “So if we shut Blue up . . . that would help, right?”

  Tristan shook his head, jabbing a finger at me. “Nah, Elaine. Don’t you dare. Don’t you fucking dare. If anything happens to Blue, I swear to God, I’ll tell your family myself.”

  I forced a smile, black humor in the despair.

  “Seems you’re falling for him then. Who’d have thought it? Both of us losing our hearts to our lovers in the same crazy whirlwind around us.” I managed to laugh. A bitter laugh. “I wasn’t thinking about wiping him out, I was thinking of you talking to him.”

  He didn’t force a smile right back, and he sure as fuck didn’t laugh.

  “This isn’t the same crazy whirlwind, and Lucian fucking Morelli isn’t your fucking lover. He’s the man who wants to destroy you and your whole damn bloodline.”

  I didn’t argue with him, because what would be the point? There was no reason that could possibly counter the fact that the Morellis despised the Constantines, and destroying us all meant more to them than a mountain of joy ever could.

  Even so, with my ass still hurting, and my pulse still racing, I couldn’t believe Lucian Morelli wanted nothing more than to kill me.

  It wasn’t my head that wouldn’t believe it . . . it was my heart.

  It was my heart that believed Lucian wanted more from me than destroying every sliver of life in my body and my soul to match.

  It was my heart that believed Lucian had saved me for a reason . . . more of a reason than saving my pain all for himself, which he did – he wanted my pain all for himself – but it was more than that.

  It was my heart that believed that maybe, just maybe, Lucian Morelli could love me back. One day, in a whole other world, in a whole other time, maybe, just maybe, Lucian Morelli could love me back.

  23

  Lucian

  My parents were eating when I sat myself down at the dining table. My mother gave me a smile, but my father barely looked at me, placing his cutlery down neatly at the sides of his plate as he cleared his throat.

  “Leave us,” he said to the butler, and old man Michael scurried away with a bow.

  It was then that he met my eyes, and they were as savage as I’d ever seen, even sheened with the chill of calm I’d come to know so well.

  I returned his calm with a chill of my own as I pulled a foot up onto my knee and leaned back in my seat.

  “I’m back in the office tomorrow,” I told him. “I had some unexpected events to attend to. Nothing more.”

  My father wiped his fingers on his napkin, then dabbed his lips. The pause in him spoke volumes, and I looked at him afresh after years of barely registering the appearance of the man before me. Bryant Morelli was still a handsome beast, and I was the eldest in his footsteps. His dark features were deep enough to swallow everything around him, and his demands on those in his life were hard enough to cripple. They always had been. He’d taught me to be every part the monster I’d grown to be. And there was more. He knew the full extent of my icy coldness, in a way that nobody else had ever seen.

  He knew me. All of me. Even the deepest secrets. The deepest strengths and weaknesses, both entwined.

  Secrets snake through the depths of every family bond, and ours was the very depths of the hiss and snare.

  My mother looked unsteady as she picked at the food on her plate, caught up in our unspoken tension while struggling with her love for both sides. I was her son, but my father was her husband, the man she’d loved above all others for the biggest part of her life.

  The battle in her was lost for me. Father’s side held more power in her heart. Sarah Morelli hated the Constantines almost as much as he did. Almost.

  “You had some unexpected events to attend to, did you?” he repeated with a scowl. “Unexpected events such as druggie bitch Elaine Constantine by any chance?”

  I didn’t lower my stare. “I know you’ve been speaking with Trenton.”

  “Just as well. Trenton is concerned about family business and reputation. It appears that you haven’t been quite so loyal, or smart.”

  I scowled back at him across the table, the original rage and purpose restored in my heart. “Our family reputation will never reach its peak unless we take a final stand against theirs. Someday, somehow, we’re going to have to strike at the heart of them and destroy them a piece at a time. I want that day to come soon.”

  That’s when my father got to his feet and cast his plate aside with a crash. He jabbed a finger at me across the tabletop, and his face was pure fucking spite.

  “It’s not your concern when we take a stand against the Constantines, boy. It’s mine. It’s always been mine.”

  “Stop,” my mother said, but Father gestured her away.

  “This isn’t for you, Sarah. Leave, please.”

  She hovered, a maternal fear in her eyes as she looked at me across the table. Still, it didn’t stop her bowing to my father’s will when he cursed and pointed to the doorway a second time.

  “Leave!”

  I watched my mother’s exit and wished that I could somehow feel something inside me.

  I wished I could feel more. I wished I could embrace a hint of love, or warmth for the woman who’d given birth to me and raised me to my place in this world. I wished I could look over at my father and his rage and feel the true belt of shame gripping me tight. But I didn’t.

  I didn’t feel a thing . . . and Father knew it. I never had.

  He walked a
round the table and kicked out a chair at my side. He turned it to face him and dropped himself down to straddle the seat.

  “Believe me, Lucian, if violence were an option to knock some sense into you, I’d be taking it now. You’d be feeling my wrath with your skin and bones.”

  I didn’t react, just kept my eyes on his until he spoke again.

  “Trenton told me you’ve been asking questions about Elaine Constantine. He said that you met with her.”

  “Trenton Alto is a piece of shit who has no business telling anyone any of mine.”

  “Trenton has every business telling me about anything that concerns me,” Father snapped. “Tell me now, boy. Have you met Elaine Constantine?”

  I tipped my head to the side. “I met Elaine Constantine at Tinsley Constantine’s masked coming-of-age ball. I went there to investigate the Constantine compound and work out a route to their destruction. I enjoyed the thrill.”

  As usual, I hadn’t lied. My stance was faultless as I stayed still in my seat.

  Father would have punched me straight in the ribs if there had been any point. Instead, he leaned in close, and his voice was a river of shards.

  “I’ve always been very proud of you, Lucian. You’ve made an excellent son with excellent prospects. You’re every part the Morelli heir I created, and I’m very proud of that. Very proud.”

  Every statement like that always comes with a but, and Father’s came loud and clear.

  “I’m telling you now though, boy, you go anywhere near that Constantine bitch again, and you’ll be dead to me. Our family will never live with that betrayal to our name. Do you understand?”

  He was giving me more leeway than I would have expected. A pleasant surprise.

  I smirked at him. “Yeah, I get it. I go near Elaine Constantine again you’re going to wipe me out. Blow my brains out and kiss goodbye to your heir in a heartbeat.”

  He smirked back, coldly, and for once inside I felt something. I felt a shiver of fear.

  “Maybe it’s not you who will be wiped out, son. Maybe you’ll be confined to darkness in a cellar, not in the ground. One thing you can be sure of, though, I’ll be wiping out Elaine Constantine if you so much as set a foot in her direction, and I’ll make sure we don’t take the credit for her demise.”

  “Trenton told you I have feelings for her, did he?” I scoffed.

  Father stayed smirking. “No. He didn’t say that, actually. He told me you were hunting her down in a way he’d never seen before, and he had his . . . suspicions. I’d have killed you by my own hands by now if I believed for a second you would ever care for a Constantine bitch.”

  He wasn’t lying, and I didn’t blame him.

  I should kill myself by my own hands for even contemplating I might want anything more from that Constantine fool than her blood and pain.

  “I’d never love a Constantine woman,” I told him, and my voice was seething.

  “I damn well hope not.” With that, my father pulled his knife from across the table and offered it to me. “Swear it, then. Swear on the Morelli oath. Swear to God and the Virgin Mother above.”

  I shouldn’t do it. Even with that shiver of doubt and sin inside me, I should never have taken that knife from him. I was damning myself to hell for all time.

  But I didn’t care.

  For once in my life, the Morelli oath meant less to me than a woman I should despise.

  I ran the blade down my palm, slicing deep and true. The blood dripped, running a vein of a river as I squeezed my fingers closed tight.

  “I swear to God above, on the Morelli name, I despise the Constantine bloodline and always will.”

  I wasn’t lying. I despised all of the Constantine bloodline. I hated everything about them, every fake smile and mockery they made of their adoring media platform around the globe. I hated their corruption, hidden so sweetly behind their societal facade.

  I despised Elaine Constantine and everything she stood for.

  My father nodded at that and took the knife away. He cast a glance at my oath cut and tossed the knife on the table.

  “You cut too deeply with that, boy,” he said, but I shrugged as I wrapped a napkin around the wound.

  “I always cut too deeply. Greater blood makes a stronger promise.”

  He stood up from his chair and went back to his side of the table. “You need to be more careful who you demonstrate that to,” he said. “If people for a second thought you were the man you are . . .”

  I’d heard this before, so many times that I shrugged again. “I don’t make oaths very often. Not anymore. Nobody is going to see my faculties for what they are. Not from one tiny slice on my palm.”

  I was right on that. Nobody had ever seen my body for the beast it was, not even my mother. The secret was bound deep between me and the man who raised me to be his heir.

  “Our empire was built on oaths,” he told me. “And so was the strength of our lives. Never forget that, and never stop investing in our family’s promises to the Lord.”

  I looked at the painting of Jesus above his head at the rear of the dining hall, and I wondered just what it must be like to live in families built without the constant pursuit of Godliness, tainted in a world based on lies and corruption.

  Our past lineage was evil, and our present hierarchy never faltered from the same, so again, I didn’t understand why my father was so keen to avoid conflict with the bloodline who’d built theirs on destroying ours.

  “We could ruin the whole sorry lot of them,” I said. “We’re strong enough. We need to strike the first blow. Now.”

  “No,” he said and sat back down on his side of the table. “We’re not striking anything against the Constantines, not until I decide we are ready.”

  It frustrated me and always had how my father was so determined to control everything about our family from the sidelines, even though he’d already given me control of our future.

  “Go back to Holdings in the morning,” he ordered. “If you take another day out from business, I’ll be sending Seamus and Duncan in to oversee your position. They can report back to me.”

  “Is that a threat?” I pushed. “Seamus and Duncan have no place at Morelli Holdings. They’re weasels with no spine. Pointless and pathetic. And McTiernans at that, not even Morellis.”

  “They are blood relations with an interest in family business,” he countered, and I didn’t bother pushing it further. Not today.

  I could imagine their faces, smug and cunning as they danced around my father like baying hyenas after another man’s bones. They sure as fuck weren’t having mine.

  “I’ll be back at Morelli Holdings tomorrow,” I assured him and got to my feet.

  I didn’t hang around to see my mother appear back in the room, just made my exit with the napkin still wrapped tight around my bleeding hand. It was true, I would be back at Morelli Holdings tomorrow, and Seamus and Duncan could get fucked. They weren’t having anything to do with the power in my world.

  I wished my palm was spitting in pain, just to keep my oath in my mind, but my promise was already lost to me as I left the mansion.

  It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered, and I knew it. I knew it right there and then.

  There was only one thing on my mind.

  Elaine fucking Constantine.

  Her tracker was useless to me now that her clutch was useless to her.

  I had only one thing left to use. Her diary.

  I called it up on my cell before I’d even left the grounds.

  24

  Elaine

  I don’t know how I made it through the night, shaking and crying, knowing my heart was lost to the monster.

  I don’t know how the fuck I got ready for family time on Sunday. I don’t know how I managed to style my hair with trembling fingers and get myself prepared for the façade.

  I was trying to avoid my mother on our family manor front lawn, but I knew it would be pointless. There was no way she’d leave me alone throug
h the afternoon.

  I weaved my way through my cousins, making nothing but small talk, battling the chaos of fears in my head. It didn’t work. I was shaking like a leaf in the bathroom as I splashed cold water on my face, determined for once in my life to avoid the drinks on the lawn. No champagne for me. No champagne. No champagne. No champagne.

  I couldn’t risk it, not even a glass. I couldn’t risk the loosening of my tongue to anyone in the world.

  Harriet was trying to take hold of me and guide me to the edges of the garden party whenever she got the chance, but I didn’t let her. I couldn’t stand a string of her questions, not that day, not with Stephen Cannon’s blood still fresh in my mind and on my hands to match.

  Not with my ass still burning sore from Lucian Morelli’s dick, and my heart still burning sore from his touch.

  I felt an instinctive shudder as I reached for a token cupcake from the buffet. I knew it. I felt it. I sensed in one single flutter that it was Uncle Lionel stepping up behind me and pressing tight.

  I hated his body. I’d always hated his body.

  I hated him with every part of my soul.

  “Your mother is after you,” he whispered, and his voice had that sheen of venom and filth I’d come to know so well.

  I couldn’t hold back my tongue. “Yeah, well maybe I don’t want to speak with her.”

  His fingers jabbed my ribs before clasping my arm. “If you have any sense in that ditzy skull of yours, you’ll go and speak with your mother. She’s losing her patience with you.”

  I turned to face him, hating his breath in my face. My eyes must have been bristling with hate, and my heart was overflowing to match. It would have been my greatest pleasure to take a knife from the buffet table and stab him deep in his stomach, just like I’d seen Lucian do to Stephen. It would have sent my soul soaring to the sky to watch his pain.

  He wasted no time before speaking again.

  “She knows you’ve been socialising with druggie downtown losers again, Elaine. She knows you’re fresh from another round of bail outs.” He tutted. “Cheapening the family name. Silly little girl you are. Such a silly little girl. If you have any sense, you’ll take her offer when you hear it.”