The rage sprung up in me. Seamus and Duncan could kiss my sorry ass.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I hissed, and I meant it. In that moment, I fucking meant it.
I stepped out of there, and the very idea of handing my responsibilities over to those pieces of shit was enough to enrage me – except it was surpassed as I began the trek to my top-level domain. Surpassed by a wave of priorities that made me shiver. I couldn’t deny it anymore. I had to start speaking my truths to myself as well as other people.
I wasn’t interested in what my father was threatening, or what was happening around me in this place, or what I should be interested in between the Power Brothers and the Constantine pieces of shit I’d hated my whole life. I should be celebrating the conflict and focusing everything I had on teaming up with the idiots who’d help me destroy them, but I wasn’t. All I was damn well thinking about was Elaine back at my shithole of a retreat and just how much I wanted to hurt the men who’d torn her apart with their seedy games.
The truth was a hard one to accept, and it took my breath before I made it back to the elevator. I’d never been floored by emotion in my life. I’d never known such a rush of conflict, never mind how to fucking deal with it.
I forced myself into the elevator and selected the top floor. It was the slowest ascent of my life.
I hated myself as I faced up to the impossibility of what lay ahead of me. I couldn’t walk the line between Holdings and Elaine. There was no way I could juggle the two of them – not with the lengthy journeys from Peak to NYC and back again every day. I couldn’t indulge the temptress and my wants for her and still maintain my control over the Morelli empire. It was impossible. The whole thing was fucking impossible.
It was time to do it. I had to make my choice.
Upstairs or downstairs? Holdings or Elaine? Sitting back at my desk and stepping back up to my position, or telling my father I was stepping down until I could sort myself out?
It should have been Holdings. Of course, it should’ve been Holdings. I should’ve turned my back on the bitch and finished her off for good without a backwards glance. I could take that sweet virginity of hers and revel in her pain and dismiss her into the trash where she belonged as a Constantine. Only it wasn’t Holdings I wanted. It wasn’t upstairs.
I stopped the elevator halfway up.
Fuck. FUCK. I shouldn’t do this. I shouldn’t even be contemplating making the most dumbass decision of my whole fucking life, but I was. I did.
I was cursing myself and everything I stood for as I pressed the button.29ElaineWhen Lucian’s car pulled up in the driveway, I was still outside with a trowel in the flowerbed. My heart did a terrible leap as I realized just what the hell I’d done by staying in this place and risking my life every second I was around him, but I’d done it. My decision had already been made.
The sun was still high in the sky, the afternoon barely half done when he’d parked up in the garage and was heading to the front door with his keys in his hand. I could have hidden in the bushes and pretended I’d already run away from him, but I didn’t. I was every bit the utter fool with a stupid crush on a monster when I called out to him from the garden.
“Over here, honey!” I waved my trowel in the air.
The monster stopped and started, fixing me in his piercing eyes as he stomped in my direction. I carried on digging the soil and pulling the weeds out, like it wasn’t the most insane decision I’d ever made and I wasn’t kidnapped in a hole of a place belonging to my arch enemy.
“What the hell are you doing? Are you out of your fucking mind?”
His tone was blunt, but it wasn’t aggressive. His eyes were wild but not full of hate as he stared down at me.
I shrugged. “Probably.”
“Probably?”
“Yeah, probably. Maybe I do just want you to kill me? Otherwise I’d have been running back to Bishop’s Landing like a girl who wants to be snorting coke and hating her life every single minute of it.”
He couldn’t hold back a smirk.
“You’re doing alright on that. I’d have expected a lot more wallowing and begging on the coke front.”
Yeah, I would too. I’d surprised myself there. I was firmly on the same page as him on expecting the wallowing and begging for lines of powder. That and bottles of fizz.
Lucian tossed his keys in his hand as he scoped out the pile of weeds I’d been digging up. I did a silly little bow from my knees and waved the trowel in the air like some kind of superstar as I spoke again.