When I didn’t offer anything else, he asked, “Not anymore?”
“I want to. I’m trying to—I’ve been trying to. I’ve sung a lot more for the fun of it in this last year than I had in the five years before. But most of the time I feel like I don’t know how to just sing.”
His dark eyes searched mine for a few seconds before he nodded. “The night I was shot . . . a lot of people died and a lot of people lived. I’m just lucky that when it all ended, I was one of the latter.”
I thought over his vague response as confusion flooded me. “Were you in the military?”
He laughed softly, but something in the tone changed at the end. The sound made me feel cold even though it was warm and humid outside. “No to the military. You see who I am now, Briar? Who I am here with you?”
I hesitated for only a second before nodding.
“You saw who I was when you came here?”
Another nod.
“I wasn’t born into this. I had to fight to get into this. I had a rough life before I met William. The night I was shot was a live-or-die shootout within my family.” When I looked up at him in horror, he dipped his head closer. “Not what you expected from your devil? It was a necessity for William to take me on.”
This man wasn’t just cloaked in darkness; he was darkness. I had feared him and that darkness, but I had never thought of him as dangerous. Panic slithered through me at his menacing tone, but I didn’t shy away. Because even though the fear was there, I couldn’t connect it to the man in front of me.
“You . . . did you kill someone?”
He released me and rolled so he was on his back and staring at the top of the canopy, but not before I saw his eyes. “I’ve killed a lot of people.”
I knew from his steady words he wasn’t lying, but I also knew in the heaviness of his tone and the pain that flashed through his eyes he hated himself for what he’d done.
And it was then that I knew I had been right: I didn’t know this man at all. Because that look and that weight pressing on him wasn’t the devil who’d bought me, or the Lucas who’d broken rules for me. He was someone else entirely.
I sat up so I was sitting cross-legged on the bed and forced myself to remain calm when I asked, “Why?”
As if he didn’t realize he was doing it, his right hand passed across his left forearm a few times, just over the large, swirling tattoo. “It’s easier to explain why I’ve killed people than it is to explain why I tried to break you, but that doesn’t mean I can explain it to you.”
“Lucas, I’ve given my body and heart to you, and you just told me you’ve killed people—including members of your family.” I took a steadying breath when my voice took on a frantic edge and swallowed roughly before continuing. “You need to give me something.”
He reached out for me, but he paused when I flinched. “I won’t ever hurt you again.” His hand stayed suspended between us for long, torturous moments before it fell to his stomach, and he looked at the canopy again. “Sometimes you don’t have a choice, Briar,” he said in a soft, haunted voice. “As for the family . . . like I said, it was a live-or-die situation, and my brother technically shot first.”
I stared down at him as shock and confusion flooded and overwhelmed me. I didn’t understand how he could talk about these things so calmly. I didn’t understand how they could be true at all and wanted them not to be.
“How could a family enter into a shootout in the first place?”
“Because they wanted to hurt something I’d vowed to protect.” Lucas’s face had slipped into an emotionless mask, and his voice was a deadly calm when he responded, letting me know he was done talking about what had happened that night.
I’d wondered so many times how the women who were forced into this world would ever want to stay, especially when they would never have the kind of relationship that Lucas and I had. After meeting William’s women and hearing their stories from their previous lives . . . in a way, I could understand. But only to an extent.
Even more, I’d wondered how these men had ever entered this world, and how their minds had been warped and twisted into thinking this life was okay. I’d been sure they’d all come from money—given what I’d seen of Lucas and William, and knowing that they paid for all the women—and had disturbing fetishes. But after being given the smallest glimpse into Lucas’s past, I couldn’t help but wonder how someone like him had stumbled into this life, and why his past had been essential for it.
“So, you’re dangerous,” I mumbled softly.
“Not to you.”
“In general.” I let my eyes gloss over the scars that littered his arms and wondered what all the other ones were from. “Why was that a necessity for William? What in this life would require you to be that way? The energy industry can’t be so . . .” My words died when he laughed darkly.
“Not all of the men in this world work in energy. There are some in oil, gas . . .” He eyed me and dropped his voice. “The government, the police . . . which is why we’re able to live the way we do. We control Houston and everything that happens in the surrounding cities. Police, weapons, drug—”
“Sex trafficking,” I added bitterly.
Lucas made a face like he was going to deny it. “Human trafficking.”
“There isn’t a difference—”