CHAPTER48
LUCIA
Jax’s huge arms are wrapped around me as I sit on his lap in the back of my father’s car. The smell of blood fills my nose, its coppery tang in my throat even after I guzzled an entire bottle of water as soon as we got out of the diner. I’m not sure I will ever get the stench from my nostrils. If my father had any lingering doubts about me joining the family business, I’m pretty sure I just laid them to rest. I didn’t know that people could endure the levels of pain that Dolos—or Richard, as I now know him—just did. Even when they cut him wide open and pulled out his insides, I didn’t flinch. The screams and the smell made me want to retch, but I didn’t. This is what the two men I love most in the world do and it’s what I do now, too.
My father called some of his men to dispose of Richard’s mutilated body, dump the Prius and remove any evidence of us being there, and then we climbed into his SUV to head for home. I catch him glancing at Jax and me in the rearview mirror and I offer him a faint smile to let him know that I’m okay. He winks at me before his gaze drifts back to the road.
“You okay?” Jax asks as I shift on his lap.
“Yes,” I murmur. “I can’t wait to get home and showered.”
“We’ll be home soon,mija,” my father answers. “Magda has your old room ready.”
“No, Papi,” I reply. “I’m not moving back home.”
“You’re not going back to your apartment,” he snaps.
“She and Matthias will move in with me,” Jax says and I look at him and frown.
“I’m not moving in with you,” I whisper and Jax frowns right back at me.
“You’re not going back to that apartment, so you come home with me or you stay with Jax until I find you somewhere more appropriate,” my father adds.
“So you’re happy for me to live with Jax?” I ask him leaning forward in seat so I can see his face when he replies.
“No,” he snaps. “But his house is like a goddamn fortress. So…”
I look back to Jax. “It’s not up for discussion, Angel. One of us will be taking you home with us tonight.”
“Fine,” I mumble. “I’ll stay with you, but I’m not moving in.”
“Why not?” he whispers.
I beckon him closer, until I can press my lips against his ear so my father won’t hear me. “Because you have screwed half the women in California in that house.”
“Oh,” he chuckles softly, “then we’ll look for somewhere new then.”
I shake my head. I don’t have the energy to argue with the pair of them about my living situation right now. Whatever drugs Richard gave me are still making me feel woozy—or maybe it’s the lack of food and the fact I just watched a man tortured to death—or a combination of all three.
I close my eyes and lean against Jax’s chest and he strokes my hair.
“You said you weren’t the first girl he’d done that to,mija,” my father breaks the silence in the car.
“Yes. He said that he usually liked skinny girls that were younger than me. That was why he was so angry with me, because when I made you think I was dating him and you had Jax look into him, he was pissed that he almost got found out.”
“But then he took you, so he must have known we would come for him?” Jax says with a frown.
“Yeah,” I agree. “But I think he honestly believed he was some sort of criminal mastermind.”
“Hmm. Naming yourself after a Greek god does kind of scream over-inflated ego,” Jax says.
“You think you could look into it a little more, Papi? See if there are any other girls he’s maybe taken, or even killed?”
“He’s dead now,mija. He can’t hurt anyone else. No good will come from digging into his past.”
“But those girls might have people worried about them, Papi. Parents or brothers, sisters, children?”
He takes a few seconds to answer. “Fine,” he eventually sighs.