Lucas grabbed my arm, his fingers biting into my skin. “You are my property.”
I didn’t even bother to think, my hand colliding with his cheek as soon as the last word was out of his mouth.
“I’m no one’s property!” I screamed, wrestling my arm out of his grasp. I hated him at this moment, the way he was making me feel and how he was trying to push me away.
He was succeeding. “Fine. Then get out. Go.”
Lucas’s eyes grew dark with anger and though I was pissed at him for various different reasons, a spurt of heat spiraled into my stomach suddenly. There could be no way I was turned on.
Right?
Lucas flexed his fist and I glanced at it, some of my anger turning into a small shiver of fear as my hand burned from the contact with his face. He wouldn’t hit me. Not like this. Perhaps in bed, when I gave him a run for his money, but never hard enough to do any real damage.
But that fist could break my jaw or worse.
Lucas let out a harsh laugh and before I knew it, he was walking out, slamming the door shut behind him. I stood there for a moment, my heart hammering in my ears, and my body, well, it was heated from both anger and something that I didn’t want to think about right now because it was wrong.
Lucas had been cruel to me, nothing like the man who had worshipped my body for the last few days, told me that he loved me in his own way, and given me hope.
Now that hope was dashed, possibly beyond repair.
A sob escaped me as I ran over to the door and pulled on it, only to find it locked. He had locked me in.
Lucas had locked me in his room, full of his things and his smell and, oh God, the bed that held so many memories and what I thought was love.
I slid down the door to the floor as tears started to stream down my cheeks, my chest heaving with sobs I couldn’t control any longer. After everything I had been through with my father, with Lucas, with my life in general, I would never have thought that something as cruel as what Lucas had done would hurt so badly.
But I could hear my heart shattering in my chest. I had no one. Nico had Rory and their children. They didn’t need me in their lives, and if something were to happen, I knew that my brother would eventually move on.
My father…I didn’t even want to consider that he held any shred of affection for me. He had used me as his pawn, and that was one of the many reasons I was in the position I was in right now.
Lucas, though—I had thought he might be someone that could be all mine, the special part of my life that I was missing. I had thought he would take my love and cherish it, not use it against me to hurt me like he had just done.
Drawing my knees up to my chest, I buried my face in the circle of my arms and cried for everything that had been lost tonight, including the damage that Lucas could never repair.
He had no idea what he had done to me and more importantly, what he would no longer have.
Chapter 42
Lucas
I opened one eye and immediately shut it with a groan, my head feeling like it was going to split open at any moment. I had a crick in my neck, and my right leg had gone to sleep, but nothing hurt as much as my head did.
I hated a hangover. It muddled my thoughts, and more importantly, it made me not remember bits and pieces of what had happened the night before.
There were snatches of conversation, of Leda yelling at me, tears in her eyes for something I had said to her.
What the fuck had I said? I couldn’t make the words form in my mind, but I knew I hadn’t gone upstairs to fight with her.
I had gone to apologize to her, and clearly I had done a shitty job at it if I was sleeping in my fucking study, nursing the worst hangover I had ever had.
The entire plan had been for me to apologize and then give her the ring.
Fuck. The ring.
I forced my eyes open, blinking several times to clear my vision and the nausea in the back of my throat before reaching into my pocket and pulling out the diamond that Emil had procured. The stone sparkled in the morning light and for some reason, I wanted to throw it across the study. I hadn’t given it to Leda last night, which meant I had gotten cold feet.
I, Don Valentino, had cold feet about making Leda my own. My wife. There would never be another that could compare to what she did to me, to how she made me feel, and making her my wife should be relatively easy, considering the shit I had put her through. She deserved my last name.