His jaw worked a little.
“Sometimes I think I could have stopped it,” I said miserably. “But he was really strong.”
“I’m going to kill him,” Lucien said casually.
I gasped, sitting up and drawing the sheet around my lap. “You can’t say things like that, Lucien.”
He took a drag from his cigarette, totally composed again. “No, I’m going to kill him and Viktor Anatole is going to help me. You met him last night. He’s the Pakhan for the Bratva, the Russian godfather. We’ve collaborated since the tension began to rise, faking conflict between us to throw Romano off our trail. He’ll give me the firepower I need if things go wrong. We will kill Carlo Romano and his son.”
I gaped at him. “And then what?”
“And then I will be king,” he said. “And you will be queen.”
So that was what his talk of chess, of me being queen, had been about. Now that I thought about it, he’d made a good many cryptic remarks alluding to his plans, but they hadn’t made any sense at the time.
“How long have you been planning this?” I whispered.
He considered my question for a moment. “Since the moment Romano threw me into that cell and tortured me like I was nothing more than a rabid dog. He is unfit to be capo.”
“Why would Viktor Anatole do this for you? It’s probably a trap,” I said, fear making me frantic.
“He’s doing it in exchange for peace, for redrawn territory. And I’ll give him a bride and seal it by making him family,” Lucien said.
“A bride?” I whispered.
“He and my cousin, Sienna, will marry once Romano is dead.”
I had met Sienna a few times before and she was a sweet, headstrong woman a few years older than I. Lucien couldn’t be so cruel as to send her away to wed the godfather of the Russian mafia, a man old enough to be her father.
“You would force Sienna to marry him?”
He blinked and I thought I saw a ghost of irritation cross his face. “She made a deal with me. I allowed her to get her degree and now I get to marry her to whomever I choose.”
“That’s barbaric!”
“It’s the reality of our world,” Lucien said. “We’re both making the same sacrifice. Now, I’m sure I don’t have to swear you to secrecy about this. If you tell, it won’t just be me who’s killed. It’ll be all of us. You, Duran, Iris, likely even Sienna.”
I shook my head. “I swear, I won’t tell anyone.”
He regarded me for a long moment. Then he stepped back and put the cigarette to his mouth and ran both hands over his hair, slicking it down. He paced from one side of the room to the other, finally stopping to linger by the desk where he’d left a glass of amber liquid. He downed it in a single gulp and turned back and beckoned to me.
“Come here, Olivia.” His voice was a little hoarse.
My stomach fluttered, but this time it wasn’t from fear. I slid from the bed and padded barefoot across the room to where he stood. It hadn’t hit me before now how tall he was, how broad his body was towering over mine. Something about his crisp shirts and suits made him seem tamed, almost contained, but now that he was disheveled and his naked torso hovered at eye level, his presence was almost stifling.
“I will kill Romano, not just for what he did to me, but for daring to touch you,” Lucien said flatly. “I’ll slit his throat for hurting you.”
My nipples hardened and my heart began thumping wildly. I had no doubt he would do just that. It felt strange, but it also felt good, to have someone in my corner at last.
“And I won’t let you out of my sight around Romano,” he said. “I wish I could say you don’t have to see him again, but I don’t have that power yet. Now, you need rest and I need to get sober. Goodnight.”
Then he was gone, the sound of his shoes echoing down the hall after him. I stood in the middle of the room with my heart pounding from the roller coaster that had been the last hour. It was going to take a while for me to fully register what he’d just told me, to understand the gravity of what Lucien had planned.
Chapter Seven
Lucien
The morning after I went to Olivia’s room, I woke with my mouth dry and my stomach roiling. As I pushed a finger to the back of my throat and vomited up the rest of the whiskey in me, the memories of last night came flooding back. My mind was a confusing mess, inundated with images of her on her back, her legs spread, her fingers playing in the valley between her thighs.