Chapter 11 - Midnight Confessions
|
Twenty minutes later, while Dante and his cleanup crew handed a bleeding Enzo Ferrara over to Agent Miller’s federal tactical squad two blocks away—along with security footage of Ferrara bringing illegal automatic weapons into a Manhattan hotel—the armored Maybach glided through the quiet night streets back toward the Upper East Side.
Instead of stopping at the Carlyle Residence where her father was sleeping, Lucian directed the driver two blocks south to his own private penthouse atop the Bellini Tower on Fifth Avenue.
"My father—" Elena began as the private elevator doors slid shut around them.
"Is sound asleep with four armed guards outside his door and two more in the lobby," Lucian interrupted quietly. He looked down at her bare feet on the elevator’s marble floor, the hem of her Valentino gown torn and dusted with white plaster and chemical powder from the fire extinguisher, and a small red scratch across her bare collarbone where flying brick had nicked her skin. "If you walk into your father’s apartment covered in drywall dust and gunpowder at eleven at night, he’ll have a stroke."
She couldn't argue with that. Now that the adrenaline of the stairwell firefight was draining from her veins, her knees felt like water, and a sudden, delayed tremor started in her hands.
When they stepped out into the cavernous, dimly lit penthouse—where floor-to-ceiling glass framed the glittering diamond lights of the Manhattan skyline from sixty stories up—Elena made it halfway across the living room rug before her legs gave out slightly.
She caught the back of a charcoal velvet sofa to steady herself.
Instantly, Lucian was behind her. He stripped off his ruined tuxedo jacket, tossed it onto a chair, and swept one arm beneath her knees and the other around her back, lifting her effortlessly off her feet.
"I can walk, Lucian," she whispered, though her arms went instinctively around his neck, her fingers brushing the warm skin above his loosened black bow tie.
"You ran down two flights of marble stairs barefoot and blinded a Camorra hitman with a fire extinguisher," Lucian murmured darkly, carrying her down the wide hallway into the master bathroom. "For the next hour, you don't lift a finger."
He set her gently on the wide marble bench inside the heated dressing alcove, knelt in front of her on the tile, and inspected the soles of her bare feet to make sure she hadn't stepped on broken glass in the stairwell.
Finding them unhurt, he stood up, took a warm, damp linen washcloth from the basin, and gently wiped the white plaster dust from her cheek and shoulders.
When he dabbed antiseptic onto the tiny brick scratch along her collarbone, his breathing slowed. His eyes stayed fixed on the faint red mark against her pale skin, his jaw clenching with a dark, simmering fury that made the air between them feel thick enough to catch fire.
"An inch lower," Lucian whispered, his voice rough and strained, "and that stray round would have hit your throat."
"You were standing right in front of me," Elena said softly, looking up into his gunmetal eyes. "You took the brunt of the wall exploding on your back."
"I’m built for it. You aren't."
"I'm not made of porcelain, Lucian. I’ve been taking care of myself and my father since I was twenty-two."
"I know," he murmured, his large hands coming up to frame her face, his thumbs resting along her cheekbones as he looked down at her with an unguarded vulnerability he had never shown another living soul. "And for eight months, every Tuesday and Thursday morning when you walked into my building at six-forty-five with dark circles under your eyes and your head down... I hated that I couldn't just walk across the lobby and take the weight off your shoulders without scaring you out of the city."
Elena’s heart stopped, then gave a violent, aching throb against her ribs.
"You... you weren't just noticing my missing cuff button," she whispered, the realization washing over her like a warm wave. "Who do you think recommended our community college department for that anonymous humanities grant in July that kept my adjunct paycheck funded?"
Lucian didn't deny it. A muscle feathered along his jaw.
"You never looked at me once after that second day in the lobby," he confessed quietly. "So I watched from where you couldn't see me. And yesterday, when Sabatini laughed behind your back in that boardroom, I called on you because I saw the fire in your eyes—and I wanted an excuse to hear your voice."
Elena reached up, her palms sliding over his crisp white dress shirt to rest over his racing heart.
"You didn't have to mock me in front of twelve men just to hear me talk, Lucian," she whispered, a shaky, breathless smile touching her lips.
"If I had asked you nicely, you would have lied and said you didn't speak a word of Italian so you could keep your head down," he growled softly, his hand sliding around the back of her neck, pulling the diamond pins from her hair until her chestnut waves tumbled down over her bare shoulders. "I knew the only way to make Elena Mercer fight back was to challenge her pride."
He bent his head, stopping a fraction of an inch from her mouth, giving her one last second to pull away.
May you like
Elena didn't pull away. She rose up on her knees on the marble bench, wound her arms around his neck, and pressed her mouth to his.
A low groan tore from Lucian’s throat as his arms locked around her waist, crushing her crimson silk gown against his chest and kissing her with eight months of starved, ruthless devotion.
