Lucian (21 page)

“I learned something the last time this happened,” Lucian stated wryly.

Was he trying to be funny? Jordyn’s patience was running thin. “What’s that?”

“It hurts me like nothing else.”

“Oh.”

“I don’t like to fight,” Lucian muttered. “With you, anyway. Anybody else is fair game.”

Jordyn rolled over in the bed, keeping her eyes averted to anywhere but him. “I didn’t think my question was so unreasonable it required you to be a complete asshole when responding.”

“It didn’t. I know.”

“And?”

“And maybe an apology would make a lot of sense if you actually understood what I was apologizing for.”

“True,” Jordyn replied.

“I didn’t need to be screwing around with my guns tonight.”

Jordyn’s brow furrowed as she rolled to her back. “I don’t understand.”

“All that noise, I didn’t need to be making it. I don’t always wander the halls because I dream. Sometimes I just don’t want to sleep, or I can’t. Tonight was one of those nights. I had too much noise inside my head, so I made a different noise to make it go away. Something else to think about for a while. That’s why I was up.”

“What kind of noise?” Jordyn asked.

“Lately it’s been about my concerns for you.”

“But it’s not all about that.”

“No,” Lucian confirmed, the word so low she strained to hear. “The anniversary of Antony finding me is coming up. Sometimes it passes by without me noticing, and other times, when I have a lot to think about regarding my life, I focus in on it more than I realize. You’re important in my life, a really big change, so this time around I’m thinking about it more.

“And you were right,” he continued quieter. “It makes me embarrassed and ashamed. It hurts me. I don’t want to be looked at like some lost, little boy ever again. I shouldn’t have to feel weak and helpless, but that’s exactly what those memories dredge up inside. It doesn’t matter how much money I have, how secure I am, or how cold and ruthless I seem to others, I will always be Luciano Grovatti behind this person. I know who I am beneath this new last name. A child with murdered parents, a boy with no home, and broken because of it.” 

“Are you really, though?” Jordyn asked, not wanting to push the wrong button again.

“As Lucian? No.”

“But you can’t be Lucian if you weren’t Luciano first.”

Lucian cleared his throat, shifting from foot to foot. “Aren’t you going to ask about what I meant?”

“About Antony finding you?”

“Yeah.”

“Only if you want me to,” Jordyn replied.

“I thrive in this world. The violence of it, the greed; the rules I grew up with and the understanding of what was expected of me. I know just where I’m going when Antony is done. I was always meant to be Dante’s underboss, and I’m fine with it. I don’t mind spilling blood for this life. Sweetheart, you have no idea just how much blood stains my hands.”

“I don’t care, either.”

“I know. And that reassures me more than you can understand. There’s going to be nights I won’t come home, and if I do, I’ll be in the shower for hours before I’m cleaning it out with bleach. Someday, if we share a last name, you’re probably going to be my biggest confidant because I fucking hate confession and I haven’t talked honestly in a long time. I like to know that even if you worry, you’re not going to be waiting up because you trust me. These things are good for me, for us.”

“Okay.” Jordyn pushed herself up to a sitting position, resting back to the headboard. “What does this have to do with the Antony thing?”

Lucian shrugged and moved a little further into the room. “I always wondered what my biological father wanted for me. He kept me secret from everyone, even his best friends. It’s ridiculous, too, because if anyone considered the dates, I was born months before John even married Kate.

“I was not a product of an affair. Kate and John were in no way involved before their wedding night. It was all business. And even if they were, Kate would have been the other woman because my father had been involved with my mother for years before her. His father would have disapproved of her lower economic status and half-Italian, half-American heritage. My father could have publically announced my birth, Jordyn, but he didn’t. He still kept me a secret.”

“Have you asked Antony why that was?”

“Sure. Like I said, he thinks it was a mixture of John knowing his father would be critical of my mother and the deal with Kate’s father. We never went much deeper into it. I don’t like to talk about what it means to me and Antony didn’t push me to.”

“Like John didn’t want you involved in the family, you mean.”

“Maybe,” Lucian answered, his voice strained with emotion. “I mean, that’s easier to consider than thinking he didn’t want me at all, right? Because it’s either he didn’t want me to be the man I am now, or he didn’t want people to know he had a child with a woman he didn’t consider appropriate to marry. Which would you want to be, the failure to a dead man, or a dirty secret?”

“Lucian, don’t …”

“Well? Which one?”

Jordyn took a deep breath, forcing her inner turmoil to calm. “Neither. I’d want to be exactly who I wanted to be. That’s what we’re supposed to do, anyway. Find and make our own way. Do our own thing. We’re unique to us, Lucian. We’re not the people who came before. If it works for you, that’s what matters.”

“So why am I focusing on what doesn’t?”

“I suppose it does, too. You have questions for people who aren’t here. I think what’s more important for you to deal with is if you can be happy not knowing the answers.”

“I like who I am, Jordyn.”

“So be happy with what you are, Lucian. You expect it to be the same thing, and I don’t think it is. Lucian the man and Luciano the little boy are the same people. You can’t like who you are if you’re not happy with what you were. It can’t be swept away like dirt under a rug. Eventually, it all gets washed out.” 

Lucian had come to stand by the side of the bed, and he fiddled with the blanket. “Since when did you become so well-versed in human mentality?”

Jordyn snorted indelicately. “Since I was born to an addict mother who cared more for her drugs and men than feeding her own daughter. Being a teenager struggling to find some self-worth when you weren’t worth very damned much to the woman who gave you your life, it can really screw with your head. It was no surprise I grabbed on to the closest people I thought would treat me like family because I didn’t have the first clue of what a real family was.”

Lucian’s fingers skipped under the blanket, his hand laying to Jordyn’s leg. “Sometimes I think my family is too intrusive. Always around, sticking their noses in where it doesn’t belong … I could tell them to screw off, but it probably wouldn’t make a difference.”

“I’m going to ask about Antony finding you now,” Jordyn warned.

Lucian’s tone grew thicker as he said, “Yeah, okay.”

“What happened?”

“I don’t remember a lot being only six, but after John was killed, my mother somehow knew it had to do with her and me. She tried to protect me; moved us from place to place for a little while. Motels, shelters, and things like that. Anything to keep under the radar. Problem was, she didn’t get out of New York. This was her home, too.

“The bigger problem was that she relied on my father,” Lucian continued, heaving a sigh. “To keep things paid, and money for everything. Whatever she had was probably used up pretty quick. She screwed up when she went to her sister for help. She left me at a shelter and told me to stay hidden, that she’d be back. I remember her crying, because I think she knew.”

“And she didn’t come back,” Jordyn assumed.

Lucian shook his head sadly. “No. A couple of days without her showing up, the people who ran the shelter started talking. They were going to call the authorities about me since I was abandoned. It’d been beat into my head that those weren’t good people, and they wouldn’t help me. My last name wasn’t safe, and I needed to stay hidden. So, I ran. I did just what my mother told me to do and I stayed in the shadows everywhere. The streets were my home for two years. I slept in alleys that were warmer because of heating vents, and I stayed out of the rain because I didn’t have clothes if mine were ruined.

“Some of the homeless helped me when I would let them,” Lucian added, a shake quaking his words. “Some gave me food, others clothes, if they had it. Some just kept me safe from the predators, because there are awful monsters who hide in those streets. And nobody even cares because it’s not their child or family those people hunt.”

Jordyn’s emotions threatened to spill over, but she forced them back long enough to ask, “How did Antony find you?”

“I was hiding in an alley beside one of his restaurants to find something to eat. A few of his men had noticed me there before. They’d tried to follow me once, but lost me. I guess me muttering about in Italian made one of them stop and think. By that time, Antony had already gone in search of my mother and found the documents of me in her old apartment. Anyway, that night, when he said my father’s name, I trusted him. He apologized to me and then he took me home.”

“Lucian—”

“Antony paid for my mother’s burial, because her family couldn’t afford it. I’ve never been to her grave.”

Jordyn felt his hand tighten to her leg, like he was rotting himself in place. “Hey, look at me.”

Lucian wouldn’t. “I attached myself to Dante first, because he was the closest in age, but he scared the shit out of me half of the time. He was a lot louder as a kid than he is now. Gio talked a lot and was a joker always causing trouble, and he still does. I liked the house because it was big, but sometimes it was too big, so I’d hide in the closets for hours until someone finally found me. Cecelia hated that, but she never once scolded me for it. A few months after my ninth birthday, Antony found me under his desk playing with a pocket knife. Instead of punishing me for having the knife, he showed me how to peel an apple and I’ve called him my father ever since.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Lucian whispered. “Those people gave me everything.”

“And you feel guilty because you miss what was taken away.”

“Sometimes. Mostly I’m just stuck trying to figure out what I was supposed to be.”

“You told me once that you knew John loved you,” Jordyn said quietly. “Was that a lie?”

“No, absolutely not.”

“Then he wouldn’t care who you are, Lucian. The son Antony raised, or the boy he helped make. It wouldn’t matter.”

“I’m never going to know for sure, though.”

“Like I said before, you need to figure out if not being able to have answers is something you can live with. It’s your life. No one else’s. Don’t you know anything about your future you want for sure that is solely yours and has nothing to do with your past?”

“You,” Lucian said instantly. “I want you.”

“You had me before you told me any of this. I’d like to think you’ll have me long after, too.”

“No one else will,” he stated, a possessiveness filling his tone and sending a shiver up Jordyn’s spine. “I wouldn’t let them.”

“No one,” she echoed. “Come to bed. It’s late and you’re tired, Lucian.” 

Lucian did, but he didn’t crawl onto his side like Jordyn thought he would. Instead, he pulled the blanket off her and slipped between her thighs, sinking into a waiting embrace. For a long while, he stayed like that, still and silent.

It was only when his talented fingers began unclasping the buttons of the dress shirt she pulled on before coming to find him earlier that Jordyn finally understood what he wanted now. Lucian pushed open the shirt to expose her chest without a word, his mouth coming down to dot along her breasts, up to her collarbones, and underneath her jaw. Gentle, sweet kisses of his lips and tender flicks of his tongue striking out to taste her skin.

Softly, he touched her, his fingertips skipping across her flesh, waking up nerves and desire. Heat curled in her belly, driving her thighs to close around Lucian’s sides as his hardening length ground into her bare sex. Instinctually, her hands found purchase to the strong lines of his back and shoulders, her fingers digging in to hold him closer, and to feel him better. Arousal soaked between her thighs, and she yearned for him to fill her and take her.

“I want to love,” he murmured along the curve of her right breast. “Love and then sleep.”

“We can do that,” she replied in a moan. Lucian’s teeth enclosed her nipple, making Jordyn arch into his mouth and gasp.  “
Jesus, Lucian
.”

“Again,” he demanded, grinding harder into her sex, his fingers grabbing tightly to her hips. “My name in your mouth just like that, sweetheart. Like you adore and love me, only me. Like I’m all you need and want.”

Jordyn whimpered low. “You
are
.”

“Say it, Jordyn.”

“Lucian, please …”

He was only gone from her body for a moment, long enough to grab what he wanted from the bedside table, but every inch of her felt it. A loss, a piece of her gone. It wasn’t normal.

Jordyn didn’t want it to be.