Authors: Bethany-Kris
Neither Dante nor Gio had spoken during the entire exchange, but they looked like they wanted to. Antony didn’t give them the chance.
“Everyone out of my office, now!”
The two brothers were up and going before Antony needed to repeat himself. Jordyn turned to leave, too.
“Not you, Jordyn,” Antony practically growled.
“I’m sorry,” Cecelia mumbled. “Antony, I’m so sor—”
“I’ll kill her,” he snarled. “Just like I should have twenty years ago!”
“I didn’t think she would hurt him,” Cecelia cried.
“Just get out!”
“Where’s Jordyn?” Lucian asked the moment he stepped into his father’s office.
“I sent her to bed, though I’m sure she’s awake and waiting for you.” Antony sighed, rubbing at his forehead as he looked over the papers spread across his desk. “She’s just about the only person in this house who didn’t test my patience tonight. You should be proud.”
“Hey, asshole,” Paulie barked from the couch. “I’ve only been here twenty minutes. Give an old friend credit where it’s due.”
“Then whatever you wanted can wait until morning,” Lucian stated, turning to leave.
He wanted Jordyn. Desperately. The injuries to his neck were aching, just like his throat. His muscles screamed in exhaustion and protest. All of the cuts along his knuckles stung to the high heavens. If anything, he needed a hot shower, Jordyn to make him forget about the day, and a long nap.
“No, it can’t,” Antony muttered unhappily.
“The fucking lawyers took care of it,” Lucian snapped impatiently. “Call them.”
Antony chewed on the inside of his cheek, an action Lucian was unaccustomed to seeing from his father. It usually signaled his nervousness. “I’ve been on the phone with more lawyers than I care to talk to tonight, son. That’s not what this is. I’m aware the detectives are going to mark it down as self-defence. I’m not concerned. Please sit down and talk to me. When we’re done, you can do whatever you want. Go home, stay here. There’s church tomorrow, but we certainly don’t expect you to go if you’re not feeling up to it. It’s up to you.”
Anxiety slipped through Lucian’s veins. “I’m not hiding again.”
“You won’t have to,” Paulie said softly. “Sit and talk to your father, Lucian. This is important.”
Lucian wasn’t even paying enough attention to notice the meaning behind his father’s consigliere’s words.
“I really just want Jordyn. Okay?”
“As soon as you let me say what I have to say,” Antony responded with a firm tone.
Lucian quickly realized arguing with his father was going to be useless. Frankly, he didn’t have the energy for it, either. Still, he refused to sit, leaning back to a wall with crossed arms instead.
Antony took that as his sign to continue. “John considered many paths you might someday take, Lucian. I believe there were certain ones he took that he didn’t want you unknowingly following.”
“I’m not in the mood to talk about the dead tonight,” Lucian said dully. “I’ve been prepared to leave them where they are for years.”
Not considering he had just about become one of them.
“Stop it and listen to me.” Antony’s glare pinned Lucian in place and kept him quiet. “John’s marriage made him openly unhappy, even though it had been arranged years before it finally was seen through and he agreed for the sake of his father. Honestly, I would have been surprised to find out he hadn’t had a mistress and a child on the side, rather than finding out he actually did.”
Lucian didn’t understand where this was going. He heard it all before. “So?”
“You might have been born before he married Kate, but he always considered you. Where you would go, how he would handle you after his father-in-law was gone and John took over the family. There were mistakes he made that he didn’t want you to make, but he didn’t want to tell you that you couldn’t make them, either. He wanted the decisions to be only yours because they were what you wanted, whether they were the right ones or not; regardless if he agreed with them or not.”
Antony frowned, staring down at the papers again. “Do you understand what I’m telling you, Lucian?”
“I get it in context, but as it applies to me at this point in time, not really.”
“Okay, so let me explain it differently. You may have been the illegitimate son of a Cosa Nostra man, but you were still his son. Eventually, you would have been the illegitimate son of a Cosa Nostra Don. The woman you came from didn’t matter to
la famiglia
, only your father’s side. When certain people were gone, the threats to you so to speak, John could have introduced you into his family, and you would have been accepted.”
“His wife’s opinion wouldn’t have mattered,” Paulie added from the side. “Not about his mistress, his child, or his second home. Not if she wanted to keep her place.”
Lucian swallowed the thickness building in his throat. “I’m aware.”
“But you never considered that was his plan, did you?” Antony asked.
“I asked—”
“About when you were young,” Antony interjected gently. “When you were just a child. You didn’t ask me about what he might have done when you were older.”
“How would you know?” Lucian shot back. “You didn’t even know about me until after.”
“I know because I have his Last Will and Testament, Lucian, which very clearly stated what he did and did not want for you. Specifically, any child of his, but it was clear he didn’t have plans on having more children, and certainly not with Kate.”
Lucian’s brow furrowed as he tilted his head to the side, taking in the information. “Why’s that?”
“John was careful to designate what he wanted to go to his child without ever naming a child. He never gave the indication what should be done if he had more than one child. Everything he gave to you, was given under the pretense if he had a child, this is what that child should have. Never more than that one hypothetical child—you.”
“I’ve never had access to his Will,” Lucian said, confused.
“I know, son. He didn’t want you to.”
“Why not?”
“I already gave you the answer to that,” Antony said.
Lucian searched his overly tired brain for what he missed. “He didn’t want me doing what he did, but he didn’t want to tell me not to do it, either.”
“Something of that nature,” Paulie agreed. “Are you getting it yet?”
Lucian was far too tired for this shit tonight. “I’m sorry, no. I’m too exhausted to play mind games.”
“It’s not a game,” Antony said gruffly. “This is about your life.”
“A life that is technically irrelevant because John is dead and has no bearing on what I do today. I don’t have to consider the what ifs, and I’m fine with who I am now.”
“Not exactly, Lucian.”
Lucian’s gaze narrowed. “Excuse me?”
Antony flipped a couple of the pages on his desk off to the side until he seemingly found whatever it was he was looking for. Then, he began to read. “The currency protected in select trust for the child or children produced by the sole issue of Johnathan Lucas Grovatti shall be continually held in trust until said child or children reach legal age. As of that period, the monies are to be equally divided between inheritors.”
His father left money for Lucian’s future children?
Lucian couldn’t wrap his head around that.
“For the trust to be opened to future offspring, the sole issue of Mr. Grovatti is required to be bound in a marriage of their own making and choice by age thirty, or have produced at least one issue of their own,” Antony continued reading. “Should the issue fail to marry or produce children—legitimate or otherwise—by this age, the trust shall be transferred to the legal wife of the deceased, Kate Tiffany Grovatti.”
Antony glanced up from the papers, a heavy expression weighing down his stare. “It also states in the clause you were not to be made aware of the trust because it wasn’t for you, specifically, and John didn’t want you making choices about love and marriage for the only reason there was money involved. That would have reflected his own mistakes, even if you wouldn’t have profited from it.”
“How much?” Lucian managed to ask.
“Is that important for you to know?”
Lucian shrugged, feeling dizzy. “Not really, I guess. Just … curious.”
“At the time, it was a two-point-three million. It has since gained interest, and will continue to until the trust is opened. You can safely assume it will be enough for whatever children you may have to pay for a more than adequate education, and start them out in life with better prospects than most. The estate John gained from his own father’s and grandfather’s death certainly left him with sufficient funds to safeguard his future and his family’s.”
Paulie coughed, wincing. “But only if he married Kate.”
“I’m not married and I don’t have children,” Lucian said.
“
Yet
,” Antony corrected pointedly. “Tell me it hasn’t crossed your mind since meeting Jordyn.”
Lucian felt his jaw tick from agitation. “That’s for me to consider. Whether or not I marry, or have children, is my choice. I don’t have to share it with the family and discuss it like it’s the same thing as me wanting to take a vacation. I still have two years, right?”
Antony nodded but at the same time, he sunk back into his chair. “Apparently someone else didn’t think so. You were close to reaching the designated age, and suddenly, you have a companion you obviously care for, being openly seen with you and whom you were affectionate with. It certainly wouldn’t be a far stretch to consider you may have been thinking of settling down. Do you really think it’ll take you two years to marry that girl, son?”
No
, Lucian thought instantly.
“What am I missing?” Lucian asked instead.
“Kate ordered the hits on you.”
Lucian snorted, the sound derisive. “She’s too obtuse to work out how to do that.”
“I can assure you she isn’t,” Antony replied. “And I have the transactions to prove it.”
“I still had two years,” Lucian insisted.
“At the first dinner … when Jordyn met Kate for the first time.”
“What about it?”
Antony rubbed at his forehead. “What did she ask you?”
Lucian had to bite his tongue to keep from focusing on the rage spilling into his gut. “She wanted to know if Jordyn was my
principessa
.”
“You said yes,” Paulie assumed.
“Not exactly.”
“You didn’t deny it,” Antony said, sighing.
“No,” Lucian confessed. “Are you sure?”
“Positive.” Antony tapped a pen to the desk, the seriousness of his expression turning into one of fatigue. “That was about the same time she requested money from Cecelia for something she claimed to want to be involved in overseas. Investment, or some nonsense. The accounts the money was wired to have nothing to do with Kate, and I can almost guarantee it’ll lead back to Christophe.”
Sickness rolled through Lucian’s insides like a wrecking ball. “She used my mother to get to me?”
“Cecelia didn’t know.”
“I don’t doubt that!”
“Calm down,” Antony murmured. “I know you’re angry—”
“I’m downright enraged,” Lucian spat. “That spiteful fucking bitch … Is she going to get away with this, too? My whole life has been nothing but taking the hits of her abuse to keep the peace. I’m not doing that anymore.”
“No, she’s not,” his father answered. “I’ve already made the call. By morning, it’ll be done. It’ll look like a suicide, I imagine, but they never do think to look for an injection site in the scalp.”
“Helpless and terrified,” Paulie continued for Antony, almost smirking. “It’s a terrible concoction of medications. Used separately, the drugs won’t do much. Together, they become deadly and burn out of the blood too fast to be identified, but what is left to detect gives off the impression of suicide. The victim is frozen, unable to move, speak, or breathe. But they can see and hear. So, while they slowly suffocate to death because their lungs won’t function, they get to be very aware of their upcoming demise. It’s perfect and awful at the same time. It looks like an overdose. A bottle of empty pills on the bedside table and everything appears just as it should.”
Lucian froze. He should be the one to end that woman after all she did to him. “What? If … Why not me?”
Antony tipped his chin downwards. “She’s a woman, and while I know she’s done you incredibly wrong, son, she is still your mother’s sister. Can you look Cecelia in the eye tomorrow after you’ve killed her blood? I did once, but it wasn’t easy. Despite how your mother despised her father, she was still his daughter. I spent years at her mercy apologizing for that and rightfully so, as the selfish need for me to feel retribution only left her in pain. Could you do the same?”
“That doesn’t matter.”
“And you’re a much better man than me,” Antony said, smiling sadly. “So I’ll answer what you deflected. No, you couldn’t. Go find your sweetheart, Lucian, and remember to sleep without worry. You’ve waited so long for her already. Why wait more?”
• • •
“What are you doing?”
The raspy, hoarse voice coming from only feet behind Jordyn made her jump. She nearly fell off the stool she was using to pull the shoe boxes down from the walk-in closet top shelf. Jordyn eyed Lucian from the side, trying to decide if she wanted to kick him from her spot for scaring her, or jump off the stool and kiss him. The terribly raw looking marks around his throat had tears prickling at the backs of her eyes, but she refused to cry.
“You sound awful.”