Total pages in book: 98
Estimated words: 95046 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 475(@200wpm)___ 380(@250wpm)___ 317(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 95046 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 475(@200wpm)___ 380(@250wpm)___ 317(@300wpm)
No.
I shove her away—hard, rougher than I mean to.
She stumbles back onto the bed, the force knockin' her off-balance.
"Don't," I snap, voice comin' out harsher than intended. "Don't fuckin'—just don't."
Emmaleen curls into herself immediately, knees pullin' up to her chest, arms wrappin' around her legs. She makes herself small—impossibly small for someone who moments ago was reachin' for me like I was salvation.
And then she starts cryin'.
Not the performative tears from before, when she was beggin' for her King and her Master. These are different—raw, broken, the kind of sobbin' that comes from somewhere deep and unreachable. Her shoulders shake with it, her whole body tremblin' as she presses her face against her knees and just breaks.
I stand there, still hard, still breathin' too fast, hands clenched into fists at my sides.
Father Patrick's voice cuts through the chaos in my head, sharp and knowin'. Lorcan, mah boy, what've ya done now?
"Fuck off," I mutter under my breath.
Ya brought her here. Ya cuffed her to yer bed. Ya got hard lookin' at her throat. And now she's cryin' on yer sheets and ya don't know whether to comfort her or call Giovanni and beg him to take her back.
"I said, fuck off."
But he's not wrong.
I don't know what I'm doin'. Don't know if I'm helpin' or hurtin'. Don't know if draggin' her away from Giovanni was an act of mercy or just another layer of cruelty in a situation already so fucked up I can barely see the edges of it anymore.
All I know is that she's naked and broken on my bed, cryin' like the world's endin', and my cock is still thick and wantin' against my jeans because apparently I'm just as much of a monster as Giovanni.
I'm just better at pretendin' I'm not.
I suck in a deep breath.
Let it out slow.
And then I pull my phone out of my pocket and find his number.
Giovanni picks up on the first ring.
His growl is deep and his words are hard. "About fucking time."
11
"About fucking time," I snap into the phone, my voice raw with barely controlled rage.
Lorcan's accent comes back at me. "Giovanni, listen—I know how this looks, right, but I was only tryna protect ya. Uncle Fearghus, he sent me to yer place on orders from the LaRiccias, they wanted dirt on ya about Rico, evidence ya killed their boy or kidnapped him or—but I wasn't lookin' for anythin', I swear on Saint Patrick himself, I was never there to find things, I was there to report back that there was nothin' to find, that ya had nothin' to do with Rico goin' missin', that it was all just—"
"Lorcan."
He doesn't stop. The panic in his voice escalates. "—and I know I shouldn't have been in yer house at all, shouldn't have used the codes from when I put your security in, but I thought if I just got in and out quick, filed the report sayin' everythin' was clean, the LaRiccias would drop it and ya'd be safe, and I never meant to—"
"Lorcan," I repeat, harder this time.
"—she just appeared, Giovanni, came walkin' out of yer library wearin' nothin' but that collar and I just—I lost time, I don't even remember decidin' to grab her, it just happened and now she's—"
"Lorcan."
Silence.
Then a shaky exhale on his end of the line.
My heart hammers against my ribs. Every muscle in my body coils tight, wound so taut that one wrong word will snap me in half.
The question forms before I can stop it, desperate and raw in a way I don't recognize. "Is Emmaleen okay?"
Lorcan hesitates.
That single beat of silence—maybe half a second, maybe less—detonates inside my chest like a grenade. My brain supplies images immediately. Scenarios. Each one worse than the last.
Emmaleen cuffed to Lorcan's bed, spiraling into that desperate place Jino described. Begging for structure, for commands, for someone to fill the void I created when I trained her to need me. Lorcan touching her. Lorcan's hands on her skin. Lorcan's cock inside her while she cries and calls him Master because her broken brain doesn't know the difference anymore between the man who conditioned her and the man who kidnapped her.
Or worse.
Emmaleen hurt. Lorcan losing control the way he did thirteen years ago in that St. Augustine's bathroom, hand around a girl's throat, eyes glazed with something darker than lust. Emmaleen unconscious on his floor. Emmaleen not breathing. Emmaleen gone because I trained her to submit to anyone who commanded her and then gave someone the chance.
"Giovanni—" Lorcan starts.
I can't breathe.
The monster inside me claws at my ribcage, roaring for blood, demanding I burn Boston to the ground until I find her. But underneath that rage is something worse—something small and broken that sounds like the eight-year-old boy tied to a post in a warehouse, waiting for someone to save him when his father had no intention of ever doing so.