by Jade West
His eyes were wild when he turned back to face me, grabbing me by the hand before trying the doors, but they were locked up tight.
“What’s happening?!” I asked him. “Lucian?! What the hell?!”
I’d never seen him scared before.
I’d never seen him frantic like he was when he tried to elbow the window until it smashed, but still he couldn’t break it.
It only took one sight of the driver staring back at me in the rearview mirror before I knew exactly what was happening.
It wasn’t the same driver as the one who’d taken us to the Eye. It wasn’t any one of the drivers who’d been responsible for driving us around since we first stepped foot on their soil.
I cried out as the limo pulled off the road at a random junction marked with a sign that said “Briar Dene Village, please drive slowly.” But we didn’t drive slowly. The limo sped through the village and I cried out harder as it screeched and rumbled up onto a gravel path, heading off road into some woodland, lined high with trees. I was so scared. So fucking scared I couldn’t breathe as we came to a stop.
Lucian’s hand was tight in mine when the driver got out of the front seat and came for us. The gun was already aimed at us as he opened the door and ordered us out.
Lucian moved first, keeping me firmly behind him.
“Whatever they’ve offered you for doing this…” he said, but the guy shook his head.
“Don’t even think about trying to buy me,” he replied. “I’ve been pro Morelli my whole life, you ain’t got shit to hold over me. Now, get out of the car slowly. I know you’re packing. Hand it over. Try anything and I’ll blow your bitch’s brains out.”
Lucian did as he was told, revealing the holster beneath his jacket, carefully taking the gun from it.
The driver snatched it from him, told us to get to the trunk.
Lucian kept me close behind him as we did as we were told, shuffling to the back of the limo while the driver kept the gun aimed at Lucian. He opened the trunk and there was the original driver, curled up, dead.
“Your father wants your body,” the driver said. “And I’m gonna be delivering it to him. But first, he wants to see me do it. He wants to see you fucking die.”
He took out a cell phone and pointed it at us, and the light came on as he set the video camera rolling.
Once again he gestured us forward, guiding us into a space on the grass.
“Get the fuck over there,” he said to Lucian, and Lucian held his hands up as he stepped away from me.
“Stay where you are, Elaine,” he said as I made a move to follow him.
“No!” I cried out, but Lucian hissed at me.
“Stay there, Elaine. This is between me and my fucking father.”
The driver laughed. “Not quite, Morelli. Your father wants the blonde bitch’s corpse too. You can get married in fucking hell.”
My heart was weirdly glad I’d be going along with him. I didn’t want to live without Lucian. I’d rather be dead alongside him.
“Any last words for your father?” the driver asked Lucian, stepping up closer to get a decent view on camera.
“Yes,” Lucian told him, stepping forward so his stomach was pressed to the gun. He looked straight at the cell and pulled a smirk. An evil one. “Go fuck yourself, cunt.”
I screamed as the gun sounded and Lucian collapsed onto the grass, lifeless. I rushed over but I didn’t get very far, the driver stepping between me and my love before I could reach him.
I was wailing inconsolable, on my knees on the grass when the driver pointed both the cell and the gun at me.
“How about you, slut? Any last words for Mr. Morelli?”
The evening was dark around us, but not so dark that I didn’t see the movement of Lucian’s body between the driver’s legs. It didn’t make any sense, because if Lucian wasn’t dead, he would be screaming and flopping. He wouldn’t be able to hold himself still.
But of course.
He wouldn’t.
He wouldn’t be feeling a thing. He couldn’t feel a thing.
I gulped in a breath when my love got to his feet without a sound.
I’ll never forget the sound of that knife going in. The driver fell to his knees, dropped the cell and almost dropped the gun. He tried to swing it round but Lucian had him, snatching the gun in a beat.
My love won the battle and fired the next shot.
The driver fell to the floor, bleeding out and wailing before Lucian shot him in the back of the skull, just like the driver should have had the sense to do to him.
Then my perfect lover collapsed himself.
He collapsed to the ground with his arm clenched to his wound, blood spilling from his mouth as he struggled.
“Thank fuck for my insensitivity to pain,” he whispered.
I don’t know how I had the breath or the voice to make the call to the emergency services from Lucian’s cell, pulled out from his tux pocket, but I did it.
“Where the fuck are we?” I asked desperately trying to remember the name of the village we went through.
“Briar Dene,” Lucian managed.
“YES! Briar Dene Village, straight through it and onto a gravel path, in the woods. Please hurry,” I said to the despatcher.
I sat next to my fiancé and begged the heavens to save him. Please, please just save him.
My hand was pressed tight to Lucian’s bleeding stomach when the sirens and lights showed up, begging them for help as they fought for his life.
Thank fuck, and thank the lord, they managed to get Lucian’s breathing steady before we pulled up at the hospital, screeching to a halt outside the emergency entrance, a team all set to take him inside.
I waited for him through a long night.
I waited for him with the Quentins alongside me, Francesca rushing on in to give me a hug and hold me tight.
I waited until the morning next to the people who’d become our friends, grateful for the true support I felt from them with every breath.
And then, finally, when the sun was bright outside and London was stirring to life for another day, the doctor arrived to tell me Lucian Morelli was done with surgery, and that he too was stirring with life for another day.
Lucian Morelli was going to make it.
My fiancé was going to survive.
Epilogue
Lucian
It’s a beautiful thing, having such ultimate power over somebody so powerful. Enough evidence to destroy them if they so much as step a threatening foot onto your turf.
It was such a foolish move of my father to demand a video of my murder in which he’d been referred to by name. Such a fantastic stroke of fortune to have Quentin deliver the driver’s cell phone when I was recovering in the hospital from the shot to my stomach. As it turns out, Quentin’s contacts really did stretch as far as I’d figured, the veins reaching right into the upper echelons of the police force. High enough in the ranks that they handed over the evidence backhandedly, without another word.
My Morelli family were quiet across the Atlantic, feigning a pathetic happiness to the press at my engagement to Elaine Constantine, clearly realizing it wasn’t worth the risk or the fight. They’d been quiet for months. Months where Elaine and I had enjoyed our engagement very happily in our Morelli-Constantine Manor, feet firmly rooted on UK soil.
Even I had been surprised when my family’s feigned happiness for my new life stretched as far as a call from my father late one Thursday evening with a grudging invitation in his tone.
Come back to Morelli Holdings.
It wasn’t really my father behind the request. It was the board itself. They felt free to interject their opinions about my personal life, insisting that it reflected on the company. But in the end they knew I had tripled our profits since taking the helm.
My father would be no replacement for me, even if they wanted him.
It made me glow inside in the coldest of ways.
Yes, I was the head of the
Morelli kingdom. I’d been destined to be from the day I was born.
I would return as leader. As ruler. As the CEO of Morelli Holdings.
Elaine was nervous as I’d shared the news with her. Her beautiful blue eyes were filled with reluctance along with her pride at my father’s admission.
“Of course he needs you back,” she told me. “You’re too incredible for them to do without you.”
I loved her faith in me. I loved the joy in her smile.
It was only a few hours later that her reluctance reached the surface.
“But will we make it there?” she’d asked me. “Will we be okay there, Lucian? I mean really be okay there? In New York with everyone in our family’s?”
I’d been certain of my answer.
“Yes, we’ll be okay there. We’ll be okay anywhere we go, princess. The world is ours.”
The world would be ours with her at my side, devoted to each other, husband and wife.
I was surprisingly nervous as my wedding day began, pride of place in Bishop’s Landing, back on home ground. I woke up alone in bed with a strange rush of flutters in my stomach, still scarred after all these months from taking the bullet. Hunter and Clark were downstairs in the breakfast room, still looking groggy from their drinking the night before as they guzzled down black coffee. Devon was telling them about his insurance empire when I stepped in to join them, clearly still tired from his flight across the Atlantic. All three of them let out a cheer and gave a little applause as I sat myself down at the breakfast bar in my dressing gown, giving them a smirk that matched my mood. A happy one.
“Here comes the groom!” Hunter said, reaching over to punch me in the arm. “Never thought I’d see you getting hitched. Sure as fuck never thought it would be a Constantine!”
“Anyone would want to marry Elaine,” I assured him with a smirk. “Even if she is a damn Constantine.”
None of them disagreed with me.
We still had a few hours before the ceremony. The guys started on the whisky as soon as we were dressed up and ready for the service, but I was still sticking to mineral water, very much enjoying being in their company as they enjoyed being in each other’s.
The caterers and wedding planners had already been at work on the manor for hours. The marquee looked even more incredibly grand than I’d expected as we set off in the limo for the local church, and it should. I’d invested the very best into the very best celebration life could offer.
The church only had a few guests in their seats when the four of us arrived and made our way inside. Clark and Hunter took their positions at the entrance, ushers standing proud, and I gave them a thankful nod as I left them to their duties.
It was Devon I’d chosen to be my best man, his place feeling very natural at my side as we stepped into the front pew.
“I’m weirdly fucking nervous,” I confessed to him, and he did his best guffaw laugh.
“Never thought I’d see you nervous, Lucian. It’s a damn novelty.”
The nerves only heightened as the benches filled up. Elaine’s friends were filling up her side of the aisle just as mine were filling up mine.
Yes, the room was most certainly filling up.
My father ushered my mother down the aisle, to a seat in the front. Family power struggles were private. They wouldn’t show the world any weakness in our family.
My siblings were next. Leo came in with Eva, delighting at the way people turned their heads to look at him. To see what he’d do. Nothing, at my wedding. Sit quietly and clap at the end. He turned back once to keep a protective eye on Daphne and make sure the rest of them followed. They filed into the row behind my parents.
They were one reason I was glad to be back in Bishop’s Landing. I would have left them for Elaine, but I would have felt terrible about it. Already, they had taken too much abuse when I was younger. Because I couldn’t feel pain, my father saw no amusement in beating me. He would beat them instead, no matter how much I tried to stop it. When I failed to protect them, I tried to harden my heart against them, to distance myself from them. Ultimately the reason why I want Morelli Holdings isn’t for myself. I can take care of myself. It’s for the family. I may not care about my bastard father, but the company also cares for my mother and my sisters.
The church was almost full when I saw them. Elaine’s sisters. Vivian and Tinsley, looking spectacular in pastel gowns. My heart thumped even harder when I saw Harriet, her cousin, stepping in to join them.
Still, my thumping heart had nothing on the fucking speed it thumped when Caroline Constantine, Elaine’s utter bitch of a mother, came into view and took a seat alongside them.
She truly was a bitch, loud and clear, and had remained that way since we’d come home, but she was there. Staking her claim on public appearances in the most powerful of ways.
I’d have stepped right on over to begin a pretty terse dialogue with her if the harpist hadn’t started up the beautiful music for the bride’s entry. My whole body heated up in the most incredible of ways as I strained to get sight of the church entrance, because even now, after months of imagining it, I couldn’t quite believe it. I couldn’t believe my love, Elaine, was walking up the aisle.
She’d taken my breath countless times since the very first moment I’d laid eyes on her, all the way back at Tinsley’s ball, but my breath was ripped right from my chest as I saw her there, nervous, her blonde curls swept up behind her, and her pure white veil positioned so perfectly underneath her tiara.
Her dress was the most intensely beautiful thing I’d ever seen on her. It framed her figure in such a way that would burn itself into my heart forever, flowing around her feet in the most divine of ways with every step. Elaine was walking up the aisle. To me. My love was walking up the aisle.
Every step was getting closer.
Every step had my whole soul desperate, insane.
It was the guy who still utterly despised me that was standing next to her with his arm in hers, all set to give her away. The best friend she’d known since she was a teenager, who I’d knocked out cold when I was hunting her down months ago. Not exactly the best of introductions to your future wife’s bestie, but it was what it was. He hadn’t quite forgiven me for it yet. Can’t say I blamed him.
As it turned out, Tristan wasn’t hissing fits at me when he delivered her to my side. He managed a smile, and I managed the briefest of smiles back. Her bridesmaids, Francesca, Raven, and Cara—all fresh in from London—were grinning bright as they took their seats, but I barely saw them. My eyes were fixed all on Elaine. She was shaking like a leaf as she joined me at the head of the aisle, her beautiful blue eyes pools of perfect love.
“I have no words,” I whispered to her. “None that could do you justice right now.”
That’s when her innocent girly smile lit up her face even brighter.
“Ditto,” she said.
Elaine was so focused on me that she had barely cast a glance around the guests before the service started. The ceremony started right up, every word etched into the fabric of time, vows of declaration that people had lived by and loved by for hundreds of years before us.
I took Elaine to be my lawfully wedded wife with a lump in my throat because it meant so much to me.
She took me to be her lawfully wedded husband with a lump in her throat to match, eyes welling up because it meant so much to her.
Devon handed me the rings when they were called for and I slipped the gold band onto Elaine’s finger with surprisingly shaky fingers of my own, to which she returned the favor, and there we were. Officially declared. Husband and Wife.
“You may kiss the bride,” the vicar said and how I fucking kissed the bride.
I took her face in my hands and I kissed her with all the love in my heart, except it wasn’t all the love in my heart. Not anymore. Not now there was the slightest hint of a bump under her wedding dress.
The room cheered, and the exit song sounded out, ready for us to walk back down the a
isle as a couple, and that’s when Elaine stopped in her tracks, mouth dropping open as she first caught sight of the blonde row of family members, her mother positioned right on the end of a pew.
Her mother still had frosty eyes as she clapped for her daughter, but she was there. Even if just for appearance’s sake, she was there.
I coaxed Elaine forward but she struggled to look away from her family. There were a whole fresh set of tears in her own eyes as we reached the church porch and the confetti started up around us, a whole new set of cheers sounding out loud.
The limo ride to our new manor was a happy one, hand in hand, both of us staring at our wedding rings. I was bursting with pride when the driver let us out, pulse racing, ready to walk my bride through the manor grounds to our wedding reception and the waiting crowd.
“Let’s do this,” I said, and she nodded with a smile.
“Yeah, let’s do this, husband. I’m ready.”
Thank you for reading the Starcrossed Lovers trilogy! We hope you loved Lucian Morelli and Elaine Constantine’s dark and sexy story. Find out what happens next in the Midnight Dynasty with Lucian’s brother Leo in SECRET BEAST.
The beast hides a dark secret in his past…
Leo Morelli is known as the Beast of Bishop's Landing for his cruelty. He’ll get revenge on the Constantine family and make millions of dollars in the process. Even it means using an old man who dreams up wild inventions.
The beauty will sacrifice everything for her family...
Haley Constantine will do anything to protect her father. Even trade her body for his life. The college student must spend thirty days with the ruthless billionaire. He’ll make her earn her freedom in degrading ways, but in the end he needs her to set him free.
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