Unholy Intent

by Natasha Knight

  A text message vibrates the phone in my palm. I shift my attention to it. Lucas’s name pops up on the screen. It’s a text. A single word text.

  Lucas: Seriously?

  I’m about to reply and ask what the fuck he thinks he’s doing when I get a second one.

  Lucas: I had no idea you were so sentimental. Tell me, do you love your wife? You never answered my question.

  I try to call the number, but it goes directly to voicemail. I try again, same thing, so I send a text.

  Me: Where the fuck are you, coward?

  Nothing.

  No reply.

  The checkmark telling me the message is sent pops up on the screen, but the second one to tell me it’s been delivered never does. He must have switched off his phone.

  Do you love your wife?

  My throat goes dry.

  I dial Cristina’s cell phone, but it just rings and rings. Does she even have it?

  I try Joseph. He answers on the first ring.

  “Where is she?”

  “Upstairs in her room.”

  “You sure?”

  “I just checked on her myself. She’s asleep.”

  I exhale. “All right. Thank you, Joseph.” I need to calm down. But how the fuck can I calm down when I’m sitting in a back office of one of my warehouses watching my fucking world burn to the fucking ground.

  I had no idea you were so sentimental.

  Could Lucas know where she is?

  “They’re here,” Tobias says, moving to open the door.

  I look up from the monitors to watch Adam Valentina being dragged into the office, his suit jacket askew and torn in places, shirt dirty, one eye turning black before my eyes.

  “There,” I say, pointing at a chair and rolling up my sleeves.

  Valentina looks at me and I wonder how much he’s drunk today. “What do you know about this?” I gesture to the screen.

  “I know you overshot your position.”

  Tobias smacks the side of his head with the butt of his gun.

  “No, he’s right. I underestimated my enemies.”

  Valentina grins.

  “I have at least three of your men in my custody,” I tell him.

  “They know the risk when they accept. It’s why I pay them what I do.”

  “Yeah but you can’t pay them anything. I know my brother bankrolled this operation. Him and the Clementi family.”

  “They’re not your only enemies, Damian. You seem to make them at every turn.”

  “Don’t I know it. Where is he? Where’s my fucking brother?”

  “How should I know? I’m not his fucking keeper.”

  I gesture to Tobias who grips a handful of Valentina’s hair and forces his head down knocking his forehead into the edge of the desk before pulling it back. One of the soldiers rights the chair that fell over.

  Valentina’s eyes spin as he’s seated again. He’s got a good, red gash across his forehead.

  “That jar your memory?” I ask.

  It takes him a minute to focus his eyes on me.

  “You were with him and my wife.”

  His expression changes a little when I mention Cristina.

  “What did he want with her?” I ask.

  “Just wanted to fuck with you. Where is she? I hope you have her somewhere safe.”

  “Do you care? What if I told you she was on one of those ships?”

  “She wouldn’t be. And yeah, I do care. I take offense that you ask.”

  “Because if she’s out of the way, the foundation becomes yours. Free and clear.”

  “And you think I’d hurt my niece for that?”

  “Wouldn’t you? You’ve used her for money before. Pretty easily if I recall.”

  He’s quiet.

  “Tell me what he wanted with her.”

  When he doesn’t speak, Tobias grips his hair again, tugging him out of his seat. That same spot on his forehead slams against the desk louder this time.

  “Again,” I say to Tobias.

  “Wait!” Valentina screams as blood runs down into his eyes.

  I step closer, then lean down so I’m in his face. “I’m not a very patient man. Tell me what the fuck he wanted in your next breath, or I’ll break your fucking face.”

  “Leverage!”

  “What kind of leverage?”

  “Get him off me,” he says.

  “Right after you answer my questions. What kind of leverage?”

  “He won’t hurt her. He gave me his word.”

  A pit forms in my gut.

  “What the hell do you mean?”

  “I helped him because he said he’d get her away from you. He promised not to hurt her.”

  “Away from me how?”

  “Get your goon off me.”

  “If you won’t answer me, you’re no use to me. Start with his face and work your way down,” I say to Tobias, picking up my coat to walk away. “Go slow.”

  “Wait!”

  I turn back and look at him.

  He’s on his feet, two men holding him by either arm. “He wanted to be able to track her. In case he needed access to her.”

  That pit in my stomach turns into a cement block.

  “What do you mean, track her? Track her how?”

  My brain races to her arm. To how it felt like there was something hard under the skin. She’d said she thought it was a bite.

  “He told her about your scheme to get her pregnant, use the baby to steal the foundation out from under her.”

  Hearing it like this, spoken out loud, it makes me sound exactly like the monster I warned her about.

  I wouldn’t have gone through with it, though. I couldn’t do that to her. I decided that soon after coming up with the idea.

  “He took her to a doctor to give her a birth control shot so it wouldn’t work.”

  My brain rattles with rage.

  “He did what?”

  “While she was getting that shot, a tracker was inserted.”

  Tobias is already dialing Joseph when my phone dings again.

  Lucas: Okay wait. I should ask my question differently. Maybe then you’ll tell me. Because I think I can guess the answer. So maybe a better question is how much? How much do you love your wife, Brother?

  28

  Cristina

  I wake to the distant sound of glass breaking. Disoriented, I rub my eyes and look across the room toward the empty bed as the fog clears my brain.

  Scott’s bed.

  Remembering where I am and why, I sit up.

  The blanket falls away and I’m surprised that I fell asleep so quickly. So easily.

  I don’t know what time it is because there isn’t a clock in here, but it’s still dark out. I hear footsteps outside my door and swing my legs over the bed.

  It must be Damian come for me.

  The door opens as I stand up. A man steps into the room.

  “In here,” he says.

  Dark forms move in the direction of my bedroom. Two. I recognize one and it sends a shiver along my spine.

  Because it’s not Damian.

  “There she is,” Lucas says in that tone of his, the one that sounds like we’re old friends. The mocking one.

  I swallow and back up a step but knock into the nightstand.

  “What are you doing here? How did you know I was here?”

  His eyes scan me, and I remember what I’m wearing. A little tank top nightie that doesn’t hide much.

  “My brother sent me to get you. Bring you to him,” he says, meeting my eyes again.

  I study him but can’t read his expression.

  He steps deeper into the room until he’s only a step from me.

  “Where’s Joseph?” I ask.

  “Downstairs.” He looks me over again. “You were sleeping.”

  I look down too, cross my arms in front of myself before meeting his eyes again. He’s too close. I lean back only to feel the lamp at my shoulders. I’m out of space.

 
; “I want to call him,” I say when I see the phone in his hand. “I want to call Damian.”

  He shrugs a shoulder. “Sorry, it’s out of charge.” He puts it into his pocket. “My brother has all the luck,” he says. It’s quiet for a long minute while he watches me, wiping something from the corner of his mouth with his thumb, eyes narrowing slightly like he’s thinking. Planning. If he comes even a centimeter closer, we’ll be touching.

  My heart races because he’s not here to take me to Damian. I know that.

  “You don’t scream at the sight of me anymore. Why not?”

  I want to tell him it’s because the outside isn’t nearly as scary as the inside, but panic is setting in. This is bad. Very bad. I feel it in my gut.

  He cocks his head and I feel one hand span my lower back. He tugs me to him.

  I yelp, hands flying to his chest. He’s big, like Damian. And he proved how much stronger than me he is at my uncle’s apartment.

  “Lucas—”

  “Tell me why you don’t scream.”

  “Please.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Get off me.”

  “Why does my brother get to have everything he wants, and I get stuck with this face? Because I admit, I want the pretty girl too.”

  “The rules say you can’t touch—”

  He snorts. “You think I give a fuck about any rules.”

  “Let me go!”

  “Boss,” someone says behind us.

  “Yeah.” Lucas doesn’t turn.

  “It’s all set to go.”

  “You mean to blow,” Lucas says with a strange look. The man only chuckles. “Get out and close the door. I need a minute with my sister-in-law.”

  Without a word, he’s gone, and the door closes behind him.

  “Get on the bed,” Lucas says, releasing me.

  “What?”

  “Get on the bed.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I said so.”

  “Lucas—”

  “Get on the goddamned bed!”

  His tone is so sharp that without a thought, I drop to the edge of the bed.

  He looks down at me and I try to not look away from him. I try not to look at his crotch, which is at eye level.

  “Put your feet up.”

  “What?”

  “Your feet on the bed. Pull your feet up on the bed.”

  I do, setting my knees between us, but it’s clearly not what he wants because he grips them and forces them apart, pushing me back onto my elbows when he does. My nightie rides up to my belly and he keeps hold of me, looking at me. At my spread legs. Between them.

  He swallows, and I make the mistake of looking at his crotch expecting to find him erect. I’m surprised when I don’t.

  “Lucas—”

  “Damian would kill me if I touched you, isn’t that right?” he asks, dragging his gaze to mine. “His.” He says that last word with disgust and shakes his head. “When you should be mine.” He pushes my legs closed and stands looming over me, studying me. “If things were the way they were meant to be, if I were your master and not my brother, would you kiss me?”

  “What?”

  “Or would you close your eyes so you wouldn’t have to see me every time I came near you?”

  Something about the way he says it makes me stop and I remember how people looked at me after Scott and Mom died. I remember that pity. And what I see in his eyes is exactly how I felt whenever I’d look at any of them.

  I try to wipe the pity from my expression. It’s a powerful thing, that. It can make a victim or a villain out of you. I know what it’s made of Lucas and I need to be very careful with him.

  “What happened to you is terrible, but it doesn’t have to define you now. It doesn’t have to be the way it is between you and Damian. He loves you. He misses you.”

  A moment of confusion creases his forehead, then he grins. “We’re way past psychoanalysis, sweetheart. Just answer my question.”

  “You don’t want me, Lucas. You want to take what’s his. That’s what this is about. That’s all any of this has ever been about for you.”

  He sighs, grins. “True that I want to take what’s his, but don’t underestimate yourself, sweetheart.” He shifts his grip to my arm and hauls me up. “I have one more surprise for my brother tonight,” he says as he drags me through my room and out the door.

  “What are you doing?”

  He doesn’t answer me as he forces me through the hallway and down the stairs.

  “Everyone out!” he calls to the soldiers scattered on the first floor.

  They begin to file out as we descend. As I take in the smell. Register what it is.

  Gasoline.

  Gallons and gallons of gasoline on their sides and emptied all over the living and dining rooms. Soaking our furniture and carpets, my mom’s favorite curtains.

  “Lucas, what are you doing? Let me go!” I scream as I miss a step and he has to catch me before I go flying face-first down the rest of the stairs.

  “I told you I have a surprise for my dear brother.”

  I can guess what that surprise is. I smell it. Gasoline fills my nostrils, making me nauseous.

  “No, Lucas…”

  I watch his men file out of the front door. I see Joseph and the other two lying on the ground, one in the foyer, shot between the eyebrows. Joseph is still alive but barely conscious as he bleeds out and the other face down in the corner of the living room.

  “You can’t leave them…you have to get them help!”

  He just snorts.

  The front window is smashed. That must have been the shattering glass I heard.

  “Let me go!” I cry out, fighting with all I have as he drags me through the dining room and down the hall, past the photos I’d been looking at just hours earlier.

  He doesn’t let me go. He just keeps walking and his grip is like a vise around my arm. For the second time tonight, I pass by our happy, smiling faces as he takes me toward my father’s study door.

  “Lucas, please!” He opens the door and drags me in, then closes it behind us. “No!”

  “Sit,” he says, pushing me into my father’s desk chair.

  At least the smell isn’t as bad in here. I don’t see any empty canisters either.

  “What are you doing?” He picks up a length of rope that he’d set on a chair and a flashback to that night eight years ago makes the scream catch in my throat. “Lucas?”

  He doesn’t speak. Instead, he slips the loop around my neck.

  Instinctively, I reach up for it, but he’s too strong and easily pulls it tight, forcing my head backward. He looks down at me and I see myself reflected in his eyes, eyes and mouth wide in shock and terror.

  He grins and loosens the rope a little.

  “Don’t worry, it’s not the same noose my father used to hang yours.” He gets to work, slinging it over the beam above my head.

  “What are you doing?” Terror like I’ve never felt before grips me as I close both hands around the rope at my neck trying to give myself room to breathe.

  He swings it again and tugs, and I’m up on my feet when he does.

  “Lucas!”

  “Relax. We have a little time yet,” he says, securing the rope somewhere behind me and coming to stand in front of me.

  I’m up on my tiptoes and the breaths I manage to take are labored, painful. I’m barefoot, I remember, feeling the rough carpet beneath my toes. I didn’t have a chance to put my boots on.

  He sits on the edge of the desk and looks up at me, cocking his head to the side, grinning like the fucking Joker himself.

  “Answer my question, will you? Would you kiss me or turn your head if it were me and not—”

  “Damian,” I choke out, cutting him off. Pissing him off.

  He gets up and walks away. “Is on his way. Unless he’s a complete idiot, which honestly, he could be.” He’s back in front of me again. “Don’t worry, we’ll wait for him.” He leans toward
me. “I wonder…” He trails off and pokes his finger in my belly, pushing me off balance.

  I try to reach up for the rope as the noose tightens when gravity takes control, and for the first time in my life, I know—really know—how terrified my father must have been. I know how he must have felt in those final moments.

  No, not moments.

  Minutes.

  Benedict Di Santo dragged them out.

  “Gotcha,” he says, catching me. “Let’s take a selfie for my brother.”

  I’m trying to get my hands back around the noose, trying to loosen it when the flash blinds me.

  “Aww,” he says, checking the photo. He vacillates between madness and rage, and I’m not sure which is scarier. “You weren’t smiling. But I guess it’ll have to do.”

  He hits send on the image, and it’s not even a second later that his phone dings with a message, then rings and rings and rings. Lucas finally shuts it off and sends it flying against the far wall, shattering it.

  “He’s on his way,” he says to me more calmly, that rage sounding like it’s in check, but I know better. “We should get you ready.”

  He grabs me by the waist, pulls me close, then sets me on my knees on my father’s chair.

  “Please don’t do this. You don’t want to do this.”

  He jerks me once. “How do you know what I want?”

  “I don’t. I don’t, but I know what Damian wants. He told me. He told me everything.”

  He doesn’t speak, but his eyes grow intent on mine.

  “He doesn’t blame you. He loves you. And he wants you back. The way you two were.”

  He snorts, but in his eyes, I swear I see a flash of someone different. Someone younger. Someone afraid. And I know he wants to believe me.

  “He told me you were born holding hands. Your father poisoned you against each other, but it doesn’t have to be like that. Not anymore.”

  Dark eyes search mine and I wonder if I’ve gotten through. If this is salvageable. But then a moment later, he chuckles.

  “You know what’s really funny? And sad, actually. I think you really believe all that. I think he does too.” He tugs me close again, so close I feel his warm breath on my face when he speaks. “The thing is, I don’t want it. I don’t want any of it. Besides, he had a chance to stop all of this. He had a chance to put me out of my misery and to save you and you know what he chose? To save himself. He didn’t choose you and he didn’t choose me. He chose to save himself from a lifetime of guilt. Now get up.”