Page 21 of Bound

I hate being in this room and feeling like I’m about to break.

“She helped him,” Blaze says. “She helped Carlos. She helped with the old routes, the messages, the Village.”

“I know,” I say.

“She helped destroy people,” Blaze argues. “For him.”

“I know what she was,” I say. “I knew what she did. I know she wasn’t innocent. She’s still my cousin.”

My voice cracks. Damn it.

Then Erin says, “That part always hurts. Loving someone despite what they’ve done.”

My eyes burn.

Lucian’s voice comes next. Low. Controlled. “What did Marina keep? And could Carlos have killed her to gain it?”

I breathe in. I can do strategy.

I cannot do grief in front of Lucian Bachman and the woman who owns his heart.

But I can do strategy.

“Authorization records,” I say. “Old Bachman routes. Warehouse rosters. Payment chains. Who opened which door? Who delayed which alarm? Carlos’s early deals. Your men.”

Lucian goes still. Dangerously still.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I mean his men. Carlos’s. From before.”

His face becomes something terrible.

The men in his eyes, I killed.

I remember those men, the way they looked at Lucian. The way Carlos watched him, his eyes darker every day. Clouded with jealousy and fear that those men would one day follow Lucian.

I remember Carlos telling me, “Do you know what Lucian will do when he leaves us? When he takes our men with him?”

I remember being horrified at what he told me. Something so dark, so devious, I instantly saw Lucian in a different life.

“We have to stop him,” I said. “We have to talk to him.”

Carlos took my face in his hands and looked at me like I was something fragile and broken and he was going to fix me. “It’s gone beyond talk. There’s only one way to stop him, Belle.”

God help me, I believed him.

I was vulnerable then.

I wanted to believe so many things.

And an ugly little part of me wanted the more vicious man. The bad man who would kill for me. Kill to get me back.

Kill to keep me.

Keep me in beautiful places filled with beautiful things where I could be his beautiful queen and reign beside him.

Powerful. Chosen. Vicious.

I got exactly what I wanted.