Page 58 of Irrevocably

Chapter Twenty-Eight

LUCIEN

There are so many things I shouldn’t be doing and giving her that truth about myself is just one more. But I wanted her to have it. I can’t tell her anything else and she deserves to have something of me. Especially after everything she’s told me, everything she’s trusted me with.

And I was right about that. She does trust me. She has no guarantee that I won’t take her to her friend, torture or even kill them both, but she’s absolutely confident that I won’t.

I don’t know why she thinks that, and while her reasons make a certain kind of sense, I still don’t understand. I didn’t follow through on my threat to her father, and I let her friend live, but those were decisions I made in the moment. In another moment, I could change my mind. I hate loose ends as much as Enzo does.

She’s not a loose end.

That’s the truth of it, the bare truth. The truth I’ve been trying to ignore. She’s not a target or a loose end. She’s not just a fuck. She’s a woman who for some reason has put her trust in me, and whether I want it to or not, that means something to me. It makes me want to keep it, be worthy of it.

There’s concern in her grey eyes now, a crease between her fair brows. Her cheek is warm against my palm and I want her again. “What do you mean, everything?” she asks.

Free of Enzo. Free of my oath. Free to make decisions. Free to want things I’m not supposed to want. Free of the world I grew up in.

But I can’t tell her that, not without revealing everything I’m supposed to keep secret. Because I’m not free, not yet.

So, I ignore her question. “You need to get me that information you promised,” I say instead. “And you need to get it to me tonight.”

She blinks, then draws back, sitting very straight on the couch. “No,” she says calmly. “Not until you tell me what you want it for.”

“I can’t,” I say. “I made promises to people and I can’t break them.”

“Promises to who?”

She’s relentless, isn’t she? I’d admire it if it wasn’t so annoying. Her stubbornness is going to get her into trouble, though, and I shouldn’t be encouraging it. Except she’s worried for her father. She’s protective of him. Maybe if she knows he won’t be killed, that would help.

“I can’t tell you that, either. But what I can say is that we need your father to stay alive.”

Her eyes narrow. “We?”

I say nothing.

“Will you hurt him?”

I let out a breath. “I will try not to, though I can’t speak on behalf of anyone else.”

She isn’t encouraged by this, clearly, since her expression remains tight. “And if I say no?”

We’re back to this again. This and her certainty that I won’t use her, and I’m almost shocked to discover that she’s right. The thought of hurting her to get what I want, the thought of hurting anyone she cares about is … distasteful. No, more than that, it’s wrong. I can’t do it.

But someone else might.

A dark thread winds through me, tightening my muscles, stirring that possessive beast inside me. If I don’t get that intel for Lazarus, he’ll get someone else to do it. One of his lowly soldiers perhaps or he might even handle it himself, and I … can’t allow that.

She’s my target. She’s mine. And that information belongs to me.

The beast growls, restless, and abruptly, I push myself to my feet and pace over to the fire. This is a problem. It’s a real fucking problem.

I don’t want to hurt her, but I can’t allow anyone else to hurt her. Yet if we want to keep the gun-running operation going, we need the police to keep away and stay away. There must be another way to do this that doesn’t involve Astrid, and yet … we need to keep Chief Starling where he is, and she’s the perfect leverage to do so. She’s the key. We need her.

“What if … what if you didn’t do this.” Her voice from behind me is soft. “What if we just got into Matilda and drove away?”

An easy solution, and nothing I haven’t thought myself a hundred times already. But there’s no escaping Enzo. No escaping the Tribunal, not when you’ve given them your oaths. They’ll hunt you down to the ends of the earth, the way they hunted my parents. The way they’re hunting the rest of my family.

The way you’re helping them.