Page 84 of Perfect Sin
“You’re going to be even more overbearing now, aren’t you?” she asks, changing the subject.
“Knowing half the underworld is searching for you out of sick curiosity? Hell yeah, that’s a pretty safe bet, princess.”
“Part of me feels like I should fight you on this out of principle, but I just don’t have it in me. You have to make up with Ford.”
She’s right, of course. He’s been a real friend, the first one I’ve ever had. Lucien has always been my brother. We grew up in the same house, our bond forged out of necessity. If we didn’t have each other’s backs we’d never have survived. Ford chose us, and for that I owe him. Not to mention he’s the only one I trust to keep Raven safe. Even Lucien has moments where I doubt he’d sacrifice himself to protect her.
“I’ll call him,” I promise her.
Raven yawns. “Sleep, princess.” I pull back the blankets. “Just put it away for now.”
She nods and lays back on the bed. Within minutes her breathing evens out, and I leave her to escape to the oblivion sleep offers.
I step out of our room and quietly close the door.
Lucien is putting away cleaning supplies as I enter the main part of the house. “How is she?” he asks as he closes the cabinet door.
“She’s sleeping now.” I’m afraid to know the answer, but I ask the question anyway, “Is there any truth to what Neville said?”
“About Damien having disgusting thoughts about Raven?”
Damien, not “my father”. “Yeah, that.”
Lucien leans against the counter, and hangs his head. “I don’t know. And what’s fucked up is I should be able to say ‘of course not’, but he’s a sick fucker. We both know that. Raven looks exactly like Natalie. I thought we got our looks from Damien, but it seems only I did.”
“The two of you look a lot alike,” I point out.
“Her hair is black, mine is just dark brown. Our eyes are the same color, but the shape of hers are exactly like Natalie’s. And they’re both so small.”
He takes a deep breath. “When she was twelve we went on some stupid vacation. I think he liked to show us off to the legitimate businessmen he associated with, so we went to some resort he joined to network. I was fifteen, and I hadn’t seen her in a year. I looked forward to those trips because she was mine. Being with her made me feel normal. With her I was a big brother, not a trained killer, or any of the other horrible things I was being turned into.”
His breathing becomes more labored, and I fear what he’s going to say. “I smiled when I saw her. Can you imagine how small she was as a child? There’s always been an innocence around her, and it drew everyone to her. I ruffled her hair and told her she was getting pretty. Such a normal thing a brother would say, but Damien lost his shit. He sent her to her room with her nanny and beat the shit out of me. He said I wasn’t going to see her ever again, that she wasn’t mine. I told him I didn’t mean it the way he was suggesting. The idea he would think I did made me sick. He sent her away the next morning. I hadn’t seen her again until she showed up at the manor a few months ago.”
“Now that Neville said what he did, I’m starting to think Damien assumed I could look at her like anything other than my sister because when he saw her he didn’t see his daughter. I think he’s a pedophile.”
“I know he is.” I wasn’t the only child used in that way in his house of horrors, though Damien has always been partial to teenage girls.
“I know your father is a threat to you and Raven, but I don’t think I can go along with letting Damien win the election,” Lucien admits.
I nod. He’s right. We need to speed up finding evidence against him, except did we?
Lucien breaks through my thinking. “We need to go to this meeting and find whatever we can to bring him down.”
“Do we? Think about it, Luce, even behind bars he’s a threat.”
“You want to kill him,” he states.
“Don’t you?”
“I want to destroy him. Tear his empire apart at the seams. Only then do I want him dead. If we don’t shine a light on it, someone else will step into his shoes. Someone we don’t see coming who might be as big of danger to us as he is, or bigger. After all, who would be the biggest threat to his successor. The first person caught in the crosshairs?”
“You and Raven,” I say. There are a few men in the organization who would already put a bullet in Lucien if only to clear the way for their own rise to the top. Without him in the way, the succession is wide open. Raven would either be another liability, or a way to gain legitimacy. Either way she’d be at risk.
“What’s the plan then?” I feel like the rug has been pulled out from under me and I’m standing on unstable ground.
“We take everything away; the election, cut off his trafficking routes, and expose his crimes to the world. Then we take him out and make it look like self-defense.”
I can see the logic. “Let’s make it happen then,” I agree.