Elizabeth

The punch surprised me, but it didn’t knock me out. Or even to the floor.

I merely stumbled slightly, holding my cheek in a second of confusion.

The man who threw the punch was likely confused too, because it had enough force behind it to knock a woman out, or at the very least knock her to the floor.

I’m sure it would’ve worked on a lot of women, and it most likely worked for this man in the past, but I was not a lot of women. Lukyan had punched me harder than that.

And I’d survived.

I’d fought.

Which was what I instantly did the moment surprise left me. One look into the stranger’s eyes and I knew he was here to kill me. It was plain. It was the look that had been in Lukyan’s eyes the night he came into my house.

Death had abandoned me that night. Given me something of a chance.

I wouldn’t be so lucky this time around.

And I didn’t plan on luck having anything to do with it.

So I advanced on the large, muscled and hook-nosed man. He was trained, so he’d recovered from my lack of reaction to his punch seconds after I had. But he’d expected me to run, not to charge at him.

He still had enough time to lift his gun, but not enough to pull the trigger. I’d already identified the make and model—Lukyan had made me memorize all common and uncommon weapons used by professionals—and that meant I knew exactly where the magazine’s eject button was. In one move, I raised my hand and fastened it over the correct spot so the clip rattled to the ground. I used my other hand to slide back the hammer to eject the bullet in the chamber.

It flew up and backward, bouncing off my attacker’s cheek.

Again, he was bewildered. But not enough.

He didn’t release his grip on his gun when I tried to rip it from him in order to coldcock him. Knowing I wouldn’t win an outright strength battle with him, I immediately released my grip, striking up with the heel of my hand to connect with his nose.

The resounding wet crunch and his gurgle of pain had me smiling. The gun rattled on the floor as both his hands went to his face, blood pouring out of his nose as he stumbled back.

I utilized every second of his pain and my upper hand by darting to my bed and reaching underneath to find the handle of the gun taped there.

Lukyan had guns in every room of the house. He’d taken the entire day to show me every single one. I had thought it was rather dramatic at the time, but now it was saving my life.

Not a second too late, I turned, the gun raised and my finger on the trigger. I squeezed without hesitation. The bullet landed beneath the man’s eyes, jerking him backward and spraying warm blood and brain matter on my cheek.

His body crumpled to the floor inches from me, his hands still closed around the knife that had been moments away from killing me.

Adrenaline coursed through my body, my senses acute and heightened. My heart was a hammer against my chest, everything moving slow and fast at the same time.

I didn’t have a moment to breathe, to think about what just happened. Lukyan’s security was extensive. That meant it had been bypassed. That meant there was more than one man.

Many more.

My heart suddenly stopped in my chest at the thought of one of them catching Lukyan unaware. Of a bullet tearing through his skull.

The gunshot that tore through my fear happened almost outside reality. It took me a long few seconds to realize that my arm was extended and I’d been the one to fire the bullet at the man coming from my bathroom.

Another head shot.

I’d practiced at least an hour a day with Lukyan.

He’d fashioned an indoor shooting range two months ago.

He had made sure that I had every skill available not just to survive in the outside world, but to battle in it.

Battle and win.

I was running through the halls before I could quite understand what happened. Rapid gunfire worked as a siren song to me. That was where Lukyan was. That was where I had to go.

My body and mind were both absent from fear. There was only purpose.

I slowed down once I got to the corner before the dining room. That’s where the gunfire was coming from. Not as rapid now, just deafening sprinklings.

I was too focused on rounding the corner and ending the people firing at the man I loved, so I let my guard down.

Cold steel kissed my temple.

“Drop the gun, bitch,” a voice demanded.

I glanced to my left.

Another man, this one thinner than Hook Nose. Wiry almost. Bald. No humanity in his eyes.

Cruelty aplenty.

I smiled.

Then my heel jutted out to connect with his shin, and I ducked when the gun went off, millimeters from my ear.

Pain erupted in my skull with the force of the sound, a physical blow to my body.

Warm liquid trickled from my ear, a dull and agonizing ring replacing all sound. But I didn’t let that give me any pause. Instead, I closed my hand into a fist and made quick contact with the man’s temple, hitting the perfect spot to push him into the side table to his left.

The pain of my blow meant his gun dropped, and mine discharged two shots.

He was dead before he hit the ground.

That was the only way I knew I’d fired the gun. The ringing was still the only thing inside my head.

The pain was intense, and I stumbled slightly as I turned back to the dining room. I idly wondered if I’d done permanent damage, if I was going to be deaf for life now.

It wasn’t a pressing matter.

It only mattered right then because it meant I couldn’t hear whether the gunfire was still ensuing, or whether one side reigned victorious, surrounded by corpses.

None of them would be Lukyan’s. I was sure of that. Because none of them could be Lukyan’s. I wouldn’t survive that. And I was going to survive.

I leaned my back against the wall, trying to think past the shards of glass spearing into my brain with every movement. I tried to remember how long the pain would be expected to last if this was a nonpermanent injury. How long it would be before even jerking my head wouldn’t make me want to pass out.

I couldn’t.

There were two choices. I turned the corner into the dining room, took the chance that I’d be peppered with bullets and hope that Lukyan would be in there. Or I stayed here and waited for death to come to me.

I was around the corner before my second choice had a moment to actuate.

* * *

Lukyan

He almost killed her.

His finger was squeezing the trigger of the gun pointing at her before she came into focus. She had originally been nothing but a blur in a quick succession of blurs, all trying to kill him.

Nature had taken over and identified every movement as a threat.

So he almost killed her. By accident.

But nature also knew if he’d pulled that trigger, it would’ve been the end anyway, so the gun was lowered the second before bullets could puncture her body.

The barrel of her own gun was pointed at him too. The only man left standing in a room full of corpses.

She lowered her weapon seconds after he lowered his. But instead of holding onto hers, it hit the ground with an offensive twang.

Lukyan’s jaw twitched, and he was about to chastise her for such a foolish move in an uncertain situation, but he stopped the second he recognized the sway to her body, like she was on a boat experiencing rough seas. The blood, fresh and flowing down her neck.

From her head.

He was across the room in moments.

Just in time to catch her as she tipped forward, like her brain couldn’t quite remember how to stay upright.

He didn’t breathe for the time it took to examine her and make sure there was no bullet wound in her skull or any other part of her body.

It was only then that he exhaled.

There was a rapidly swelling bruise on her left cheek, red and angry. Not fatal. It was the blood trickling from her ear and glassy sheen to her eyes that bothered him.

That terrified him.

“Elizabeth,” he demanded, holding her upward and shaking her slightly.

She blinked at him but said nothing.

His fingers tightened on her skin, relishing the fact he was holding her in his arms. She was covered in blood, she was hurt, but she was alive. She had fought.

The scent of the blood that covered her skin changed from the metallic twang of death that had saturated his senses moments ago. The decay in the air was no longer apparent. On her skin, death was perfume. It was the siren song.

Nothing like Ana’s. Nothing coaxing him into his demise. No trick.

He went willingly.

“Elizabeth,” he repeated, his lips pressing to hers, unable to stop himself. Blood leaked into his mouth and he swallowed it willingly. Her blood. Her living blood.

Her mouth moved against his, the first active response he had gotten, something that made his cock hard and his body sag with relief at the same time.

The kiss deepened, and it would’ve developed into a frenzy—into Lukyan fucking her on the floor amidst the corpses—had he not yanked himself back.

She was hurt.

Potentially seriously.

That took precedent.

Elizabeth’s lazy and slightly irritated stare gave him more confidence in the fact her injury wasn’t critical.

“Why did you stop?” she yelled, then winced, her hand going up to her ear in reflex.

It immediately clicked.

Gunshots produced a loud burst of sound, concussive energy that rattled the eardrum, the bones of the inner air and the cochlea. In close range, a gunshot could produce at least a hundred decibels of sound directly down the air canal. A human whisper was only twenty-five decibels.

He snatched her face between his thumb and forefinger, forcing her to look at him. “Can you hear me?” he asked loudly, but not loud enough to irritate her already injured ear canal. He directed it to the less injured ear. “You’re going to be okay. This is temporary.”

He hoped to fuck it wasn’t permanent. She already had enough permanent injuries. This would not be another.

Her brows furrowed, both with pain and confusion. He knew the extreme discomfort she was in, had experienced it before.

It bothered him.

More than he cared to admit.

But she was breathing.

Her heart was beating.

She was still standing.

She could handle it.

* * *

Elizabeth

“Well,” the handsome and extremely clean-cut doctor exclaimed, leaning backward from where he’d been inspecting my throbbing ear, “I can’t say for certain that you haven’t done permanent damage.”

He took off his gloves, pocketing them, glancing at Lukyan, then me. He removed his glasses—spectacles—and rubbed them on the bottom of his shirt. Something about him toyed in the corner of my mind. Something familiar. I knew him from somewhere.

He was kind, gentle. Human.

But he couldn’t have been any of these things, considering his connection to Lukyan. That being any connection. That and the fact that he hadn’t even spared a glance at the blood-spattered room and the corpses gruesomely displayed around it. He’d made a beeline to me and began his examination immediately. I had just started to be able to hear past the dull ringing in my ears before he arrived.

Lukyan had spoken, but I’d pretended not to hear him.

Total coward.

Then the doctor arrived. The doctor he’d called. For me. Because he was worried. Though that was too tight a word for it. His hands had only left my body because practicality dictated the doctor needed my body to examine it. His jaw had been granite as he watched me, arms crossed and fingers tapping on his forearm. He didn’t seem to care that such posture demonstrated weakness.

He didn’t seem to care about anything in this room but me.

I pretended not to notice that.

“Ears are delicate things,” the doctor said. “Gunshots are not. You’ll likely be hearing a ringing in both your ears for a few days, right ear for weeks. Maybe longer. I’ll come back to check up on you.” He glanced to Lukyan. “If I’m allowed, that is.”

There was a lightness to his tone, a teasing that caught me off-guard. I was still trying to figure out how I knew him. There was no way I could’ve. But still, I couldn’t shake the feeling.

Lukyan didn’t even twitch. “You do everything you can to make sure this isn’t permanent,” he demanded.

My spectacle-wearing, spindly, kind doctor smiled at my hit man. “You can put a gun to my head and you’ll know that even then, I’ve done all I can do.” He glanced to me. “It’s up to her body to heal itself. And I don’t doubt its capability. Miracles happen.” He gave Lukyan a pointed look. “And be sure not to waste them, Oliver.”

Something hung between them, something pivotal, something I was somehow a part of.

The doctor’s kind eyes fastened back on me. “I’m truly happy to see you are well.” He paused. “Gunshot-induced deafness aside. You really are a remarkable woman.”

Then he clapped Lukyan on the back, retrieved his small leather bag and left, wading through the bodies gracefully as he did so.

I looked from his disappearing back to Lukyan. “Is he your friend?” I asked in amazement, fearing I was still yelling. My voice sounded like it was underwater, battling against the liquid to be heard.

The little pills the doctor had given me, that Lukyan had all but forced down my throat, dulled the sharp pain in my head to a throbbing ache.

“I don’t have friends,” he countered, eyes roving over my face, zeroing in on the bruise.

I tentatively touched it. “You’ve done worse.”

His jaw tightened. “It wasn’t me who did it. Which means it is worse.”

Somehow those words filled me with some kind of warmth, something that chased the reality of today away.

But words did little against reality, and it tackled me moments later. The bodies. The men. It was a coordinated attack.

Planned.

They got through Lukyan’s security.

No one could’ve gotten through that. I knew that. This was Lukyan’s sanctuary. His fortress.

They would only be able to come in if it was planned.

If someone let them in.

My stomach clenched, and my half-eaten dinner climbed at my throat.

I swallowed painfully, bile and blood mixing on my tongue.

“You arranged it,” I said, horrified that the truth had been staring me in the face and it took a lifeless grimace of the dead man in front of me to understand it. “All of it. Everything that’s happened in this house has been by your design.”

It was too horrible to be true, which was why it had to be true.

“No,” he replied. He spoke louder and clearer because he knew sound was still muffled and there was still a slight ringing in my ear. “None of what’s happened has been by my design.” He gritted his teeth. “You think I’d take such a risk with your safety?”

I eyed him. “Yes,” I said.

He stared at me. “Then you don’t know anything.”

He wasn’t wrong.

I tilted my head. Maybe tonight wasn’t by his design, but other things were. “So you didn’t arrange for those thugs to come in, knowing at least one of them would cross the line, cross my line, to force me to deal with it? You didn’t know that inviting those two men in would only result in one of them walking out?” I asked. “And then you didn’t know that the one walking out would talk of you and the mysterious woman residing in your tomb, though she wasn’t dead. You didn’t know that this wouldn’t reach the right ears and bring about all this.” I held my arms out to the carnage in the room. “That every move you made was calculated to move the ground of my mental foundations, shake at it, crack at it so I’d be pushed into some kind of… remission?” I paced the room, righting myself quickly as it swayed. “You did it all, didn’t you, to get me out of the house. It was all a plan to get rid of me. Don’t you dare fucking lie.”

He watched me. Let my screamed words bounce off the walls. “Yes, at the beginning, when it became apparent that the only way you would leave this house was in a coffin, I made plans. A blueprint to make sure you could, and would leave under your own power,” he admitted.

“So what? Your plan was to make me fall in love with you just so I could hate you enough to escape?” I hissed.

“No,” he said, something resembling emotion injecting itself into the word. “I had no plans to develop any kind of feeling toward you. Even when your very presence, your very heartbeat was a glaring example of some kind of feeling. I ignored that. Because I thought it was something that could be ignored. That you were something that could be ignored. Dealt with. I was wrong. As I have been about almost everything pertaining to you and what you would come to mean to me.”

I didn’t answer. I wanted to scream. Yell. Tell him he was lying and he was evil and cruel and he’d ruined me.

But he already knew what he’d done to me.

“The plan—the one I strayed from the moment you woke up—was designed in order to make you hate me,” he said.

“Mission accomplished,” I hissed.

“I didn’t account for the flip side of that hate. That I would come to hate you for making me love you,” he continued.

Again, I was mute.

“I arranged the skeletons of this plan. Intended on it remaining that. A skeleton. But you changed it. Attached flesh to the bones of the plan, to my bones. Brought it to life in a way I never would’ve designed.” He paused. “I did arrange those men coming to the house, because I knew you needed to see that the world could and would get in, no matter what. But I didn’t count on word of you spreading.” His eyes zeroed in on my bruised face. “I never would’ve arranged this.”

“So you regret it?” I asked, not letting the regret and pain in his voice sink in. “Doing all this to me, me finding out?”

“No,” he said immediately. “If I had to do it all over again, I would. Because there is no other way for you to grow than to experience pain. You wouldn’t be standing here without it.”

“I’m standing because I have no other fucking choice,” I all but screamed.

He didn’t react. Not at the decibel of my voice or the glass-shattering pain behind it. “You do have a choice,” he said. “The one you chose before. And you’re standing not because you don’t have a choice not to, but because now you’re strong enough to shoulder your pain.”

I glared at him. “Well, isn’t that wonderful?” I asked. “I’m just strong enough for you to destroy me all over again.”

“Think what you will, Elizabeth, but that’s not what I want to do. Not anymore,” he rasped.

I didn’t answer, couldn’t answer.

The dead took over the room for a few long moments.

“There’s more,” he said, almost tentatively.

“Of course there is,” I whispered. “It’s not enough to cut down to the bone. You have to grind it to dust too.”

I imagined his flinch. I must have. “Your family now control Christopher’s interests,” he said.

“I’m not surprised,” I said without emotion.

“I suspect not,” he murmured. “But my family…”

“Your family who arranged the hit on me? Oh no wait, that was you who arranged that. They just paid the bill,” I spat.

“Yes, that family,” he agreed, failing to rise to the bait. “They’ve found a way to become aligned with yours.”

The pieces fit together in my mind, everything stark and obvious. “Which brother?” I asked.

Lukyan’s fraction-of-a-second frown told me he was confused.

“Which of my brothers have you chosen to marry your sister to?” I clarified. “I’m thinking Henry. Even though he’s younger, and seems like the weaker one, it’s only because he makes himself look that way. He’s got more friends who want to see him succeed, and he’s brutal enough to make sure he does do that. Succeed.”

I knew my brothers barely at all. In a personal sense. They spoke to me as little as possible; like the rest of my family, they were too concerned with their own interests to trouble themselves with mine. But I watched the people who considered me invisible. And I learned them.

Lukyan inspected my face, in wonder maybe, if he had been capable of such an expression. “Yes,” he said. “In my meeting with my father and—”

“Your wife,” I interjected.

A nod. “They informed me of this plan. But they were also informed about the woman at my residence—”

“As you planned,” I interrupted again.

He shook his head sharply and violently. “Somehow, there was a connection made between you being this woman, Elizabeth Hades, who was supposed to be dead. An insinuation.” He eyed me. “Something that was not part of the plan.”

“Sure,” I replied, sarcasm and dread rolling off my tone.

If Lukyan was right, if they suspected me to be alive, they would come after me. Or they would inform my family, who would also come after me. I was of little consequence when I was invisible. But if I appeared in the eye of the underworld, in the midst of their takeover, I’d be a blemish on their iron throne. A weakness.

“Believe what you will, but it’s the truth,” he said after a long silence. “I will admit that I manipulated situations, manipulated you in order to exert some control over the one part of you that neither of us could control. I did it to bring you from the grave, not pile more dirt on it.”

“Are you sure?” I whispered. “Sure it wouldn’t be easier if you stepped aside and let either your blood or mine kill me?”

“It would be easier,” he agreed. “But it would also destroy me. And I’d much rather destroy every single person instrumental in any plot or past action to hurt you. My entire family included. Starting with my wife.” He stepped forward. “And I want you to be by my side as I do so. Not behind me, letting me fight your battles, but fighting them right along with me.”

“And I forget everything you’ve done to get me there, beside you?” I asked, watching him approach with something that bordered on fear and toyed with excitement.

“No,” he said. “You don’t. You use it. Let it fuel you.”

He approached me. Stood in front of me, but did not touch me.

“There is no going back. No escape. You know this. There never was any escape for you, except death. You know this too. You’ve toyed with death, had your chance to meet it. You chose not to. Now this is your life. Fighting. Blood. Pain. Anger. Hatred.”

He stepped forward, only slightly, enough for me to inhale his scent.

“And us. There’s no escaping that either. You know this. Only death. If you want to be rid of me, you kill me.”

Something cold and heavy pressed into my hands.

A gun.

My fingers wrapped around it, my body relishing the feeling that came with the weapon.

His hand circled my wrist, moved it up in the space between us so the gun pressed into his chest. My finger flexed on the trigger.

“If you want out, you do it, kill me,” he invited. “This is the only chance you’ll get. I’m offering you a third choice.”

His eyes flared with intensity. Honesty. Some kind of acceptance of death. He wasn’t certain of the outcome here, that much was true. I was unpredictable now. I was the one who held his death in my hands, the positions of our first meeting reversed. And I saw it in him right there, that he was taking a risk. That he thought there would be a chance of me pulling that trigger.

I thought that too as my mind recounted everything between us. The betrayal. The pain. The ugliness.

“You want me to kill you?” I asked.

“No, I don’t want to die,” he said. “But if I am to, the only way I’ll meet the grave is if you introduce me to it. Whether it be now or in three decades’ time. I’ve never been certain of the number of heartbeats I’ve got left. I’ve controlled everything around me to make sure I have the advantage, but there’s no certainty in life.”

My eyes didn’t waver. Neither did my grip on the gun. “It would be easier,” I whispered. “If I pulled this trigger.”

He nodded. “It would. Likely for both of us.”

We stayed suspended between the worlds, the one my decision would cement us in.

Then I stepped back, ejected the magazine and emptied the chamber. The gun fell to the floor.

“I’m not ready for easy,” I breathed, my body both heavier and lighter with the weight of my decision.

The decision that would define my life, and the length of it.

Lukyan didn’t move. Not even an exhale of relief.

“But I’m not ready to forgive you either,” I said, my voice a blade.

And I turned my back and walked away.