“I HAVE TO PEE.”
Ace gave me a bored expression as he uncuffed me from the desk. I was free, but I knew it wouldn’t be for long. While I went to the bathroom, I contemplated my potential escape options, but they were limited to spraying him with water or throwing a bar of soap at his head. Nothing in this bathroom would be useful, and the man was a tank.
“You might as well just suck it up and do it,” Ace told me when I came back out. “You’re only delaying the inevitable. He won’t let you go until it’s done.”
“You sound like you know from personal experience.”
“That’s because I do.”
I arched a brow at him. “Did he make you write lines?”
“No, worse. He made me go to school.”
He locked me back to the desk, but my curiosity wouldn’t let him go. “What could he possibly have over you?”
“He saved my life,” Ace said. “I owe him more than I could ever pay him. The least I could do was get my shit together if that made him happy.”
I looked up at the beefy man who sounded mild as a kitten whenever he talked about Lucian. “So you finished high school?”
“College,” he corrected.
That information shocked me. Maybe it was a stereotype, but I’d just assumed the huge biker dude probably didn’t have much going on in that head of his other than beer and broads.
“What’s your degree?”
“Diesel mechanics,” he explained. “It was a two-year program. Now I got my own shop, make a decent living, and give some of the boneheads from my club something to do with their time. No complaints on my end.”
“Huh,” I mumbled.
“Yep. I’m going to go take a nap. I suggest you get to writing.”
“Wait,” I pleaded.
He sighed. “What?”
“Can’t you tell me just a little bit about Lucian?”
“That’s for him to tell you.”
“I’m not talking about his darkest secrets.” I rolled my eyes. “I just… I don’t know anything about him really.”
“He’s a good dude.” Ace shrugged. “That’s all I can really say.”
“Good?” I snorted. “He gets criminals off. How is that good?”
Ace crossed his arms and narrowed his eyes. “Have you ever considered that maybe you don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, little girl?”
“What do you mean?”
“He defends accused criminals. There’s a big goddamn difference. Now give that some thought before you go tossing out bullshit statements.”
His body language warned me we were in choppy waters here, but I was finally getting somewhere, and I couldn’t stop now.
“You were innocent?” I pressed.
“Yes.” Ace gritted his teeth. “Even if you find that hard to believe, not everyone who gets tossed in the can actually deserves it. You might be surprised if you did your research.”
I toyed with the pencil on the desk as I thought that over. “So he just takes on cases of people he thinks are innocent?”
“I can’t answer for him. All I can say is Lucian does what he thinks is best. He’s a damn good guy who got dealt a shitty hand, and I stand by his choices whatever they may be.”
“Shitty hand?” I looked up at him, desperate to know what he meant by that.
“You’ll have to ask him about that,” he said.
I groaned, and Ace smirked. “You know, you’re a little brat. But I kinda think you might be good for him if you can get your own head out of your ass and see him for who he is.”
And with those sweet parting words, he left me on my own.
Hours had come and gone, and I still hadn’t written my lines. I knew I wasn’t getting out of it, but I was desperate to prove that I couldn’t be so easily controlled. Lucian had yet to return, but when he did make an appearance, I would show him that his orders weren’t the rules I lived by. At least for a little bit.
Honestly, I was tired, and this position was uncomfortable. My arm was cramping, and I wanted to go to bed. I also couldn’t stop thinking about the conversation I had with Ace.
He believed Lucian was a good guy, deep down to his core. But everything Lucian had shown me so far pointed to a control freak who lived a regimental lifestyle and wouldn’t know the definition of kindness if it slapped him in the face.
I found it difficult to reconcile the two wildly different accounts of him—how the media portrayed him versus the one his close friend gave. Either he was a piece of shit criminal attorney with no morals, or he was a selfless justice-seeking one-man army for the innocent. He couldn’t possibly be both. I wanted to find out more about him, but so far, he hadn’t given me the opportunity to do it. That key from his office was still hidden in the bedroom, and it couldn’t stay that way for long. I needed to get in there and poke around, but with him accounting for every hour of my day so far, it was easier said than done.
“Still trying to prove a point, I see?”
Lucian’s voice startled me, and when I turned, I found him hovering in the doorframe, his dark eyes moving over me with a tiredness I felt deep in my bones.
“I could write the lines.” I shrugged. “But they would be a lie. We both know I’m not going to do what you tell me all the time.”
“They wouldn’t be a lie,” he corrected. “They would be a goal. An intention. And it’s up to you whether or not you want to be the kind of person who follows through with your intentions.”
I wrinkled my nose. “I could come up with way better intentions than that.”
Lucian closed the distance between us, his fingers grazing the strands of hair around my neck. “Something you should know about me, pet, is I don’t bend or break. You can write the lines, or you can sit here until you do. Those are your options, and your defiance won’t change it. Is it worth your discomfort to prove a point that means nothing to me?”
I looked up at him, a maneuver that forced me to acknowledge his dominance over me. “Why are you doing this?”
“Because you misbehaved, and it needs to be corrected.”
“No.” I closed my eyes and blew out a breath. “I mean why are you acting like you’re my father or something.”
“You don’t have a father.” The heat of his hand disappeared from my neck, and when I met his eyes again, they seemed almost black.
“Everyone has a father,” I answered.
He shifted away from me. “In your case, he was merely a sperm donor.”
A rush of heat exploded into my chest as I slammed my hand down on the desk. “Don’t pretend to know me or my life.”
“I do know your life, and I won’t pretend otherwise, pet. It would be of no benefit for me to lie to you.”
“Yet I know nothing about you,” I shot back. “How is that fair?”
He stuffed his hands into his pockets and examined me with wary eyes. “What do you want to know?”
It felt like a trick question, so I proceeded carefully. “Why do you defend… people you think are innocent?”
“Because someone once defended me when I needed it,” he answered darkly.
“You were in prison?”
“Yes.”
A blanket of ice wrapped around me as my mind went wild trying to imagine what had happened. I wanted to ask more. I wanted answers desperately, but since I’d opened that can of worms, his whole demeanor had turned to steel. His eyes were arctic, and at that moment, his formidability scared me. I was too afraid to push him for the answers I needed.
“Anything else?” he asked.
“No,” I whispered.
He left the room and took my wits with him. I picked up the pencil and wrote one hundred lines.
Nice and neat.