Chapter 2 · Stripped on the Bridge

The first round hit the windshield and the glass went white.

It didn't break. It spiderwebbed, right in front of my face. Armored, just like he promised. I still screamed, because nobody tells you what a bullet sounds like when it hits a window six inches from your nose.

"Down."

Lucian's hand clamped on the back of my neck and shoved. My cheek smacked the leather. White silk bunched under my knees. The eight-carat diamond he'd forced on me ten minutes ago cut straight into my palm.

I could still taste the ink from the contract. Still feel his mouth on mine, hard and cold, like he was stamping a seal.

Outside, the lead SUV was on its side across both lanes of the causeway, burning. Wind hit the car so hard it rocked. Past the guardrail, the sound was black and churning, and forty feet down it looked hungry.

"Boss, six on foot, bridge's blocked both ends—"

The driver's head snapped sideways. Something warm hit my arm. He slumped over the wheel, and the horn started screaming.

"Stay in the car," Lucian said. Calm. Like he was telling me to wait while he grabbed coffee.

Then he kicked the door open and stepped into the gunfire.

I pushed myself up on shaking arms and watched through the cracked glass.

A man in a ski mask came out of the smoke with a pistol up. Lucian didn't duck. He walked straight at him. Caught the gun wrist, twisted, and I heard the bone go from inside a sealed car. The man opened his mouth to scream.

Lucian's other hand closed around his throat.

He didn't look angry. That was the part that made my stomach flip. He looked bored. His fingers sank in, the man's boots scraped the wet asphalt, and there was a wet, crunching pop I felt in my own teeth.

He let go. The body folded.

Two more came running. Lucian's men dropped them from behind the burning SUV. It was over in maybe ten seconds.

And the dead driver's pistol was lying on the floorboard by my heel.

I didn't think. If I'd thought, I'd have said Mia's name and stayed put. But I'd spent five years watching my father's hands, and the one thing I'd learned was that a man who kills like that doesn't need a wife. He needs a body in the water.

I grabbed the gun.

It was heavier than I expected. I got both hands on it, swung out of the seat, and put the barrel on his back while he stood over the corpse with rain running off his shoulders.

"Turn around," I said. My voice shook. I hated that.

He turned around.

He looked at the gun. At me. At my knuckles, white on the grip. Then he smiled, slow, and it was the worst thing I'd seen all day.

"Safety's on, Bianca."

I looked down.

One second. That's all it took.

He crossed the space between us before I could breathe. His hand wrapped around the slide and wrenched it sideways, and my wrists screamed. The gun was gone. He drove me backward into the open door of the car, and then I was on my back across the leather seat with his body pinning mine, one hand locked around both my wrists above my head.

The door slammed behind him. Silence. The horn had finally stopped. All I could hear was rain on the roof and my own ragged breathing.

"That was stupid," he said.

"Get off me."

"You had a clear exit at the ferry road. Twenty feet of dark and a rail. You grabbed a gun instead." His eyes went down my face and came back up. "You weren't running. You were going for me."

"Yeah, no kidding!"

"Good." He said it low, almost pleased. "Now I know what I'm working with."

His thigh pressed between mine. Through layers of wet silk I felt every inch of him, the heat, the weight. Rain dripped off his jaw onto my collarbone. I turned my face away, and he caught my chin and turned it right back.

"Here's what's going to happen. I'm going to check you for anything else you brought to my wedding."

"I'm not carrying—"

"You walked into that church like you had a rod up your spine. You've been favoring your left leg since the altar." His thumb dragged across my jaw. "Don't lie to me. You're bad at it."

My heart was hammering so loud I figured he could feel it through my ribs.

He let go of my wrists. For one stupid second I thought about hitting him. Then he gripped my ankle, and every thought in my head went white.

His hand slid up my calf. Slowly. Over the silk of the stocking, over my knee. His palm was rough and warm, and it didn't stop at my knee.

"Lucian."

"Quiet."

The skirt rode up under his wrist. Cold air hit my thigh and I went rigid, because my brain kept trying to tell me this was a search, just a search, and my skin kept telling a different story. His knuckles brushed the lace band at the top of my stocking. Every muscle in my leg jumped.

I hated that. I hated that he felt it.

His eyes flicked up to mine. He knew. He didn't say a word.

His fingers found the flat strip of ceramic strapped against the inside of my thigh, and stopped.

"There it is."

He ripped the stocking. One hard pull, and the silk tore from hip to knee like paper. The strap snapped. He pulled the blade out, white and thin and no longer than his finger. My father's gift to me at sixteen. The only thing I owned that nobody could take.

He held it up to the dome light and turned it, studying it.

"Ceramic. Clears metal detectors." He glanced at me. "Who taught you to hide it that high?"

"Give it back."

"Answer me."

"Go to hell."

"I'm taking you there." He said it almost gently, which was worse. "Anything else?"

I said nothing. My thigh was bare and burning where his hand had been, and I could not look at him.

He shifted off me, but only enough to open the door. Wind roared in, wet and freezing, and salt stung my eyes. He stepped out, walked to the guardrail, and stood there with the little white blade between two fingers, above the black water.

My chest cracked open. I don't even know why. It was just a knife.

It was the last thing my mother ever touched before she died.

"Wait—"

He didn't. He flicked his wrist, and the dagger turned over once in the headlights and vanished. I never heard it hit.

Lucian walked back to the car, bent into the open door, and caught my chin in his wet hand.

"Family rule number two, little bird," he said, soft as a kiss against my ear. "Claws come off first."