“Ensure that everyone is safely inside their homes! I need a team to search the woods nearby!”Several officers broke off to their assigned tasks. The scene outside the mansion was mayhem. Red and blue lights flashed for miles. They bounced off the nearby homes and cars, casting everything in their urgent hue.“This is the police! We have a search warrant!” He could feel his heartbeat in his ears.No answer. Fine, he had expected that. What criminal would happily open their door to a squadron of police? Good, he thought. Makes the game more fun.“Surround it!” he commanded. His forces circled the home, guns pointed at windows. He kicked the door open, and they poured into his home. It was barren. No movement, no lights, no noises. This is bad. “Fan out and search! He’s in here somewhere!” Checkpoints had been established all over the city, so there was no way Eugene could be anywhere.Heavy footsteps filled the house, rattling crystal vases and gilded chandeliers. Captain Whitlock mad
“I… I don’t want you to stop.”He’d never heard a sweeter melody. His mouth descended on hers, capturing her lips in a searing kiss. Their bodies were alight with passion as the kiss deepened. Their lips mashed against each other, as if trying they were trying to destroy each other. It was hungry and desperate and spoke of months of closeted longing. Her hands wound his hair, reveling at the familiar feel of his thick strands. Lucien’s arms looped around her back, pressing her body into his.An urgent beeping filled the room, forcing them apart. Audrey’s heart rate was through the roof, and any minute and a gaggle of medical personnel would rush into the room if she didn’t calm down. Their foreheads touched as they caught their breath.“Sorry,” he said, not sounding sorry at all. “That was building up for a while.”“Yeah,” she panted. “I had almost forgotten what that felt like.”“Forgot?” Lucien pulled back, affronted. “Well, I guess I’ll just have to remind you.”Audrey giggled as h
“This city is in for a wild ride. Some crazy shit is going to go down. I feel bad for anyone involved.” She walked away to continue her sweep of the house.Captain Whitlock wanted to punch a hole in the wall.“This is some bullshit!” he yelled, startling a couple of the CSI techs nearby. He went into an empty room and called Mark. That was the only other person that could know what was going on.“I’m just saying, you had people watching this house at all times. How did none of them see anything?”“I don’t know. I ran hard surveillance. People were sending me reports by the hour. Everyone that walked in and out had been accounted for.”“So, how did this happen?” Captain Whitlock growled. “How did someone slip in, murder a man who was the focus of a city wide man hunt, and then slip out without leaving a shred of evidence? Are you sure you can trust all your people?”“Yes,” Mark paused. “But I’ll look into it. If there is a traitor, you’ll have him within the hour.”“You need to know. T
“Who is at the damn top?” The more he read, the more disturbing things got. Eugene had committed some horrific crimes all to appease whoever had loaned him the money to pay off his gambling debts.“Rest is distress, you vile sack of shit.”The journal described robberies, hostile takeovers, more kidnappings, murders. Each entry more monstrous than the last. One particular entry stood out.‘I’m not stupid. Lucien has figured out by now that I’m behind the kidnapping of his precious woman. It would have gone by less messy if I had paid attention. The last time I saw him he was dating Mia. Imagine my surprise when I kidnapped her first and she told me that Lucien had essentially kicked her out of his life. Sad for her, but fortuitous for me. A woman scorned is an amazing weapon. Mia has turned out to be an invaluable ally. While spouting words of undying love for Lucien, she was more than willing to assist me by planting the drugs in his car. A drastic distraction, but a necessary one.M
Becca sat up and stared at him. Her eyes were soft, her heart full of warmth from his words.“Hmm,” she mused. “Hot, smart, and sensitive? How are you real?”Damian looked down at his lap and chuckled.“You’re going to have to stop complimenting me like that. You’re going to make me blush.”“I could do a lot more to make you blush,” she wiggled her eyebrows.“Seriously, though,” he looked back at her. “We’re just getting to know each other. I don’t want to overstep any boundaries. But… there is a way I think I can help you.”“Yeah? What’s that?”“I hear your father is a building contractor.”“He is… or was. He’s too sick now to run the business. Once I’m recovered, I plan to try and save it. Why are you bringing that up?”“I want to add your business as a preferred vendor for my firm.”Becca’s eyes lit up. She practically sprang up from the bed.“Damian…”“Don’t try to say I shouldn’t. I want to. I, um… researched your family’s business and I was impressed with the work. It won’t guar
His grounding personality along with Becca’s fire would mesh greatly. It was a perfect match in her eyes, and it was her fervent hope that Becca and Damian would be able to find happiness in each other.“You two sound like you’re having a great time,” Lucien teased as he walked back into the room.“Just plotting against you,” Becca answered.“Should I run now?”“Not yet,” Becca looked him up and down, as though she was scanning him. “You don’t have anything to be afraid of.” She made her way out of the room. Before she left, she turned back and looked at them. “…for now.”“I thought Tracy was bad,” Lucien shuddered after Becca left. “She is terrifying.”“You have no idea,” Audrey smiled fondly. “So, where did you go?”“I was taking care of a few things for work.” There was a sort of melancholy in his voice that made Audrey pause.“You mentioned you wanted to talk to me about something last night?” she prodded.“Yeah. I was wondering where you were going to go. You know, after leaving
The trip from the hospital started was thick with silence. Lucien wanted to pretend he was okay with her going back there, but inside he was fuming. As far as he saw it, there was no reason for her to go back. She belonged back in the city with him. If she didn’t want to live with him, fine. He could get an apartment for her and Bella to live in. But to be honest, he didn’t like that either. And there wasn’t any reason for her to continue to work for Damian. Or anywhere. He could provide and take care of her. All of their needs would be met, and Bella would never want for anything. He made more than enough money to ensure that Audrey every desire was catered to. When Bella grew up, she would have the finest of everything.But she refused him.Audrey wanted to continue to live her life away from him and then in the same breath tell him she wanted to be with him. It didn’t make any sense at all. Why couldn’t she understand what he was trying to do?“Our lives can’t be just about each ot
You’re not serious,” Mark laughed. “You’re mad because she won’t drop her life and run to only exist as who you need her to? She can only have a life if you want her to have one? Don’t you hear how insane that sounds?”“That’s not what I meant.”“Yes, it is. Let me guess. You want her to quit her job, uproot her father from his facility, that he loves and is thriving at, move out of her apartment, lose all sense of her own identity, so she can move in with you and do nothing?”“Why do you make it sound so bad?”Lucien retorted.“Because it is! It’s terrible! That’s not how relationships work!”“Then what am I supposed to do? I don’t know how this works. Do I just see her sometimes and let her just… do whatever?“Yes! You make plans, and then they get cancelled because she doesn’t have a babysitter. You see each other on weekends. Whatever the arrangement you had before is dead. And you aren’t married. You don’t own her. You never will. She’s your girlfriend now, and you’re going to tre
NEARLY TEN YEARS LATER….Lucien came to a halt in front of a school,he sometimes come to get the kids from school,sometimes Audrey does that or their driver.He got down from his car and saw them approaching,all three of them.Louis ran up to him excitedly.Lucien caught him and carried him on his arms.“How was school today?”Lucien asked.“It was fine.”His eldest child,Bella replied with a broad smile.He gave Braylon,his second child who was seven years old a fist bump as they got into the car.***********Lucien hurried around the kitchen,Audrey was busy with work today so he had wanted to take care of the children,feed them and put them to sleep before she comes back home so that when she gets back,she can have a good rest…well a good rest after they finish making love.He was preparing pasta for the kids and he knew he had to make it perfect,otherwise,Braylon would complain and tease him for days.Audrey has been busy these past couple of days but she promised to make it up to him
“What does that even mean?”“He had a strange obsession with Lucien. Everything Lucien did, he wanted to do. Everything Lucien had, he wanted to have. There was one year that he intentionally matched everything Lucien wore. He used to tell everyone that they had the same middle name. He even started talking to another girl in our class named Mia just because that was Lucien’s girlfriend’s name. I never liked him.”“Lucien never noticed this?”Mark let out a long, heavy sigh.“What you need to understand about Lucien, especially at that age, is that he was hungry for validation. Starving for it. If anything, all that strange attention made him feel important. To be perfectly honest, there may even be a good chance he didn’t even notice it. He was so wrapped up in Mia… his world didn’t have capacity for anything else.”Audrey felt small for a moment.“He really loved her, didn’t he?”Mark glanced at her for a moment and noted the sadness in her eyes.“He thinks he did. That wasn’t love,
“We saw that sexy ass car out here, and Nathan got the keys to go move it,” another young officer explained with tears in eyes and panic in his voice. “We all wanted… we all wanted to see. But when he turned the key… when he turned the key…” the young man sobbed. “Some people were too close and got caught in the explosion.”Captain Whitlock looked over at Lucien.“I think you were already bait and didn’t even know.”It was as though he was moving through sand. Nothing registered. Nothing clicked. Not the unnatural metal of the handcuffs as they tightened around his wrists. Not the officers’ angry voices as the read him his rights, or the rough hands that pushed and shoved him into a cell. Not when those cell doors slid home with a loud, echoing clang. Captain Whitlock tried to stop the way they were mishandling him. But they had lost one of their own. A young man who was vibrant and full of life, at the beginning of his career.Another one. Because of me?“I get one phone call. I need
Lucien’s eyes flashed up at the captain, filled with anger and anguish.“She contacted me while I was in Italy,” he almost snarled.“After you and Audrey had just been married?” Captain Whitlock raised an eyebrow.“Don’t judge me. There were… circumstances about that marriage. Either way, I didn’t want to see her. But she said that she needed someone to keep her from… Hurting herself.”The irony. She had run to him once to prevent that. But in the end, she had forced him to witness it. His eyes were dark and stony as he fought to keep his emotions in check. Part of him wanted to give in. To breakdown and just give in to himself. Anything to make these feelings go away forever.Captain Whitlock softened as he realized what was going on in Lucien’s mind.“Sorry. Why was she seeking such an intense escape?”“She was running from him. She said their marriage was in shambles and that things had gone horribly wrong, that he was cheating on her.”“That was it? He wasn’t hurting her?”“She sa
“Philip Carson”The name hung in the air between them, like a two-ton brick. After all this time, Ghost had a name. Now the hunter, could become the hunted.“Holy shit,” the captain fell back into his chair. All the air left his lungs. “That punk? That punk is Ghost?”“You know him?” Lucien’s eyes almost fell from his head.“I had him. Right here in this office years ago,” Captain Whitlock seethed. “Right there!” he shouted and kicked his chair across the room. “Ghost was right there!”“What the hell for?”“That piece of shit kid was always getting into trouble. Vandalism, petty theft, property theft, arson… all kinds of stuff. Typical spoiled rich boy shit. No offense. I always knew that kid was disturbed. He had no remorse for anything. The only thing he ever regretted was getting caught”“This was before he became Ghost obviously.”“Well, yes. But do you know that this means?”“What?”“It’s insanity. It’s the most oversimplification of anything that has ever happened.”“What?” Luci
He began spending most of his time at the building. “Command” they’d been calling it. Eugene and Mia couldn’t be trusted. The first prisoner,Racheal…Rebecca … whatever her name was, was being beaten even though he had given explicit instructions that she was not to be touched. And Mia could not at all be trusted with the other one. God, what was that one’s name? Ava? Avery? It was something with an “A”he was certain. Either way, it didn’t matter. They had to keep them both alive and the two overly emotional idiots he was working with were going to mess it up.Lucien was supposed to do a press conference and announce that he was relinquishing the company over to his cousin. The press conference was Eugene’s idea. He wanted a public take down and humiliation of his cousin. He was all for anything that made Lucien suffer. This plan wasn’t going to work. But he was interested to see how it would unfold.They planned to watch the press conference together. After it, his plan was to slink
His life had become a tunnel and the only light at the end of it was the demise of Lucien. It was the driving force in his soul. It was the pulsing his blood. His first meeting with Eugene set his plan back into motion. There was no improvising. Without even realizing, Lucien had been slipping through his fingers like fine sand. Always just beyond his reach. But this time he would get inside of Lucien’s world and destroy him from within.He kept a close watch on Lucien’s personal life. It seemed Mia had run back to marry him as he had anticipated. What he didn’t anticipate was the wrath it fueled in him. It was interesting. It had been so long since he felt any real emotion that it caught him off guard. Ever since he’d killed his father, it was as though he’d murdered his own feelings as well. Other than hate, nothing else lived within him. He often wondered why he even continued to do anything. He did have to admit that he was chasing the thrill of that first kill. Nothing ever seeme
“I told you not to get involved with her. Her father is my rival, and he has been encroaching on our territory. This,” he indicated the dead woman. “is a message.”“I loved her!” he screamed back, cradling her corpse in his arms.“You loved the other one too.”“This was different,” he cried. “She was pregnant! You killed my woman and my baby! We were going to tell you tomorrow night at dinner!”“Then I did you a favor. Children are a weakness, and you aren’t strong enough yet.”“Not strong enough?” he saw red. The vestiges of whatever humanity he had left dissipated. All that was left behind was anger and a thirst for vengeance. All the warmth left his soul. There was nothing left now. Nothing except an abyss with no end. He leveled his own gun at his father. “No one is stronger than me.”“Son, be careful.” His father’s eyes went wide. He dropped his gun and threw up his hands. He walked backwards slowly, like an animal being cornered by a predator. “You’re overly emotional right now.
Once she made the mistake of asking him what he and his father did. He brandished a gun and held it to her chest. To her immense relief, it wasn’t loaded. But she found that out only after he fired it. Bone aching terror was all she knew. Whatever life she had was almost gone. The only thing that was left was the memory of Lucien.Being with him was the last time she felt happy and safe. She clung onto the memories, and they were the only things keeping her afloat. Life was a nightmare and she just wanted to sleep.He knew he should have been treating her better. He knew that, but he just couldn’t seem to care. They were in love once. Or perhaps they just thought they were. The truth was that he was an escape to her. An escape from a life she thought she didn’t want. It was obvious that she wanted out. But his one issue was who she wanted to run to. He’d let her go if he knew that she wasn’t going back to him, back to Lucien.He refused to lose to him. So, as long as he knew she would r