Page 77 of Midnight Revelations

There was no way he was leaving here alive.

Lucas had a rule of no blood or death on his properties. Some rules were made to be broken.

I slipped down another step on my ass and was able to see under the level of the floor. The cellar had high shelving of antique wines along the outer walls. A woman lay unconscious on the floor beside the bottom of the stairs. I presumed she was the housekeeper that Lucrezia mentioned. Lucas had a lot of his men out as there had been an attack on his house in Tuscany yesterday and he was chasing leads. Marlow had used all the distractions to his advantage.

The left side of Lucas’ face was bruised and swollen because Marlow had always favoured his right hand when pummelling someone. Lucas was tied to a chair and glaring defiantly at my father’s sadistic servant. The only way Marlow subdued him was to grab Lucrezia first. I should never have come here. All her security officers were at home and I had been too tired to remember to phone them.

I couldn’t see Lucrezia and that worried me.

“You have been a thorn in Matteus’ side for too long,” Marlow said. “Always interfering and pretending to care about what happened to people. Matteus has had you on his hit list since you gave your seat on the Council to that sanctimonious asshole Xavier.”

Lucas spat in his face and received another blow to the face.

Marlow slowly wiped it away and chuckled. “Maybe I should enjoy a little time with your precious daughter and make you watch.”

A squeak of protest made me zero in on Lucrezia on the floor in the shadows, her hands and feet bound.

“You touch my daughter and I’ll make sure to tear you apart limb by limb.”

Marlow straightened and laughed. “There’s not much you can do, and your threats are worthless right now.” He walked over and dragged Lucrezia in front of her father. “The sins of the father are punishable through the children.”

That was the truth. I paid for my father’s sins every damn day.

Lucrezia bucked to try and escape, her muffled words telling me that he had gagged her. He slapped her across the face and sealed his fate. She tumbled to the floor and he loomed over her.

“Ash never loved anything in his life,” Marlow said, taunting her. “His father took everything from him to train him, even his childhood dog. Matteus wanted an heir worthy of sitting on the Blackwood throne.”

Marlow crouched beside Lucrezia, his finger trailing along the side of her face. “He never loved anything until you, and now he will once again be taught a lesson by his father. Matteus commanded that I bring your head to him. I cut the head off that other girl yesterday. Ash should have taken the warning and got you out of the country. Now he will suffer the fate of his actions.”

Murderous rage festered deep in my core, slowly bubbling until it cascaded through my veins in a burning hatred. If my father requested a head, as his heir I was duty bound to grant his wish.

***

Chapter Twenty-Five

Lucrezia

There was fear, and then there was terror, but today I found what lurked beyond that. It was a strange emotion that paralysed your senses and stole your reactions.

The creepy man with the gun had lost his sanity long ago. He muttered and hummed to himself as he paced about down here in Papa’s beloved cellar. Margo lay unconscious. He had obviously used her arriving for lunch as a way into the house. She had a huge lump on her forehead that blood trickled from.

Papa was tied to a chair defenceless as the man beat him. He’d been working when we arrived in the dining room earlier with a gun pointed to my head. Anger sparked in his eyes, but both men in the room knew that Papa wouldn’t risk my safety and that gun had been pressed to the side of my temple.

“You do realise that Ash will destroy Matteus if you harm Lucrezia?” Papa asked in a low tone. “You know he loves her, do you honestly think this will make him cower down and obey? If you do, then you don’t know the man he’s become.”

He punched Papa again. “I’ve known him from when he was a boy. He will learn to obey!”

I seriously doubted that. The Ash I knew tended to do his own thing and screw the consequences.

“That boy is now a man,” Papa taunted him as I rested on my knees with my hands tied at the wrists in front of me and my ankles bound behind me. “Believe me when I say that he will not obey.”

The man dragged me to my feet by the bindings on my wrists and I overbalanced and fell. His maniacal laugh sounded and he caught me around the waist and hauled me against him. “Ash will find your body broken while Matteus receives your head as payment.”

An image of Poppy’s head swam into my mind. That must be his signature.

His hands skimmed down me to cup my ass, touching me in a way that suggested what lay in my fate.

Ash would never survive finding my raped and beaten headless corpse. He already blamed himself for everything else that went wrong in his life.

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