Page 82 of Black Castle

But she doesn’t want to become that. That thing he desperately wants to turn her into.

She will never be that person.

Chapter Twenty-six

Lucan

Anger.

It coils tight in Lucan’s chest—a venomous thing slithering through his veins, constricting his chest like barbed wire. It thrums in his skull, the pressure so sharp he fears it might split him in two. With his jaw locked, pain snapping at his temple, he clenches his fist, nails digging into his palm until the scent of copper tings the air.

There’s a body at his feet, mangled beyond recognition. Abbey Markov, the soldier who ran away with his ledger, the same one he has been turning Russia upside down, searching for. He was the only lead he had. Now he’s dead.

But no, his death isn’t the reason his vision is currently blurring at the edges. That isn’t why his breath is razor sharp, pulse hammering like a war drum. He can barely even register the body, or the negative impact of his death…the danger that looms ahead.

He’s furious, not because his vengeful brother, while in charge last night, killed the soldier who could have led them to the stolen ledger.

Not at all.

He’s angry because he touched her. Zev touched her. Vivienne.

And she wasn’t his to touch. Yet he was inside her last night, felt her in a way Lucan never did. That thought alone festers inside him, filling him with a possessiveness he never realized he was capable of.

The moment should have been his. She should have been his first.

If she moaned, it was supposed to be for him. If a name slipped out of her lips as she unraveled with pleasure, it should be his name. It should have been his name. But Zev took it. It was sacred, the memories should have been his, yet Zev took it.

The idea sickens him. Jealousy burns through his veins.

A muscle feathers in his jaw, his breath slow, controlled, forced—because if he lets go, if he so much as exhales wrong, the fury might devour him whole.

No matter how he tries to shut his eyes to the image, he can’t help but picture it, imagine it—Zev’s hands all over her, his naked body pressed to her naked one, his name on her fucking tongue.

The image sickens him. Sends something dangerous crawling beneath his skin. It fuels him with something—a desperate need to rewrite what Zev did. To erase him. To take back what he stole.

Over the years, Zev has stolen a great deal from him, and he allowed it. His choices. His control. But not this.

This? No, it’s unforgivable.

“How did this happen?” Finally, he asks about the body at his feet, his voice calm, betraying the chaos in his head. He already knows what happened to the soldier. Who killed him. But maybe if someone else says it out loud, the story will be different.

Alex Sokolov, his second-in-command, steps forward, stiff-back. His gaze flickers to the corpse, then to Lucan. “I returned late into the night with him, boss. Sent you a message that I was back, but before you got here, I had to go check on some suspicious activity at the port. When I got back—” he gestures at what’s left of Abbey Markov. “He was like this.”

Silence thickens.

The soldier hesitates. “The boys said you were pissed that he was withholding information. So…you handled it.”

“What time?” Lucan grinds out.

“Around eleven, sir.”

Lucan’s pulse stutters.

Eleven.

Zev slit a man’s throat, severed his Achilles tendons, shattered his fingers into splintered bones, then went back upstairs and fucked her like nothing happened, held her with the same hands that were soiled with another man’s blood, and made her call his name.

His stomach lurches.

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