Page 39 of Sins of the Father
“Would you promise to never hurt me?” she asked softly, her gaze wide, guileless.
“No.” His voice was iron.
Her breath caught. But Luc’s thoughts had already turned dark, twisting inward. If Mia tried to walk away in a year, it would not be one of his soldiers who put her down. It would be him. The code demanded it. The Commission demanded it. And yet… his very soul recoiled at the thought. It was like imagining his own hand slitting his throat. The revulsion made him stiffen, his eyes narrowing into slits.
Mia tilted her head, her gaze searching his face, her lips curving faintly. “You do not need a scar to be menacing,” she whispered.
Her words pierced through his armor more ruthlessly than any bullet. For a man who had lived his whole life wielding fear, here was a woman who saw his menace, acknowledged it… and wasn’t afraid.
Or was it the alcohol that gave her this liquid courage?
He stilled, just for a heartbeat. Luc did not fool himself; he knew it was because she had only seen the tiniest fraction of the man he was.
“What is your favorite cartoon?”
He almost laughed. “I have none.”
“Let me guess—too busy? Too focused? Too…serious? What were you like as a kid?”
The questions caught him off guard. His fingers tightened around her hips for the briefest moment. “Quiet. Observant. Always thinking three steps ahead.”
Mia smirked. “So… the same as now, just shorter?”
A flicker of amusement rushed through him. “Something like that.”
She pressed further, unwilling to let him slip away with shadows. “Did you ever get in trouble?”
“Not in the way you mean.”
Mia narrowed her eyes. “Vague answers don’t count. Try again.”
Luc exhaled slowly, his gaze steady but unreadable. “In my family, rebellion wasn’t an option. Every choice had weight. Every mistake carried consequences. I learned early to play the game better than anyone else.”
“Since it’s a game,” she asked softly, “what’s the prize?”
His eyes locked on hers, hard and unflinching. “Survival.”
Her throat tightened. “Sounds lonely.”
His jaw flexed, muscle ticking. “I had no time for loneliness.”
Mia’s heart ached. “You never got to have a childhood… You weren’t taken to the cinema to watch cartoons; you weren't taken to the park to go on rides, run from clowns, and eat cotton candy. My father did that with me, took me to the park, before everything changed. You didn’t play with trucks or dolls.”
One dark brow arched. “Dolls?”
“I thought you were progressive?”
Luc laughed.
What the hell was happening? He didn’t know. But one thought cut through the haze with brutal clarity: he hoped this life never changed her. That it never hardened her into another jade weighed down by blood and shadows.
Mia shifted in his lap, her thighs caging his hips, heat radiating from her in waves that made Luc’s pulse pound like war drums. Her gaze was steady—dark blue, gleaming with a boldness he hadn’t expected.
“There is a heat in my belly,” she whispered, her voice husky with wine and something far more dangerous. “And I want it satisfied.”
Luc stiffened, every muscle taut. He said nothing, too aware of the storm she had already conjured inside him. But she only smiled, a slow, wicked curve of lips that should never belong to a convent girl, and reached between them.
The sound of his zipper lowering filled the silence like a gunshot. Her slender fingers wrapped around him, and Luc swore viciously under his breath.
