Page 30 of Lady of Darkness
Gideon and Theo.
I swallow as Luka closes the door. He walks over to me and kisses me on the cheek. I have to keep stiff as a board to keep from recoiling.
“You did beautifully,” he purrs. One of his hands comes to my hair, and he brushes it back. I try not to gag. “You want power, don’t you, darling?”
I want your fucking hands off of me.
I nod, and he smiles. If his personality wasn’t so fucking repulsive, I might find him handsome. I can see why Gemma fell for him so quickly.
“The rest of our life begins now, Harlow. With the Lords dead, we can rule the world together.” His other hand comes to my mouth, and my nostrils flare at his touch. “Unless, of course, Lord Cross and Lord Beauchamp aren’t actually dead, and you mean to deceive me.”
Wait, what?!
I open my mouth to scream as he pins me to the edge of his bed. Fighting against him, I use my knees, but he holds my hands behind me–the telltale feel of cold metal clamping around my wrists.
As I try to scream again, Luka shoves the tip of a gun inside of my mouth, prying my jaw open.
I whimper and shake.How the fuck could he tell?
“Let’s get one thing straight,” he growls. “You may think your order is all powerful, all present, all mighty. You may call yourselves gods, but I’ll tell you what I told your little fuck buddies earlier: every empire eventually falls.”
I’m trembling as he removes the gun from my mouth. The acrid taste of gunpowder and metal makes me retch. Luka slams me face down onto the bed, and I scream again when he pulls my pants down from my hips.
“Your men are going to die. I told them I had forty men, but it’s really over two hundred. They may be well-trained, but they are still human, their flesh still able to be torn apart by hundreds of machine guns,” he murmurs. “We’ll shoot them in the head to be sure this time.”
Tears fall down my cheeks as he spreads my ass.
Please.
Please.
Don’t let this happen again.
Let them be okay.
Let this be over.
I hear him spit into his palm, and I squeeze my eyes shut. My whole body is shaking underneath him, and he shoves my hands away. I feel him shift behind me, and then–
Boom.
I hear an explosion nearby, jolting beneath him, ears ringing.
Luka stiffens.
Boom.
Another one. The bed shakes, and Luka climbs off.
“What the–”
The bedroom door flies open. The smell of gunpowder and burnt wood hits my nostrils instantly. I turn my head to the side, and Theo and Gideon are standing in the doorway, looking absolutely fucking murderous.
Relief washes over me, and I see Theo’s eyes move from Luka to me–prone on the bed, pants at my ankles, my hands cuffed. A low growl emanates from his chest, and he looks at Luka before he cocks his gun and his head at the same time, pointing the gun straight at him as he strolls into the bedroom.
“How did you get in here?” Luka asks.
“Your order has always underestimated us,” Theo says, his voice low as he ignores Luka’s question. “And right now, I’mfucking furiousthat you touched someone that wasn’t yours.” He shoots Luka before anyone can react. Luka screams and falls to his knees. Blood spurts from his hand. “I’m going to put one bullet somewhere on your body for every fucking time you touched our woman.”
