Heartless Prince by Brook Wilder
Chapter 45
Lucas
I pushed open the door to the building, my heart hammering in my chest. I didn’t know why I felt this need to get inside, but something was wrong.
Something was fucking wrong.
Not bothering to take the elevator, I took the stairs instead, somehow climbing the flights with ease to my penthouse, finding it far too easy to get inside.
Where were my fucking guards?
Where was Leda?
The uncomfortable twist in my chest tightened, and I hurried to push open the stairwell door, finding the normally locked door open.
No.
I raced through the penthouse to my bedroom, where she should have been, but the bed was empty.
“Leda!” I shouted, fear clawing at my throat as I hurried back out into the main room.
The terrace doors were open.
“Leda?” I asked as I approached the doors, stepping outside. The wind whipped at my coat, and the sky was dark with pregnant storm clouds. I knew she preferred to be on the terrace, and some of my anxiety lessened at the thought of it.
She was out there. I was sure of it.
Rounding the corner, my heart calmed in my chest when I saw her standing on the railing. I wasn’t sure how she could be doing that. Her long black nightgown billowed around her body, and when she looked back at me, there was sadness in her eyes.
“What are you doing, Leda?” I reached out my hand. “Come back here.”
She shook her head. “I can’t. I can’t be with a monster any longer.”
They were the words I’d been waiting to hear from her mouth, but I had never thought they would hurt so fucking much.
“Please, Leda. Get down and we can talk about this,” I pleaded, taking a step closer to her and trying to figure out how to get her safely back on the ground without killing us both. “Please, don’t do this.”
She let out a sob. “I have to, don’t you see? This is the only way.”
“Leda, please,” I begged desperately. “Don’t. Don’t do this to me.”
“Goodbye, Lucas,” she said, and jumped.
I jolted awake, my heart pounding against my rib cage and a cold sweat covering my body. The dream. It felt far too fucking real.
I knew it was just a dream. Leda’s body was pressed up against mine, her long hair tickling my bare chest as she slept on, unaware of what my mind made me see.
Fuck.
I blew out a breath, letting my hand slowly sift through her silky strands. We’d been at the penthouse for four days now while I’d been trying to remind the boys in the Battery who their real boss was.
Adrian was moving fast, far faster than I expected, and even after I left from the meeting, I had a sneaking suspicion that my position was much weaker than I thought it was.
I was fucking sick of it. I should have had that bastard killed the moment I became Don. Instead, I gave in to a moment of mercy and let him live. Now, he went from a thorn at my side to a snake at my heel.
I would have liked to say that most of my days were spent focusing on business, but with Leda around, I found it hard to stray from her for too long.
I had tried it once, heading to one of the clubs for a drink, and found it an utterly unpleasant experience.
The club had been too noisy, the air too stuffy. And the women—hell, I had scared most of them off the moment they approached the table. Before I had had no problems having one or two join me, but none of them were Leda, and that was the problem.
None of them.
Disentangling myself from her body, I rose from the bed and found my loafers. I slid them on and walked out of the bedroom for some air.
Leda was in my fucking blood. She was all I thought about when I wasn’t with her and all that I wanted whenever I came through the door at night. I wanted her smile, her laugh, and the way she fucked me right to sleep at night.
I felt at peace around her, and that scared the shit out of me.
After pulling a water bottle out of the fridge, I walked out onto the same offending terrace from my nightmare, glad to find it empty. A storm battered the city tonight, the rain matching my dark mood.
I didn’t like this feeling Leda invoked in me. I didn’t like her infiltrating my walls and making me care about her.
She was supposed to be my trophy, my triumph over Carmine. She was supposed to be my tool that brought the war to remove Adrian from my side without dirtying my own hands.
She wasn’t supposed to become an obsession like this.
Now I couldn’t even concentrate on work because of her, because of what she had done to me.
She made me want to be a better man, something different than what I had built for myself in my mind. She made me want to fight for her smile.
I wanted her fucking love.
“No,” I barked into the storm. I didn’t deserve her fucking love. I had bought her for reasons that should have made her hate me. I had wanted to use her and then cast her aside, a broken, used shell of a woman, to piss off Carmine.
Love had never been part of the bargain, but Leda was making me fall for her. She was making me feel things I couldn’t afford, not with this shit with Adrian hanging over my head.
I couldn’t afford to lose my credibility now. I couldn’t afford to show my weakness, especially when that weakness was Leda.
