Page 46 of Ice & Steel

“Fuck,” I swore quietly. “Fuck this, fuck this.”

Enza lifted my head up, straightening my shoulders. “Lucien, you have to eat. Cosimo and Duran are out doing a perimeter check, but they’ll be back soon. Eat. Then I want you to try to sleep. One of us will stay up and keep watch.”

Slowly, I got to my feet. My body felt like rubber and my eyes burned with unshed tears. I couldn’t remember a single time in my life when I’d cried. I’d stopped crying when my father started punishing me for it when I was still a child. Even now, at almost fifty years of age, there was still an automatic element of shame to breaking down.

Iris pushed me into a chair and put my plate into my lap. My stomach was empty, but I wasn’t hungry.

“Please, eat just a few bites,” she pressed.

I obeyed and set aside the fork when I was done, passing the plate back to Enza. The numbness was beginning to recede now and it was replaced by a simmering rage. I wasn’t sure how to handle it.

“Lucien,” Iris said quietly. “Will you sleep if I stay up and watch over the boys?”

I shook my head. “They need a guard with a gun.”

“Cosimo or Duran will do it,” said Enza, standing.

“I’ll do it—”

Enza swiveled to face me, putting a hand on her hip. “You will try to get some sleep, Lucien. You’re no good to Olivia if you’re too exhausted to find her tomorrow.”

Iris glanced between us, clearly surprised by Enza’s tone. Ordinarily I would have reprimanded my sister-in-law for speaking to me like that, but now I appreciated her firmness.

“Alright, I’ll lie down on the couch in the living room,” I said. “I want to be by the door. Just in case.”

The front door was the only entrance into the house except for an underground tunnel that led out to an airstrip a half mile away. The trapdoor to the tunnel was locked and barred, but the front door was a point of weakness. I would sleep there like a guard dog.

Enza and Iris went to bed a half hour later. It was late when I finally lay down, my phone on my stomach. I pulled the couch across the door behind us and sat in silence with a second glass of whiskey. The house was quiet. I closed my eyes. Perhaps if I pretended to sleep, I’d feel rested in the morning.

I was close to dozing off when my phone rang.

Like a shot, I was on my feet with the glowing screen burning in my vision.

An unknown number.

I swallowed and lifted the phone to my ear. I knew without a shadow of a doubt that whoever was on the other end, they had my wife.

“Hello, Lucien.”

It was cool, lightly accented, with a hint of gravel. Fuck. I knew that voice and I knew exactly what he was going to demand in exchange for Olivia.

Everything.

Distantly, I heard the end approaching, the slow crumble of an empire in the back of my mind. My head dropped and my lids sank shut.

“I know you have her,” I said. “Let’s talk.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

OLIVIA

I spent the next two days locked in the bedroom. No one came for me except the silent woman who appeared three times a day with a tray of food. I ate, knowing he wouldn’t try to poison me. I was too important to Lucien.

The morning of the third day, the silent woman handed me a paper bag of clothes with my breakfast. There was a note pinned to the outside of the bag instructing me to get dressed and be ready to leave.

Heart pounding, I obeyed. Inside the bag was a skimpy white sundress with an open back and a slit running all the way up. I stood by the bed with the sheer fabric bunched in my hands.

He was trying to humiliate me by keeping me half naked.