Ultimate Vengeance (Wanted Men Book 4)(123)
Tegan lowered herself to the bench and Lore glared at Vasily as he brushed by to sit next to her.
Vasily went a little further. “The visitation is tonight at seven. If you can make it, I know your presence would help tremendously.”
“Yes,” Tegan murmured, her eyes unfocused. “Of course, I’ll be there.”
“T.”
She looked at Lorenzo. “Yeah?”
“Maybe you should give this one a miss.”
“Why? Markus was killed, Lorenzo. It’s his visitation and funeral. Why would I give that a miss?”
Her disbelieving tone had Father Michael nodding his goodbyes and moving off down the aisle toward the back of the church.
Vasily stayed right the fuck where he was. He wanted to hear this.
“You don’t need to be around…that kind of thing right now,” the detective said, his tone kind but a touch impatient.
“Oh? Hmm. What kind of thing is that, Lore? Death? Grief? My friends who need me?”
“Your friends.” He didn’t scoff, but then, he didn’t have to. It was implied.
Tegan’s shoulder’s bowed, and she hesitated slightly before confirming, “Yes. My friends,” she said tiredly. “Yours, too, at one time. Remember? Those men? They’re men, Lore, just like you.”
“We’ll talk about it later.”
“There really isn’t anything to talk about.”
They looked at each other as if neither understood where the other was coming from.
“Tegan understands something better than many others, Lorenzo,” Vasily offered, explaining something the kid should already be well aware of. “Because she feels it. She’s invested, right from her heart. She can’t turn her back on them because she loves them, and is loyal to them. There is no halfway when that word comes into it. It’s all or nothing. You’re either loyal. Or you are not. How can that be confused?” He wasn’t thinking of the young doctor anymore. “You cannot adopt the practise only when it suits your purpose. Would you like to know why? Because it lives in those of us lucky enough to grasp the concept. It’s alive. It’s a part of who we are. Tegan will forgive her friends because they’re a large part of who she is. She knows that, and I think your nose is out of joint because you know it, too, and nothing you say to her will change it.”
He clapped his hand on the detective’s hard shoulder to end the lecture, then reached out and gave Tegan’s hand a squeeze. “Seeing you there will give everyone a boost they all desperately need right now. They’ve been grieving your absence from their lives just as they’re now grieving Markus’s.”
Tears filled the girl’s eyes as Vasily walked away.
♦ ♦ ♦
Lucian sat in the front row at a funeral home on the Upper West Side, his cousin Gheorghe next to him, Gheorghe’s sister Daria further down. Claude was on Lucian’s right, acting as security. Lucian had asked him if he would prefer to be acknowledged as Markus’s partner but the man had given one shake of his head.
“Markus wouldn’t do that to you in life. He certainly wouldn’t appreciate me doing it to you in death.”
“To me?” He’d wanted to vomit. “I would be proud to show people who my brother was.”
Claude had looked pained. “I wish he could have heard that.”
Lucian looked up from the crease in the pant leg of his Kiton. It wasn’t his favorite suit, which was why he’d worn it. He would dispose of it when he took it off later. The shoes, too. Those he would miss. Berluti. His favorites.
A presence entering the room had his head slowly coming up. The feeling was one he couldn’t put a name to but had felt before. Once. In an art gallery in Queens. He wanted to look at the entrance but didn’t. He would give her yet another chance. To escape him. If she didn’t take it, then she was fair game.
He continued to nod as the people passed by, and found his gaze moving down the line.
He caught himself and faced forward again.
Give her the chance she deserves, that soothing voice he now knew was Markus’s whispered.
Lucian closed his eyes and savored it for a moment. When he opened them again, the faces in front of him were not the ones he’d been avoiding looking into a moment ago.
Down the line he looked…
His attention was fully engaged from one heartbeat to the next.
Yasmeen Michaels.
His prey.
An enchanting, classy, incredibly charming art gallery assistant…whose first hours in life had been spent in a cardboard box on the stoop of an orphanage in the Bronx. The file Lucian had read—without Yasmeen’s knowledge—stated a worker had found the unidentified infant lying quietly on a cloud of dirty blankets.