Page 90 of Lucian

No, it certainly wasn’t.

“Stay here, yeah?”

Dante glared. “No.”

“Yes, asshole,” Lucian snarled. “Because Dad would kill me if something happened to you. You’re not even supposed to be with me today. Give me twenty seconds. That’s all.”

Refusing to argue with his brother further, Lucian slipped out of the alley entrance door and walked calmly down the way with his gun still out in the open at his side. Sweat had suddenly slicked up his palms, and his heart raged faster. It wasn’t like him to be nervous, but something felt off. So wrong.

The car alarm was so much louder outside.

Out in the brightness of the street, Lucian stood staring at his beloved Lexus in shock.

All the way along the driver’s side of the car, bullet spray littered the car. Windows were shattered, the vehicle was ruined, and it was still running, just like Lucian left it. The Lexus was the only car on the side of the street that was hit.

“Dolce cazzo,” Dante exclaimed from behind him.

“I told you to wait!”

“Did someone try to kill us?”

It wouldn’t be the first time.

Lucian didn’t think the subject of intent was his brother, though. No one knew Dante was working with him but Gio, and that just wasn’t possible. Desperately, he tried to search his brain and remember if someone had followed him that morning.

Nothing stood out.

Someone might have gotten word he was going to be in the area and sought his vehicle out. That was possible. With the car left running, it might have looked like he was inside because the windows were tinted so dark they were illegal.

“Lucian?”

“No, someone tried to kill me.”

• • •

“I thought you were going to the gym today?” Antony asked, turning fast on Dante with his narrowing gaze.

“Change of plans.”

Antony scoffed. “Change of plans, Dante. What would have happened if you were in that car, son?”

“We wouldn’t be having this discussion, I imagine,” Dante replied indifferently.

Wrong answer. Lucian groaned internally.

“Wouldn’t be having this—” Antony pinched the bridge of his nose, huffing out air like a pissed off bull. Lucian knew what was coming next and moved slightly in front of Jordyn to block her from it. A glass went flying into the wall and shattered as Antony’s anger exploded. “Get out of my face right now before I make you wish you were in that fucking car!”

Oddly, Jordyn didn’t seem to react a bit to Antony’s show of rage. She simply continued staring down at her hands resting in her lap while Dante left his father’s home office with a flip of his middle finger and muttering about needing a drink, anyway.

“Lucian—”

“Hey, don’t turn this on me again,” Lucian interrupted his father sharply. “He’s twenty-six, almost twenty-seven. I can’t control him. Besides, this wasn’t an issue two years ago when the three of us were running together like a pack of dogs.”

“I didn’t say this was your fault!”

“It was ten minutes ago when you were yelling at me.”

Antony glared at the wall where the paint scratched from the glass hitting it. “And I was yelling at Gio an hour ago for not remembering to make his bed last Sunday morning before church. I yell. That’s what I do when I’m frustrated.”