Diana

“I don’t suppose that your brother has told you why he summoned all of us here in the middle of the night?”

“My mother is sleeping. I mean, technically that means he could want to talk about anything at all, really.” It’s the truth, because as much as I want to have an answer to give my husband, I don’t. Nathaniel has been working at home a lot lately. While he makes all of the obligatory work trips and stops, he has been delegating a decent amount of the work to our mother. Not that she minds being able to get out of the house every now and then, but we have all noticed that Nathaniel is a little more on edge lately than he used to be. I’ve tried asking him what the issue is, but he usually offers me a one word cryptic sort of answer that doesn’t leave anybody satisfied.

“It seemed important, though.”

“You’re just upset because you want to be in bed,” I tease.

“No,” Stephan corrects me in that dark tone of voice that I love, “I want to be in you; it doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with being in a bed or not. I could have you right here in the back seat of this car and be just as happy.”

A dark curl of desire pulsates between my legs instantly at the insinuation, and for half a moment I seriously consider taking off my pants right now and mounting my husband in the back seat of the car.

Yet, I slap his thigh as if it’s somehow a bad idea that he wants to fuck me as much as he does. If anything, marriage has increased his already insanely high libido. I keep waiting for the honeymoon phase to end, but it hasn’t. We have been married for months, and I still want him just as badly as I always have. Maybe I’m just attempting to compensate for all of those years that we weren’t together…or perhaps this is just how it is going to be between us.

“Slapping me is only going to make me want to bend you over my knee. You know that…and yet you do it anyway. Brave or incredibly stupid, Diana, which one is it?” Stephan teases as the car pulls into the driveway of my paternal home.

“Is it bad that I’m half tempted to tell Leo to drive the streets for another thirty minutes or so, that way you have to carry me inside of the house because you will have ruined my ability to walk?”

“Oh, that is very tempting,” Stephan says, and he gestures for Leo to keep driving. He doesn’t get another two feet, though, before Nathaniel throws open the doors to the estate and waves us down.

“Damn,” I mutter and shake my head.

“I guess we will have to attempt to be rather sneaky; perhaps we can sneak away for a quickie in your bedroom.”

I laugh and shake my head. “That’s insane.”

“Insane? To you—I think it’s brilliant. Now I will absolutely be fucking you at least three times today inside of your family home. Imagine, taking you in the very same room that you were pining for me all those years ago. Did you play with your clit fantasizing about me?” Stephan asks with his familiar bad boy grin as he opens the door and slides out. He holds the door open for me to pass through, ending the conversation unless I want to answer some really awkward questions from my brother as to the topics of our conversation. I don’t want to do that, so I flush and choose to shut up.

“That’s what I thought. I’m rather looking forward to exploring your teenage fantasies, Diana. I’m sure we can make them more vivid,” Stephan whispers and places his hand on the small of my back to guide me to to the front door. He reaches out for Nathaniel’s hand and shakes it firmly as we get closer.

“Nathaniel, it’s been what…a week?” Stephan cuts to the chase, but Nathaniel just nods and then goes back inside. Stephan and I exchange strange glances before following him inside. “Is it just me, or does he seem a touch more on edge than he normally does?”

“No…he’s definitely acting weird,” I agree, watching my brother and his quick pace through the mansion that both Stephan and I struggle to keep up with. Nathaniel stops abruptly in front of his office. Inside is a mess. For a man who is normally very neat and tidy, seeing his office this way is distressing to me.

“What is all of this?” I ask and step out of Stephan’s grasp, moving into the room as I run my fingers over some of the papers on the tables. My stomach drops when I see the folder labeled “Elijah Lord.” I pluck the folder open and see the autopsy report sitting on top, a collection of photos that I don’t really have any real desire to go through if I don’t have to.

There seem to be other documents and newspaper clippings across the surface of the table, and some of them have fluttered from the edge and lay scattered around the edges of the table as well. “Nathaniel,” I say, picking up a picture of Elijah having lunch with another figure with his back turned. “Seriously, what is all of this?”

Nathaniel looks at Stephan, “I have found out some rather distressing news.”

“Distressing to the point that you had us come here in the middle of the night?” Stephan says, not unkindly. I can tell from his expression that he’s concerned that perhaps Nathaniel might be obsessing over the death of Elijah in an unhealthy way and debating whether or not he needs to say something about it. Elijah is hardly the first person that Nathaniel has killed over the course of his career, even if he doesn’t ever want to talk about it in any amount of detail. I guess I can’t blame him. Dealing with the murder of another person is a very private, personal thing, and so long as he’s able to handle it, that’s his business.

It hasn’t occurred to me before this moment that perhaps my brother isn’t handling it as well as perhaps he should be.

“Yes, well…I needed to get it out of my head. It occurred to me that perhaps I shouldn’t have been going through all of this research on my own. Perhaps I should have included you sooner, but what is done is done, and I am including you now.” Nathaniel nods, and I notice the heavy circles under his eyes.

“Nathaniel…you could have called us any time that you needed help.” My voice softens, “If you needed to talk…or if you just didn’t want to be alone…we would have been only too happy to come and just keep you company.”

Stephan nods, but Nathaniel looks confused by my words.

“What? No, it’s nothing like that.” Nathaniel shakes his head and walks around the table to grab his bottle of water before chugging the entire thing.

“How long has it been since you slept?”

Again he looks at me, confused. “What? Stop it; that’s not why I asked you here. I didn’t summon you in order to debate my health or the state of my mental faculties. I called you here because I found something that affects both of our families, the Lords and the Angelos, in a big way, more than just the restructuring of power that we have been working on in the months since you’ve been married, Stephan.”

That seems to capture Stephan’s attention in a wholly different way. “What do you mean?”

“Look,” Nathaniel slides an image over to my husband, and Stephan picks it up. He examines it for a good long while before shaking his head. Nathaniel sighs as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world and he cannot believe that Stephan would miss it. “I’ve discovered that Elijah wasn’t working alone.”

“What? Of course, he was,” Stephan starts and tosses the photo back onto the table. “I’ve had each and every member of my family interrogated, no matter how distant the relation—including the divorced spouses. Which, let me tell you, was not a fun thing to accomplish, Nathaniel. If somebody in my family was working with that viper, I would have found out by now.”

Nathaniel just shakes his head and pushes the photo back again. “No, it’s somebody outside of the Lord family. That much I am certain of. Which means that somebody else was also implicated in my imprisonment. Which means that there is still somebody out there laying in wait at this exact moment that had a hand in my abduction and the subsequent tortures that I had to endure while in confinement. I don’t much like that idea, would you?”

Stephan shakes his head. “Of course not, but do you have any idea who it might be?”

Nathaniel answers cryptically, “You’ll soon find out.”

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