LUCIAN
"If I had… anything to take a risk for?" I repeated in a disgracefully hollow voice, sounding weak even to my own ears.
His eyes were on mine, as hard as steel and unmoving. I squirmed on the stool as my stomach crunched.
What the hell is this? We were just making fun of my shitty job five minutes ago, and now he's checking me out like I'm the fucking gazelle. My palms started sweating. Why'd he yank the script like that?
"Yes," Adrian answered, his voice somber and yet something else… something… something that made my skin prickle. "So let's say you were… fighting for power. Politics. How low can you go to win a campaign?"
I swallowed the big lump in my throat.
Politics? Campaigns? Is this… some kind of thought experiment? I was nobody… not some suit killing for votes.
But those eyes, Christ, they wouldn't let you look away. They were burning into me, like he could see straight through to my brain. I had to say something.
"That would likely depend upon how I felt about my competition," I muttered in what I was hoping was a casual tone. Lame. So fucking lame.
"Oh, predators. Nothing but predators," answered Adrian, smirking a bit, but it never reached his eyes. He ran his tongue along his teeth, and I suddenly shivered. "They could get you, not your campaign."
What the fuck?
This was not the Adrian I knew. The Adrian I knew was smooth, always on top of things, not this… this man with a grin as stinging as a switchblade. I gripped the counter in front of me, my knuckles going white.
"Some of them you'll hate, some you won't. But every one of them will slit your throat in your sleep to get what they want," he continued, his voice dropping.
I laughed, but it was strained. "Whoa, that's… that's a lot of risk for political power."
"But the rewards, Lucian. The rewards are... real power. You have your domain, you have peace, and you have your way with whatever you want to do. With whoever you wanted."
He hailed me and, fuck me, I leaned in. I didn't want to. I should have run. I knew it. Every nerve in my body screamed at me to run right then, but I couldn't move, couldn't take my eyes off those eyes, large, unblinking, holding me in place like a magnet. It was engulfing me. My heart hammered against my ribcage.
"...What's this about, Adrian?" I murmured with difficulty.
"You're not answering the question," he repeated, ceding nothing in his flat, final tone.
"No, I mean it, you're getting off on some wei—"
"Answer the question," he silenced me.
He flashed his eyes at me, and I backed away, my breath in my throat. It was as if somehow the dim light that filled this apartment were in the air and suffocating him. This was goddamn horror movie bullshit, and I was the moron too stupid to run.
"I…" My lips led my brain astray. Why was I talking? I didn't want it to come out, but the words dragged their screaming way out anyway. "I... for my own goals? I'd ruin them. For my own life?... I'd kill them."
The confession just hung there, a kind of pendulum, heavy and leaden, ready to swing down in finality. My chest tightened. Did I just say that? Out loud?
But it really was true… deep down I knew I would do it. Survive. Win. Whatever it took. The idea was a punch to my gut.
"Kill them? Hard talk," Adrian said with a chuckle in his voice.
He gestured at the stool across from him, and I sat, the skinny legs shuddering as if I were a kid being called in to see the principal. The apartment was not cool right now… those dark, dark corners, that flickering bulb overhead… it was a web, and I was in it.
"Well, shit, man, I haven't done that," I babbled, trying to backtrack. "We're in a twisted fantasy world where I'm some sort of a goddamned mobster. This is just off my gut here. What's... what's going on, Adrian?"
He sighed, a long, heavy sigh like one he'd kept pent up for years. He set his glass down with a click and leaned forward, his chin nestled in the knot of his knuckles, staring at me until my forehead was dappled with beads of sweat.
This wasn't my friend. And then there was something else… something that turned the inside of me inside out.
"Help me," he said, soft and somber. "I need someone I can trust. I need somebody to carry my rifle when shit goes down."
I tried to smile, brighten the mood. "You know, when the shit hits the fan, like it did at Omack's? Right?"
No smile. Just that cold, dead stare. My grin died fast.
"What if, Lucian… what if you didn't have to leave it behind?" he said, depositing the words like lead.
I cocked my head, my brain scrambling. "I uh... what?"
"I need somebody to assist me, and you are somebody, I believe."
A compliment, sure… but it didn't sound or feel like a compliment. It was as if a barb were lodged in my flesh. He wanted something… something towering, and I was diminishing under it, my hands clammy against the counter.
"My help? And Adrian, you fuck… you could buy ten of me. What could I possibly—"
"Trust," he cut in, sharp. "You're my friend. And you're so much more good at it than you imagine."
"That?" I echoed, my voice faltering once again. What the hell is he saying?
"Politics... of a sort," he said, offering me a smile that chilled my blood. It was predatory, like he was about to snap. "But here's the thing… I have a feeling you'd be a good friend and that why I'm proposing. The problem is that you don't get to keep it all."
"What is all?" I phoned in this time, my voice shaking.
"All."
"You don't… I don't… Adrian, c'mon, you've got to work with me here," I pleaded, just short of seething. He was talking in symbolism, and it was driving me nuts.
"All of them," he repeated, unflappable as ever, as if he were requesting the salt from across the kitchen table. "You're going to slowly outgrow your friends and family. They'll think you're dead. You're going to be with me. You're going to live in a new place, and you're going to be powerful... powerful, very powerful."
My jaw dropped. No words came out. No bliss or despondency accompanied my sensation, just this hollow pit in my stomach. Fake my death? Ditch everyone? This was not sane… this was bonkers, bat-guano insane. He simply went on, as if he were blind to my melting.
"The money is great, the power is even greater, but it's not about that," he said, his voice sliding into something nearly hypnotic. "Well, not just about that. It's about another whole world, Lucian. A world of hazards, and of rewards."
I knocked against the wall to remove the cobwebs. Now he was pacing, hand filled with glass, making the sort of gestures a snake oil salesman would—spreading his arms wide. Only those eyes, fuck, they never left me. I looked again at his drink. Was it always that dark?
"You're going to have a long career with me, buddy. You'll have all that you ever desired and more."
"I, I, I just, I…" I stammered, my thoughts in a jumble. "I mean, just... abandon everything?"
"Everything. My friendship is all you'll have from your old life."
"But my fucking family, Adrian! My mother, my sister, my fucking dog. My friends...."
"You don't have any friends close enough for something like this besides me, and you know you ain't close with your family," he said, sipping at the damn wine as if he was immune to the stuff.
I sat on the stool, air whooshing from me. "Hey, I have… yeah, I have nothing."
"Holy fuck, Adrian." I muttered, burying my face into the cool counter. "This is a rather stout lady you just pushed in front of me."
"And by the way, let me just… it's a secret," he added, casual but biting.
"Shit yeah, and I guess with the warning leading up to this, I spill this fucking thing and snipers are on me like flies on turds or something, huh," I said, half laughing, half panicking, rolling my head back and forth over the counter.
"That is... possible."
"Oh fuck. Oh god, fuck, fuck, I couldn't even believe it until you said it just now."
"Lucian," he repeated, his voice somewhere between human and gentle, gone soft. "Take a breath. I'm not forcing you to do anything. It is not an offer you can't refuse." He put his hand on my shoulder, and I flinched, but didn't pull away. "Think on it. Take a few days."
I raised my face and made eye contact with him. The frost cracked for an instant, and I saw something… concern, maybe? But I wasn't buying it.
Whatever this was, it was a one-way ticket to a life I didn't want. Say yes, and I'm in deep. Say no, and... what? He makes me walk, with this shit? Or do I die a ghost anyway?