All Chapters of The Mafia King's substitute Husband : Chapter 1 - Chapter 5

CHAPTER 1- THE SUBSTITUTE GROOMLUCIAN"Whatever you do tonight," Constantine Laurent said, without turning from the window, "don't let the mafia king look at you."I had been standing in the doorway of my father's study for two minutes, holding a coffee nobody had asked me to bring, and this was, as far as I could recall, the first instruction I'd been given in a month.I considered it…thinking what might be the consequences of a little mistake to the order I was given ‘Don't let the mafia king look at you.’ As though that were a thing a person could control. As though the direction of Elias Lawrence's eyes were something a quiet, overlooked adopted son could steer like a boat."Should I look at him," I asked, "or just not be looked at?""You should be…” he paused as he ran his gaze over me before continuing “...forgettable…the way you're good at."It wasn't an insult. In this house, being forgettable was a skill, and I'd spent fifteen years perfecting it the way other men perfected

CHAPTER 3 - BONDLUCIAN Evelyn was waiting at the foot of the stairs.I don't know when Evelyn had doubled back. My father had sent her to bed, but Evelyn had never been the sort of person a command could actually reach… it just passed through her and came out the other side as a grievance. So there she stood, one hand on the banister, dress still on, the diamonds still on, and the second she saw me come out of the drawing room she stopped pretending to be calm."Him?" she said again, like she was still trying to find a version of the word that made sense. "Him. Of all the people in this house. Of all the people in this city."I kept walking trying to ignore her "Don't you dare walk past me, Lucian–" she shouts the minute she saw meSo I stopped walking…that was my first mistake."Do you know what you've done?" she said tapping her feet on the floor in annoyance – which I'd never seen from her, because Evelyn's whole personality was built on never letting anyone see her sweat. "Do yo

CHAPTER 5 - THE CORNERLUCIANI asked him on the third day.I had meant to ask on the first, and the second, and each time I had got as far as the threshold of the study and lost my nerve. It isn't easy to walk into a room and ask a man what he saw in a corner. It sounds like the start of a joke, or a threat.But on the third morning Marcus drove me up Halloway Hill, and the gates opened before we'd slowed, and the house sat grey and quiet against a sky the colour of pewter. I climbed the three flights of stairs. The man in the dark suit knocked once and opened the door without waiting.Elias was at the window again. The books were stacked differently, I noticed. Someone had been reading one of them and left it open face down on the sill."You've been thinking," he said, without turning."How can you tell?""You stand differently when you've been thinking. Your weight goes back onto your heels." He turned. "Sit down, Lucian. You're making the carpet nervous."I sat. I didn't speak yet