Chapter 23

• LUCAS POV
• Xavier was dead. The news was a shock and I could still feel the tremors of it. The damned stupid bastard. I wondered if he even put up much of a fight... But really, no one could fight Nicolai, no matter how powerful, and I should have known that and not gotten entangled with Xavier's plan when I doubted how successful it was going to be from the beginning. Mostly I had been more worried about him stabbing me in the back because every time we met alone, I made myself vulnerable to attack.
• The bastard should have just listened to what I told him at our last meeting. I'd warned him to let go of the casino and he'd assured me that he wasn't going to push through with acquiring it, but he'd gone ahead to cross paths with Nicolai, thinking that the information I provided him was enough to outwit Nicolai. I should have known he would do something like this since he always wanted to compete with Nicolai, and yet he was the one who had everything to lose. And if there was one thing Nicolai loved, it was to crush and cause pain.