My Second Marriage with the Mafia Kingpin novel Chapter 340

Chapter 340: Don’t Judge

"Cigarettes?"

Gustav furrowed his brows as he read a message from Lukas. It was short, but clear.

Lucian wasn’t terminally ill. He had been poisoned — and the poison was possibly in his cigarettes. Cigarettes Lucian had quit a long time ago.

"Hah," Gustav scoffed and pushed himself out of his chair.

He marched straight from his office to Lukas’s department. The moment he opened the door, everyone was busy. Lukas was leaning against one of the cubicle partitions, eyes fixed on an employee’s screen.

"Pull that person in, no matter what," Lukas ordered, then looked up and caught Gustav in the doorway.

A sharp exhale left him. He glanced around the room. "Find out everything about the brand of cigarettes — who handled it and where it passed through before it reached the Master’s hands."

"Yes, sir!" the room answered in unison.

Gustav tilted his head, watching Lukas move toward him.

"That was quick," he noted. 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝕨𝕖𝗯𝚗𝚘𝕧𝕖𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝕞

"Is that surprising?" Lukas arched a brow.

In a way, it was. Lukas hadn’t been himself lately — throwing his attitude around, doing little else. But this was the Lukas Gustav knew: sharp and efficient.

Lukas clicked his tongue and walked off. Gustav smacked his lips, cast one last look over the humming department, and followed him into his office.

"I’ve already started a full-scale investigation," Lukas said, breaking the silence as he stepped up onto the small platform in the corner to put on some tea. "We have a few leads. Our supplier overlaps with the brand in question. They haven’t been cleared yet, but we’re focusing on everyone who handled the packaging."

"That’s going to be a lot of ground to cover," Gustav said, knowing the brand Lucian had smoked was a large corporation.

It would be complicated. Lucian had been a chain smoker. They would have to trace manufacturing dates, who worked those dates, who touched the deliveries, and whether the tampering happened during transport or after the product was already inside Dominion.

Lukas didn’t respond, and Gustav studied him from the couch.

"I suppose it won’t feel like that much work to you," Gustav said. "Given your current state of mind."

Lukas snorted, cutting him a sideways glance. "I’ll send you the report. Forward it to her."

"Don’t bother." Gustav rose. "Send it to her yourself."

Lukas frowned. "Gustav."

"Lukas, I don’t know what your hesitation is — you’re alive right now because of her," Gustav said evenly. "She had no obligation to you or me. If anything, she had every reason to side with the High Chamber. And yet she came."

He held Lukas’s gaze. "Report to her directly. The Master won’t be handling anything until he’s fully recovered."

With that, Gustav walked out, confident everything was in capable hands.

Left alone, Lukas could only stare at the closed door. His jaw tightened. He pinched the bridge of his nose.

"Damn it," he breathed, then dropped onto the couch and tipped his head back, staring at the ceiling.

"It’s not that I don’t understand," he muttered. "She came for us even when she had every reason not to. I know that." He paused. "And yet..."

He swallowed and draped his arm over his eyes, exhaling slowly.

He was grateful to be alive. Genuinely. But a part of him couldn’t silence the thought that it might have been simpler to die — because living meant facing the fact that a person as proud as himself had let love and duty blur together until he couldn’t tell them apart. And that it had cost him.

Now he had to sit with a kind of pain he had never thought himself capable of feeling.

*****

Lucian was quiet, staring blankly at the road ahead. When Ashley suggested the poison might have been in the cigarettes he used to smoke, a great many things moved through his mind at once.

Being poisoned was not a surprise to him.

It was, after all, the same method he had used on the late Madam of Dominion. Small doses, worked into her favorite flowers and tea. Enough to let her suffer before the end rather than go quickly. To think that what had nearly killed him was almost the same thing — karma, it seemed, had a long memory.

"Lucian."

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