He Sent Me Away So I Took His Crown Chapter 03
By the time Luca arrived, Mara was injecting Lark with a powerful pain medication.
I was kneeling in the straw, my arms wrapped around her sweat-damp neck.
She was trembling with pain, yet still nudging my shoulder with her nose.
When I was little, she would do the same thing at the fence every time I woke from a nightmare.
Bianca sat off to the side, her wrist rubbed raw and bleeding where the rope had burned it.
The moment she saw Luca, tears spilled down her face.
“Don’t blame Elena. I just couldn’t hold on to Lark.”
Luca went to her first.
He crouched to examine her wrist, then took off his jacket and wrapped it around her shoulders. Only then did he look at me.
“Elena, why do you always have to turn things into this?”
For a second, I thought I’d misheard him.
“She brought Lark here for retrieval without permission and tried to auction off her embryo as an alliance asset.”
“Bianca didn’t know about Lark’s condition.”
“You did.”
Luca’s jaw tightened.
Of course he knew.
Last winter, Mara had come to the main house with the exam results. Right in front of him, I wrote *no breeding, no transfer* in both Lark’s file and her bloodline registry.
He had held me then and promised that as long as Lark was safe, one less foal didn’t matter.
Now, he looked away.
“She was only trying to prepare a gift for the banquet that would satisfy both families. If you had just explained things calmly instead of charging in and grabbing the lead—”
“So this is my fault?”
Mara stood and pulled off her gloves.
“This isn’t the time to argue. The fracture is near the joint. Even with surgery, recovery will be difficult. And even if she stands again, she’ll never be able to carry a foal.”
I lowered my head and pressed my face into Lark’s mane.
The tears I had held back finally fell.
Luca was silent for a long moment.
“I’ll find the best equine surgeon.”
He helped Bianca to her feet, his tone softening.
“If Lark really can’t breed anymore, I’ll buy you a better one. Champion bloodline. Name your price, name the source.”
Slowly, I lifted my head.
Even now, he still didn’t understand what I had lost.
She wasn’t an asset that could be listed in an account book.
She was the last life my parents had freed from that fire.
She was the only family I had left—the only thing in my life no one had borrowed, hidden, or replaced.
“Take her and go,” I said, my voice flat.
Luca frowned. “Elena—”
“I said, take Bianca and leave.”
He stared at me for a few seconds, his expression hardening into that of a man whose order had just been refused.
Then he turned and left, supporting Bianca.
That night, Lark underwent surgery and was moved into a private recovery stall.
I stayed with her until after midnight before returning to the river house.
Elias called just as I was peeling off my bloodstained shirt.
“Are you hurt?”
His voice was lower than usual.
“No. It’s Lark.”
I told him what had happened, my voice devoid of emotion.
He didn’t promise to buy me a better horse. He didn’t tell me not to be sad.
He only asked, “Do you want to move her to the equine hospital in Denver? I know the surgical team there. If you agree, I can make the call. If you want her to stay somewhere familiar, I can have doctors come to her.”
I closed my eyes.
“Send the doctors here. If she wakes up and no one she knows is around, she’ll be scared.”
“Okay. You’ll have a list of specialists within four hours. You and Mara can decide.”
A sudden screech of brakes tore through the quiet outside.
The next second, Luca unlocked the door with his spare key.
He threw a thick private auction catalog onto the table.
“There are twenty-seven award-winning broodmares in here. All with clean bloodlines. Pick one, and I’ll have her delivered tomorrow.”
I didn’t even look at it.
“Get out.”
“Elena, I’m fixing this.”
“You’re negotiating a price, not fixing the problem.”
Luca’s expression darkened.
His phone rang.
He answered, and Bianca’s sobbing came through the speaker.
“Luca, Vittorio just informed my father that Moretti is terminating all cooperation with the Bellandi underground auction houses. The two leaders handling our cash flow also froze our credit. My father says we might not make it through the month.”
Luca’s head snapped toward me.
“You went to my grandfather?”
“No.”
“Then who else would make him cut Bellandi off from the tribute channels over what happened today?”
He crossed the room in a few strides, grabbed my arm, and shoved me back against the wooden wall.
“Bellandi has handled Moretti’s underground auctions for twenty years. You know what that partnership means to them.”
“And you know what Lark means to me?”
“Bianca didn’t know!”
“You did.”
Those two words stopped him cold.
I pushed his hand off my arm.
“You knew Lark couldn’t undergo retrieval. You knew I didn’t agree. You also knew that every time Bianca took my room, my seat, my ring, and my husband, it hurt me.”
“But you kept choosing her, because you were certain my name was on the Moretti protection register and I’d never dare to leave.”
Frustration flashed in Luca’s eyes.
“Nine times have already passed. Why did it have to be this time? Why did you have to push both families to the brink?”
I raised my hand and slapped him hard across the face.
The room went silent.
Luca’s head turned with the force of the blow, and he stayed like that for a long moment.
My palm throbbed, my hand going numb. Still, I told him, my voice clear and steady, “Because I have another way out now.”
“Luca Moretti, I accepted another man’s proposal.”
“His name is Elias Reed.”