Page 39 of The Sinner's Bargain

“Thank you, but I’m not hungry.”

The lie nearly cost me when my stomach took that moment to whine in protest. Even the pressure of my bunched hands pressing into my gut did nothing to quiet it. I could only grit my teeth and pray he hadn’t heard it.

“Are you lying to me, sweetheart?”

I started at the question, not having expected him to call me on it. “No, of course not.”

“Good, because I could hear your stomach from the other side of the house.” With a powerful motion, he shoved to his feet to stand over me. Even with a whole desk between us, he was terrifyingly imposing. “I have to check on something. When I return, that plate better be empty, do you understand, love? All of it.”

Paralyzed under the boring weight of his beautiful eyes, I could only sit and nod.

He offered me a low grunt of satisfaction before stalking to the doors where his guard still stood. The door was closed and the two were gone.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

THORAN

“Why is she filthy?” I asked Cyrus as we stood in the hallway, a door separating us from the woman sitting in my office looking worn, exhausted, and half starved.

“She came out of her room like that ... mostly.”

I raised a brow. “Mostly?”

Cyrus shifted. His pale eyes drifted away. An odd gesture for the man who found nothing uncomfortable.

“I heard her crying,” he muttered. “It ... it wasn’t normal.”

Whether it was the idea of her alone in her room crying or the idea of her crying at all, but my fury was a living, breathing beast in my chest. “Explain.”

If it were possible for a two-hundred-pound trained assassin to look simultaneously annoyed, uncomfortable, and regretful, Cyrus managed to pull it off with a single purse of his lips. “There’s crying like you had a bad day. This wasn’t it. I’ve only heard it a few times in my life and ... it’s haunting. The kind of crying like you’ve lost everything. Like nothing’s ever going to be okay again. That kind.” He scrunched his face like the sun were in his eyes before lowering his head to stare hard at his boots. “I don’t know what her story is, Thoran, but she’s broken. I’d put her on a train to wherever she wants to go and never look back.”

I considered those words.

I let them work through my system as the cautions of a man I respected deeply before giving my answer, “We’re all broken, Cy. You. Me. Every fucking person in this place. I don’t know what her story is either, but we don’t banish people for being broken.”

Cyrus shrugged and exhaled. “Do you need me?”

I shook my head.

With a bob of his head, the other man stalked away, and I let him go. I let him go do whatever it was he needed to do and turned to the door.

I had nothing else on my plate for the day. I could have taken a nap. Gone for a walk. Could have handled a million other things that never seemed to stop. Instead, I found myself outside my own office because the skittish creature on the other side was a liar.

She was hungry.

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