Page 34 of Caged Kitten

Katja

This had to be a dream.

I’m dreaming. That was why the room looked like a TV set, like the stereotypical head honcho’s office. I must have seen it before on a show, a movie, hell, maybe even a play, and now my mind was messing with me. Yeah. That was it. As if Xargi didn’t screw with me enough during the daytime, now I needed a new nightmare thrown into the mix.

Only a dream.

Wake up, Katja. Just wake up.

Footsteps on hardwood—prim and precise, nothing like the heavy clunk of guard boots or the shuffling of soft-soled inmate attire. Still as stone, I stared at the overladen bookshelf on the other side of the desk, catching a faint whiff of leather that wasn’t from the high-backed chair. Leather shoes. Expensive. Paired with… peppermint. An even more delicate scent, it tickled my nostrils, begged me to turn around and face the nightmare head-on.

But I couldn’t.

I couldn’t move.

As soon as a tall, dark figure loomed in my periphery, my mind went blank. Like an overloaded computer shorting out, it all went black inside. No high-pitched whine. No racing images. No whispers in my dad’s death croak urging me to run. Just—silence, except for the drumbeat of my heart, my pulse reverberating through my entire body.

He settled into that huge, imposing chair without a word. Warden—Lloyd—Guthrie.

A handsome silver fox, but I’d known that from perusing the odd society tabloid photo after Dad died—back when I thought I should finally look into what he’d been going on and on about for years. Only the photos hadn’t done crime lord Lloyd Guthrie justice. They didn’t relay the absolute power he carried in his broad shoulders, in his large hands, in the crisp suit and the steely grey eyes that seemed to look right through me, right down to the guts.

And from the way he settled into his chair, hands folded on the mahogany desktop, eyes pinned squarely on me… It was like he’d found my very soul.

Black hair tinged with grey, white at the sideburns. Neat. Swept back. Scottish heritage with a splash of Italian thrown in, if I remembered my research—what little public information had been available, anyway. He wore a pristine black suit far too good for the warden of some crap prison, and I swore the buttons on his shirt, from the glimpses I caught beneath a shiny black tie, were pearls.

Attractive man. Tall. Strong. Lean. Hawkish.

Terrifyingwarlock.

My shoulders rounded, and try as I might to match his quiet ferocity, I just wanted to slink down to the hardwood and disappear through the floorboards.

“Kitten… Sweet nickname,” he mused, his voice a deep, richly aged baritone. A New Yorker, distinctly not West Coast. “What your father used to call you, isn’t it?”

My cheeks burned harder than they had since I’d arrived, no doubt a telling beet red from the way the warden’s thin mouth twisted up. I said nothing. Did nothing. Refused to even give him a nod. Lloyd Guthrie—if that obsidian plate was to be believed, if this wasn’t a dream—tapped his threaded hands on the desk once, twice, then leaned forward, his chair softly groaning.

“Do you know who I am?”

I swallowed thickly, gulping a mouthful of knives down a too-dry throat, and then nodded to his nameplate. “Warden Lloyd Guthrie.”

Pride bloomed in my chest: I didn’t stutter his name. I didn’t whisper it or choke it out. No matter how I felt on the inside, despite the cold sweat on the nape of my neck, the blaze in my cheeks, the numb tingling that had engulfed my fingertips, I sounded strong. Good. At least I could pretend. Xargi was starting to teach me how to fake it.

Lloyd smirked, amusement glittering in his stony greys. “But do you know who I am?”

“I just said who you are,” I offered without thinking. It had just tumbled out, punctuated by a silent Duh that was probably akin to signing a death warrant under different circumstances. In all my research, I had never stumbled upon anything concrete—just rumors and hearsay, Lloyd Guthrie, warlock mobster, defined solely by his reputation.

But as we stared off now, his smirk blossoming but the mirth dying in his unflinching gaze, I had a feeling his reputation was all he needed. That smile made my blood run cold. Frigid. Elijah had set me on fire every day for the last month; a smile from Lloyd Guthrie extinguished the flames I had come to crave and chilled my blood to ice.

Elijah’s fire made me feel alive. It made me feel strong and capable, in control in a place where I had absolutely none from the time I woke up to when I crawled back into my cot after the lights-out siren.

Lloyd’s ice made me want to give in to the fear—

“You…” I tightened my trembling hands to fists, hoping he couldn’t see and knowing he did anyway. The warlock oozed predator before he’d even said a word; he probably missed nothing. “You’re a criminal… running a prison.”

“A criminal?” His curt chuckle made the hairs on my neck stand up, and he eased back into his chair, the delight shimmering in his eyes again. “Am I?”

I faltered, second-guessing myself, my dad, the cursory searches I’d done on this man over the years. Clearing my throat, I dropped my gaze to my hands, to my white knuckles. “Unless I’m mistaken, you’re the Lloyd Guthrie associated with the Guthrie crime syndicate that runs out of New York City… A crime family of warlocks who partake in, er, illegal activities, and…”

“Go on.”

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