Page 3 of Unbind

Ugh ugh ugh.

‘I’ll call a doctor,’ Anton says, his voice decisive, and it’s enough to have me opening my eyes and training them fixedly on his face. In my peripheral vision, Adam hovers by the desk.

‘No. I’m fine—I’m so sorry.’

‘I think you should take a break,’ Gen says kindly, coming around behind me and taking hold of my biceps.

‘I’m absolutely fine, honestly,’ I tell her now. ‘I’m so sorry.’

I do what may just be the bravest, scariest thing I’ve ever done, and I look up, up, up to meet Adam’s eyes. And for a second—for one despicable, traitorous second—I feel only appreciation. Because if Tom Ellis reminded us of anything inLucifer, it’s that Satan is in fact a fallen angel… and he looks every inch of the celestial being he once was.

But that appreciation dissolves a second later, because the way he’s looking at me tells me he has no clue who I am. There’s something on his offensively handsome face that on anyone else would look like genuine concern, and, if my instincts are right, some appreciation is working its dark magic on him, too.

But nothing else.

What must it be like to ruin a life—several lives—and just walk away? To show up at a place like Alchemy in a suit that costs more than I make in a year, idly wondering how many women to fuck and in which ways you’ll violate them while a fellow human goes about his day with a life-altering injury?

I have no idea, and I don’t want to know. I don’t want a single insight into how the mind of a monster works. I don’t want a second more exposure to his toxic energy.

‘Are you okay?’ he asks. ‘Can I get you a glass of water?’ His voice isn’t overly posh, but it’s modulated. The South London vowels are long gone, polished up as a part of whatever bullshit reinvention he’s undertaken over these past two decades.

I can’t actually speak, so I shake my head. I just hope that, even if the force of my glare in this moment isn’t quite enough to transform into deadly laser beams, it’s quite sufficient to telegraph my deep, deep contempt for him.

‘Nat, this is our good friend, Adam,’ Gen says softly, rubbing my arms through my long gloves. ‘Anton can gethim signed in. You’re going to come and sit down for five minutes. Okay? I’ll tell the guys outside to grab me if anyone else turns up.’

With that, she gently frogmarches me around the lectern and through the large doorway to Alchemy’s beautiful meeting space. She ducks outside quickly to speak to the doormen and returns, closing the door behind us.

The room is dim at this hour, lit mainly by the streetlights outside and by the pink onyx vulva sculpture in one corner. It’s the main clue that Alchemy isn’t your average members’ club.

I sit thankfully on the huge grey sofa. I’m an absolute tumult of emotions, sweat pricking along my spine under the velvet and heart racing as my adrenal system attempts to make sense of everything. I’m simultaneously mortified at how I’ve behaved in front of Gen and Anton and fucking furious that a guy like Adam Shithead Wright gets to walk around Mayfair as if he owns it, after the past he’s had.

Gen lets her huge coat drop from her shoulders and sinks far more elegantly down on the sofa than I did. She’s all gold now, and she’s so beautiful. That dress is a work of art, and right now it’s the anchor tethering me to sanity.

‘Okay,’ she says. ‘Something’s not right, and I’m not letting you out of here until you’ve told me exactly what’s going on. I’m pretty sure I should be calling a doctor right now.’

‘You don’t need to call a doctor,’ I mutter, resting my elbows on my knees and letting my head drop into my hands. ‘It’s not a crash, I promise.’

‘Well, something’s going on,’ she presses in a voice that’s genuinely kind but still reminds me why the most formidable businessman in this country obeys her every word. ‘So why don’t you explain it to me?’

I’m never like this with Gen. She makes me my most polished and sparkly. She’s the kind of woman you stand up straighter around. So I would never be weird or sluggish or mute like I am now. At the same time, though, I can’t bear that she doesn’t know. That man has waltzed in here with her and Anton. He presumes to a friendship with two of the most upstanding, impressive people I know, and it honestly makes me sick.

So if she wants an explanation, that’s what I’ll give her.

Except I start crying the second I raise my head and see the worry on her beautiful face, and that’s even more mortifying than my little episode out in the hallway, because I need to pull myself together right this second and get back out there and do the job Gen pays me to do.

‘Holy crap.’ She shimmies over on the sofa so she’s sitting right next to me and puts her arm tightly around me. ‘Please tell me what’s the matter, sweetie. Has one of the members been rude to you, or made you feel unsafe?’

One of the members has made me feel very unsafe, but not in the way you think.I let out a shuddery breath. ‘No, they haven’t, but there’s a problem with… that guy you brought.’

‘Adam?’

‘Yes.’ Here goes. I watch her face. ‘Do you know much about his past?’

She frowns. ‘I know it was rough—I know he’s overcome a lot to get where he is.’

I snort. I’m sorry, but for fuck’s sake. It’s no secret that Adam Wright has a past; he’s milked it shamelessly as part of his “personal brand”, which, from what I can tell, is heavy on redemption and equally heavy on bullshit. But clearly Gen’s been drinking his Kool-Aid, because her eyebrows fly up at my very unprofessional snort. She’s not pissed off, but she’s surprised.

‘Yeah, well, so have a lot of us. But some of us can’t just “overcome” the things that happen to us.’

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