Page 142 of Lamb

Lamb remained hot at my side, his warmth like a bubble trying to inch through the radiating frost seeping from my skin. Though I wished to be fuelled with fire and vengeance, it was ice and fear that gripped my heart as I stepped over the threshold and into the enemy’s domain.

The grumpy hire’s lip lifted at my retort but gave none of his own as he closed the door behind us and folded over his arms, returning to an unnerving, unnatural stillness blocking our escape from the suite.

Suite wasa stretch, I realised as I was overpowered with grandeur and flamboyance.

Hidden within the historic hotel, the room was more of a luxury townhouse. The first room opened with a spiral staircase with white marble and ivory-encrusted stairs leading up to a second floor out of view. Different statues, busts, and ornaments sat on pillars behind similar glass cases as the ones filling the charity ball downstairs.

A few other ornate doors led off to the sides of the room, but just the expanse of the entryway and the big glass windows, veiled by the night sky, was more than enough to feel dwarfed in its presence.

It was a room fit for a royal. Or someone who considered himself such.

Just as the thought crossed my mind, I heard the first tap. The knock of the cane against the marble staircase had my thoughts about the room running scarce. My fingertips turned blue, my feet grew heavy, and my chest tight.

That noise. That dreadful, hollowing noise sent me back to the past. Far from reality, that noise echoed in the depths of my memories, in the dark of my dreams, and in my shadows every step I took. It was not always loud, but it was there, lurking behind every breath.

The noise announced his arrival and, for the first time in two years, since he had shot six lead bullets into my body and left me for dead, I laid my eyes on him.

My father.

My contacts kept his visage crystal clear. To any other person, he might have looked as frail, weak, and weary as any ageing man might if they had stolen the same number of years he had. He had been old when I had first met him, and though he had changed little, I knew I had been born past his prime.

But even an old, decrepit shell could not conceal the hunting spots he harboured, the marks of a predator.

“My dearest daughter,” my father crooned, descending the staircase one slow step at a time. “You have return to your father’s …embrace.” That meticulous gaze lowered onto me, razing down from my head to my toes, pausing ever so slightly over my exposed scars.

My confidence was shattered. Whatever I had gained from displaying my weakness and vulnerability to the world nowwithered. I felt exposed and defenceless; the urge to cover my scars coiled tight in my chest.

I held myself firm, not out of pride or stubbornness but the sheer fear that even the smallest motion would cause my body to crack.

With a half-hearted shrug at my ignorance, he ambled the last few steps off the marble staircase and hobbled towards me. He was a short man; his bowing spine and the natural height decline that came with age put his head near my shoulder.

He was tailored from the tips of his toes to the greying locks on his head. His cuffs were undone, and his black bow tie was draped around his collar, having been caught mid-dress. At least my arrival had been something of a surprise to him.

His dark, haunting eyes glazed over me, to the one behind me, the one blazing a maelstrom at my back. My father flashed a sharp businessman smile, easy, charming. “I suppose I should have you to thank for that.”

“Your offer was hard to refuse,” Lamb quipped, his voice hard and tight.

“Offer?” I frowned, the word soft on my lips, but my father did not even spare me a glance.

“You are quite the shrewd businessman.” My father, with near praise in his tone, appraised Lamb once more. “Though it is rather heartless to buy a girl’s heart if you had no plans to keep it.”

I spun, my eyes leaving my father’s threatening visage to Lamb’s.

“Lamb,” I breathed, the noise strung through a tight throat. “What does he mean?” That roaring blaze that had warmed my back had vanished. Instead, the body braced to fight had been locked down.

Stone shuttered over his face, his emotions vanished, and his eyes were ice-cold as he did not even bother to look at me.

Something was wrong. Something wasreally, reallywrong.

“Everybody has a price, dear daughter,” my father said. “Even your precious hero.”

“Lamb,” I snapped, my voice torn and loud, pleading as I reached for his sleeve, my fingers burying into the material as something deep inside started to unfurl; something dark and formless in my middle. “What is he talking about?”

He looked at me.

For the first time since we walked in, he looked at me.

I had expected that icy gaze. That stone-hardness. The nothingness that walled him off from reality. The lies.

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