Page 70 of The Sin

The elderly woman, who still hadn’t said a word, let alone introduced herself, closed the door and beckoned me to follow her to a stairway that went both up and down. We went down, two flights down to the basement. My ears were keenly pricked for any sign of life besides us, but all I heard were her two-inch heels clicking on the parquet steps and the dull thud of my running shoes.

I soon saw why. The last flight of stairs ended at a door. From the stairwell, it looked like a perfectly normal oak door, but the inner side was plated with steel that was so thick, it felt like I was walking into a vault.

Female voices filtered through as soon as the door opened. Three to be exact, seated around a table across the room that was decorated with a heavily masculine touch. The wallpaper was a leathery brown—actually, it looked like leather wallpaper, if that was a thing. Floor-to-ceiling shelving crammed with books ran the full length of one wall. Recliners and couches arranged around a low-slung coffee table dominated half of the space, all of it bulky leather and solid wood.

The door closed behind me, with my escort on the outside. She hadn’t uttered a single word to me, and she wasn’t joining us.

I walked deeper into the room, my gaze seeking out the women. I didn’t recognize anyone, until the one sitting with her back to me stood and turned, and I had swallow a gasp of intense surprise.

I’d been a Sister of Capra for a while now, I’d even successfully completed a mission for them, but it had never felt as real as it did right now, right here, with my two wildly divergent roles in this society colliding…into Lisa’s mother.

Mrs. Bickens.

“Georga.” She held her arms out, as if to welcome me into a hug.

She’d never hugged me in her life.

And there was not an ounce of warmth in her features. She wore her default expression of cool, calm and thoroughly collected.

There was no hug.

Her arms lowered to her sides as I stepped forward. “We hear you’ve been busy, and we’re extremely interested in what you have to say. But forgive me, introductions are in order, I think.”

She smiled a smile that didn’t reach her eyes and gestured around the table.

Geneva was a formidable looking woman with cropped, ash-silver curls and inquisitive gray eyes that didn’t just search mine during the introduction, those eyes went hunting in my gaze.

I didn’t have time to wonder what exactly she thought I was hiding, because Mrs. Bickens added on her title with a reverent, “Geneva is our matriarch.”

My jaw loosened. I guess that answered how our leader styled herself. But seriously, was this actually happening? The head of the Sisterhood, and I was meeting her? Me?

The second woman leaned toward the younger side of middle-age, possibly early thirties. She wore her rich brown hair in a thick braid that hung over one shoulder and she acknowledged me with a shallow nod. Eliza.

“And you know who I am, of course,” Mrs. Bickens concluded. “For the purposes of Sisterhood business, please address me by my name. Calista. We try to refrain from using last names wherever possible.”

My fingers felt suddenly clammy.

Thiswashappening.

Something important, monumentally important, was going down, and I was part of it. Sure, I was sweating from the pressure, but my spine stiffened and I stood about two foot taller.

Geneva pressed her fingers to the table and pushed to her feet with the grace of a swan. She was a tall, lean woman, dressed in stylish black pants with a matching jacket over a soft, lilac camisole top.

When she spoke, her voice had a melodic lilt underwritten in silken iron. “Let’s speak in private.”

The other women didn’t appear offended. They didn’t remove themselves from the room, either. Geneva and I did. She crossed to the shelving system on the wall and tugged at a book spine, and a section slid back to reveal a secret room.

I was impressed.

And slightly wary when we stepped inside and the wall on this side slid into place again, trapping us between four seamless walls.

There was a long table that could easily seat ten or more, but there were only two chairs. A dossier sat on one end of the table, and that’s the chair Geneva settled into as she indicated for me to take the seat all the way across at the opposite end.

She planted her elbows on the dossier and steepled her fingers with the tips beneath her chin, studying me.

The silent scrutiny was unnerving. I clasped my hands on my lap, resisting the impulse to look away.

“We’ve familiarized ourselves with the report Rose submitted this morning.” She paused a beat. “Do you still stand by everything you said?”

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