Page 39 of Hell of a Mess
I pointed at my chest. “Me?”
His brows drew together. “I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
“She’s Mal’s daughter,” he said, as if I had missed that piece of information.
“I was there for the big revelation.”
Fender cleared his throat, covering a laugh.
Linc shook his head in exasperation with me and walked back around his desk to sit down. “I swear, sometimes, I wonder why I haven’t killed you yet.”
I chuckled. “I’d love for you to try. Might liven things up around here.”
“As if we need livenin’ up,” Fender said. “I’d say we passed thatthreshold today.”
I shrugged. “Ain’t the first surprise kid we’ve had show up here,” I drawled.
“Yeah, but the others weren’t grounds for a war. Halsten is going to put up a fight, according to Thaddeus,” Linc replied.
“Bring it on,” I said, clenching the cigarette between my teeth with a grin. I wanted to kill the motherfucker anyway.
Sixteen
Lace
It was so dark. I didn’t like the dark. Mommy had never made me sit in the dark. Even at night, she would make sure my magical fairy light, which kept all the monsters away, was on. But she wasn’t here.
My eyes filled with tears again. I didn’t want to think about her. Every time I did, it wasn’t the happy things. All I could see was her head go under the water and not come back up again. T—the man whose boat we had been on—had called her name over and over, then jumped into the water to get her, but he didn’t find her. She’d gone too deep.
I let out a sob and curled tighter into a ball. I had cried her name as loudly as I could, but she hadn’t heard me either. Now she was gone. And I was left here. In the dark.
Keeping my eyes tightly closed, for fear of what I would see in the shadows if I opened them, I shivered from the cold. Thereweren’t any blankets down here. I wanted to cover my body and my head. Disappear beneath them the way Mommy had in the lake. I hoped Mommy was warm wherever she had gone.
I refused to believe she was in hell, although my father had said that was where she went. If anyone was going to hell, it would be him. Mommy was too bright and loving to go there. I tried hard not to see her head going under the water and thought about her smile, the way she had smelled, and how she had looked like a beautiful princess. Her whispers in my ear that I was her best girl.
The hot tears ran down my cheeks, and I shivered, reminding me of how cold it was getting. I missed her. I wanted her to come back. I hated the darkness. I hated my father, and he…hated me.
“Lace!” The deep voice that said my name broke through the darkness, and my eyes flew open.
Blinking, I tried to focus. Where was I?
A large warm hand cupped the side of my face as hazel eyes studied me.
“Luther?” I choked out, still confused.
“Yeah,” he replied with a husky voice that sounded as if he’d just woken up.
I glanced around the room. The moonlight streamed in through the windows. I was at his house. I was safe.
“Why are you here?” I asked him.
His eyes moved from my chin and back up to meet mine. “You were crying and whimpering and shivering pretty damn hard. Even after I covered you up with another blanket.”
The basement. I’d been in the basement. I had been dreaming. And the cold that seeped into me from those memories couldn’tbe warmed with a blanket. It was soul-deep.
“A nightmare,” I replied, feeling embarrassed that he’d witnessed it. Had I been that loud?
