Page 65 of Santa Daddy
I yanked the door fully open, stepped out, and slammed it shut. The lock whined, then clunked back into place. The light flipped to red.
My hands were slick with sweat. Sugar-glass sharp with adrenaline.
No time to calm down. No time to pretend I hadn’t just seen his little butcher’s nook.
I bolted the few steps into his office, grabbed the first heavy thing I saw—a crystal paperweight—and hurled it at the window.
It hit the glass with a shoulder-jarring thunk and bounced back like I’d thrown it at a wall. It ricocheted off my hand, pain flaring across my knuckles.
The window?
Not a scratch.
Of course the windows were more bulletproof than my sanity.
Blood welled up in a thin line across my knuckles. Bright red beaded and began to drip onto the white marble.
The door lock behind me beeped. Not the office door.
The front door.
The elevator chimed in the foyer.
“Shit,” I breathed.
Adrenaline zipped up my spine as the paperweight rolled to a stop against his desk. My hand throbbed. My heart did its own drum solo.
But the alarm didn’t sound.
I’d gotten the door relocked in time.
Maybe.
The front door opened.
He stepped in like the star of a very different show.
Dark coat. Snow melting on the wool. Tie gone, shirt collar open. Hair a little mussed like he’d run his hand through it on the way up.
And blood on his knuckles.
Not mine. His right hand was smeared with a darker red, drying around already-healed cuts. The skin across his knuckles looked abraded, fresh.
Like he’d been teaching someone a lesson with his fists.
He looked at the broken lamp in the corner and the blood on my hand and then at me.
The air shifted.
“What did you do?” he asked.
His voice was quiet. Too quiet. It sat low and dangerous, like the moment before ice cracks under your feet.
I straightened my shoulders and lifted my bleeding hand between us. “Tried to see if your aquarium walls were as solid as your bullshit. Turns out—yes.”
His gaze dropped to my knuckles. Something sharp flickered in his eyes.
He crossed the room in three smooth strides. I backed up on instinct until the back of my thighs hit the desk.
