CHAPTER TWELVE

Lacroix.

It had taken all of thirty seconds to pinpoint why that name hit every alarm bell in my head. I'd only heard it the one time, from a distance.

"Jarrett Brixton is about to sign a massive contract with Lacroix. They're best friends. Known each other for years. Practically brothers."

It was the incentive Father had been trying to offer the man on the phone just the day before, hours before I was supposed to be in the plane to meet Jarrett.

Lacroix knew Jarrett.

They were business partners.

Of all the yards I had to run through to escape a monster, what were the odds that I would walk straight back to where I started?

I sat down hard on the corner of my bed. Tears liquid drops of acid burning my eyes. My heart hurt with the injustice. It ached in the bone cage of my chest.

I never stood a chance. Even with everything Malcolm had to do to help me, I got myself in even hotter water. How could I have ruined everything so badly? It was all laid out in simple terms, and I still managed to fail like I had failed my entire life. Maybe Mother was right all along. Maybe my only gift to the world was to say nothing. Do nothing. Just exist for the pleasure of others. My body was the only thing I had to offer anyone because I had nothing else.

A sob caught on the shards of glass embedded in my throat and ripped, filling my mouth, and spilling recklessly into the room.

Then another immediately followed on its heel, shredding a hole inside me, and letting lose years of fear, regret, helplessness and pain.

So much pain.

So much neglect and loneliness.

Before I could tell my traitorous emotions to stop, stop before someone heard, I was gasping around the jagged pieces of all my failures. I was doubled over, clutching at my empty belly, and heaving onto my knees.

I tried to muffle the guttural wails behind bloody fists, the inhuman gasps for breath, but I had lost control.

Again.

I was spiraling and even as I needed to finally come apart, the voice begged me to stop before Mother heard. Before she stormed into the room with her steel tipped stick, and I was put in the box. It didn't matter that Mother had no idea where I was, or that she couldn't possibly hear me, I needed to stop.

But I found myself on the floor, practically beneath the bed. Knees to my chin. My body a tight fist around itself, desperately fighting to keep the pieces together.

By the sheer grace of what was left of my strength, I pulled myself up and into the bed. My top was gray with dust from the floor. My skin was gritty, but I curled up at the foot of the mattress and stared at the vast smear of gloom clinging to the sky. It hit me in that moment that I was truly and completely alone. In the past, I always had Malcolm. No matter what happened. He was there.

Now it was me and me alone, and I was terrified.

I didn't know the world.

I had never been anywhere without Mother to talk for me, to address every issue. The last time I'd seen a movie was at one of Mother's friend's daughter's tenth birthday. I couldn't even remember what it was. We didn't have a TV at the house and Mother would never get one; it corrupted girls. I had no friends and only ever interacted with people Mother needed to impress. Malcolm had a laptop, but Mother would have skinned me alive if I went anywhere near it. Malcolm was my only source to the outside. He would tell me stories of his time with his friends and the things they would do together.

I did have books, but Jane Austen, Virginia Woolf, and Emily Bront? were not going to be any help in this century. I had to figure it out on my own.

I had to be strong.

For Malcolm.

The skin on my bottom lip tore under the assault of my teeth. Blood stung sharp on my tongue.

A knock interrupted my misery and I had to scramble off the bed. I brushed dust off my clothes and hair the best I could and wiped the tears from my eyes, but I knew my cheeks would be patchy, my eyes swollen. It couldn't be helped.

The most put together I could be, I opened the door to the man who had walked me back to my room after breakfast. His blue eyes searched my face, his a perfect, blank mask in place.

But the weight behind his scrutiny made me shamefully aware of my appearance.

"Mr. Lacroix would like to see you," he said quietly.

I kept my gaze down but offered him a slight nod that I understood.

He led the way down the corridor to the grand stairs. It wasn't the one I'd found that morning, but Lacroix was right about the doors being on that side. They were right at the base.

We turned left, the opposite direction from the dining room with a similar corridor lined with closed doors and chandeliers roped with gossamer threads of silver. That seemed to be the theme of the place. Dust. Mother would never have allowed such a display, especially when the house itself was a work of art. Someone, at some point, had put their heart and soul into creating a home unlike any other and it was being neglected and abused.

My heart ached for it. For the loss of such love.

"Miss Smith?"

My escort must have tried to get my attention a few times judging from the increase in the volume of his voice, but I'd been so lost in my own world that I hadn't noticed him stop or that I had walked straight past him.

Cheeks warm, I stopped and hurried back to join him at a set of magnificent black, oak doors with elaborate, inlayed carvings in intricate patterns.

He didn't seem upset as he rested a hand on the brass head of a lion and twisted.

The room opened and I couldn't move. My feet stood rooted to the threshold, toes in, heels out, jaw somewhere between them as I basked in a sight I had to blink to believe.

"Oh!" I breathed, hands going to my mouth.

Warm, golden light spilled in blankets of comfort over a room lined with books. Books upon books. Books stuffed along every wall. Every floor. It went up to a full, second level guarded by black, iron bars and ladders of wood. They climbed to a ceiling crafted half with glass. Half with branches. Both twined in a dome that curved down and over the far side where one wall hung open over the forest to showcase a dance of green forest and fog, and rain.

At the center of the room, worn, but comfortable, a sitting area gathered around a marble fireplace, unlit, but clean.

I dared an unsteady step forward, eyes retracing every plump chair tucked into cozy corners. Every table piled with books. Every book waiting to be read.

It was during this haphazard euphoria that I finally noticed the solid structure of wood dominating the space beneath the window and the man seated behind it.

Watching me.

He wore the same top and pants from breakfast, but his hair was swept back and fastened at the back of his head. The absence of shadows and the thin veil of light coming through the windows, his scars were more pronounced. Unmistakable. They ran in harsh, jagged lines from temple down to a stubbornly chiseled jaw. It should have disfigured him. Mother would never have accepted such a deformity as something attractive, but it only intensified the raw power of him. The warning that this was not a gentle man, yet he'd been nothing else since my unexpected arrival.

I was staring. Again.

"I'm sorry," I whispered, trying to catch my breath. My hands flat over my pounding heart. "This is the most beautiful room I have ever seen. I think it's my favorite so far."

"Mine too." Lacroix murmured. He motioned for me to take the leather back chair opposite the desk. "Did you fall?"

I stopped and stared at him a second. "I'm sorry?"

He gestured with the nod of his square jaw towards the patches of dust still clinging to my legs and top.

"No, I'm all right. Thank you."

It was only then I saw the silver tray placed on my side of the table laden with a plate of cubed cheese, a hunk of green grapes, and a turkey sandwich. A cup of tea — green from the smell of it — and a bowl of sugar sat next to them.

My stomach gave a twist. A pang to remind me I hadn't eaten since supper the night before last; Mother hadn't wanted me bloated or gassy for when I met Jarrett. But almost forty-eight hours later, I was starving.

"It's for you," Lacroix said.

I forced my gaze away from temptation to focus on the man. His almost feline eyes stayed steady on me through the dark tendrils framing his artfully chiseled face, watchful in a way that was unnerving. With the light falling through the window behind him, he was a hulking shadow with only those golden orbs reflecting back at me. Between his sheer size and the aura of raw power that radiated off him, I couldn't stop the shiver that coursed through me before I was reminded this man was best friends with a much bigger monster.

"Why?" I asked.

"Why?" he repeated.

"Why is it for me?"

His chair groaned as he settled back into it. "You didn't eat at breakfast."

I hadn't realized he'd been watching me. The notion stiffened along my spine.

"Thank you, but I'm not hungry."

The lie nearly cost me when my stomach took that moment to whine in protest. Even the pressure of my bunched hands pressing into my gut did nothing to quiet it. I could only grit my teeth and pray he hadn't heard it.

"Are you lying to me, sweetheart?"

I started at the question, not having expected him to call me on it. "No, of course not."

"Good, because I could hear your stomach from the other side of the house." With a powerful motion, he shoved to his feet to stand over me. Even with a whole desk between us, he was terrifyingly imposing. "I have to check on something. When I return, that plate better be empty, do you understand, love? All of it."

Paralyzed under the boring weight of his beautiful eyes, I could only sit and nod.

He offered me a low grunt of satisfaction before stalking to the doors where his guard still stood. The door was closed and the two were gone.