AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Plight? Who the hell says plight? And yeah,” I threw my hands into the air, “Who else would be?”
“You, Ms. Barlow. No one told you to open it. No one forced you to. You made the choice, and unfortunately, it came with consequences you weren’t prepared to accept.”
“You would’ve lost it if I hadn’t.”
“Would I?”
“Yes, obviously.”
“You’re making assumptions again, Ms. Barlow. Never a smart thing to do.”
I scoffed, crossing my arms over my chest. “All I’m hearing is a bunch of bullshit excuses. Are you sure I’m the one who can’t handle the ‘complicated’ truth? Or are you too afraid to tell me what’s really going on?”
He glared at me with a predatory gleam in his eyes that reminded me of a python’s gaze. It promised that if I continued to push him, this situation would end up with someone in a world of hurt, and it wouldn’t be him.
“Fear isn’t in my nature, Ms. Barlow. You’d do well to remember that.”
“Everyone’s afraid of something. Even the big bad wolf.”
He tilted his head to the side, and I wasn’t sure if he was checking me out—or trying to decide if I was worth the trouble to keep alive.
My mouth wasdefinitelygoing to get me killed at some point.
“Very well. You want answers? Want truths you may not be ready to hear or fully understand? Then you have one simple choice; follow me, Ms. Barlow, and get the answers you seek—or walk away and don’t.”
7
Mr. X didn’t even wait for my answer. He simply turned and headed down the hall.
I sucked in a breath, alarm lighting my highly developed fight-or-flight response as I marched straight toward the lion’s den, my boots pounding the metal stairs.
The second floor was a carve-out of the larger warehouse structure. The hall we walked down featured a thick red carpet, mahogany wainscoting rising half the length of the wall, and off-white wallpaper embossed with a stylized flower and circle motif that was almost Celtic. I stopped to stick my finger into it and found this was the same acoustic board used on the lower floor’s walls.
Damn. This man dripped money. It must have cost a fortune to have these made.
Ahead of me, his footsteps faltered.
“Ms. Barlow,” he said. He spoke as if calling a dog to heel, and my one thought was that someone needed to slap the arrogance out of him.
I sighed and followed the man into an office worthy of any captain of industry.
It was massive, three times the size of the bedroom he had put me in, and done in the same woodwork as the wainscoting outside. Only there was much more artistry in the paneled wood that resembled an ancient ancestral castle instead of what you’d find in a modern industrial park. At the furthest end, behind a massive wood desk, rose a floor-to-ceiling bookcase against the wall. Instead of polished cement, the floor was an intricate parquet wood with dark inlay lines that cut at odd angles through the room, though a humongous oriental rug knotted in red, blues, and yellows covered most of the lines.
To the side stood a pedestal on which a thick, ancient-looking leather-bound book sat. Immediately I was drawn to it, or rather the artifact in my chest was, and I reached for it.
“Don’t touch that,” he said sharply, his tone cut with knife-like precision.
I withdrew my hand and took a quick breath. Okay, Mr. Dark and Mysterious did not like others touching his things. Apparently, no one taught him how to share.
“Before you go sharing all these scary truths, how about you give me a proper introduction?”
“What do you mean?”
I glanced at him over my shoulder and discovered him watching me from behind the large mahogany desk with his fingers laced together in front of his nose. His eyes are a distracting shade of brown with red and gold flecks. I crashed into them and forgot what I had asked for a moment.
I tore my gaze away and focused on the leather couch butted into the corner and the swanky artwork hanging on the paneled walls. My boots sunk into the plush pile of the rug, and I ran my fingers along the edges of a nearby tapestry until I got my shit together again.
“I mean, like I was saying, I don’t make a habit of spying on my clients. I respect their privacy, but since you seem intent on keeping me here for the foreseeable future, I feel like I deserve to see behind the curtain. I can’t go on calling you the boss or Mr. X until this is over.”
