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She reached toward my pocket but I pulled back from her. “No,” I said. “You’re going to tell me what you seem to think I shouldn’t know.ThenI’ll decide if you will have the Orb.”
Her confidence left her and she shook her head violently. “No. It has… nothing to do with you. It’s a… personal thing.”
“It’smyOrb and that makes it my problem too. Tell me.”
When she refused to look me in the eye, I grabbed her by the arm and dragged her back the way we had just come from. “Fine. Then you can explain it to Oggen. I’m sure he’sdyingto know what really happened.”
“What? No!” Layla said, digging her heels into the marble floor.
She found no grip and simply slid across it as if it were ice. “No! Don’t do this! Please! Don’t do this!”
“You’remakingme do this,” I growled.
Would I have really handed her over to Oggen?
I wasn’t sure.
Thankfully, Layla broke before that:
“All right! All right! I’ll tell you! I’ll tell you!”
I came to a stop but kept my hand wrapped firmly around her arm. “Go on, then.”
“But you have to promise you won’t tellanyoneelse,” she said fearfully.
“All right,” I said. “You have my word. No one will ever hear anything about this from me. Now, what is it?”
Her lip set to trembling and her eyes shimmered with tears.
Before she could even get a word out, I knew it was going to be bad.
But I never realized justhowbad.
With too muchfoot traffic in the main hall, I relocated us to the kitchen.
I fixed Layla up with a cup of hot chocolate and took us to the small table in the corner.
Whenever someone came in, Layla would wait for them to leave before continuing.
She was on edge and didn’t seem to want anyone but me to hear what she had to say.
Not that she wanted me to hear it either.
When she had finally told me what happened that night at the hotel after I left, I couldn’t think of anything to say and just nodded.
Layla sipped at her hot chocolate but too much time had passed and a thick skin had formed on top.
She had it to one side and placed a hand on my knee. “What are you thinking?”
I leaned back and folded my arms. “What am I thinking? What am Isupposedto think?”
She squeezed my leg. “I told you I didn’t want to tell you.”
And now, I wished she hadn’t.
It wasn’t the danger and the intrigue that bothered me, it was something else, something Layla didn’t seem to have picked up on.
“So, you came to see me at my office because… you were forced to?” I said.
