Chapter Twenty-Five Wren #2
He shut his eyes when his name rolled off my tongue. “Stop distracting me,” he begged. “It’s cruel.”
And just because he’d angered me this morning, I leaned over, running my lips against the sensitive skin of his neck until I reached his ear. He groaned.
Making sure my lips brushed against him, I murmured, “Then you shouldn’t have run away.”
I jerked back abruptly, satisfied when he let out a needy growl, his shoulders slouched.
“Cruel. Just like I said.”
“Open the door, Damien, and then you can complain.”
He mumbled an incoherent word before looking back to his work. All the while, I fought to keep a smile from creeping over my face. I enjoyed tormenting him. Just a little.
A click sounded. “Finally.” Damien nudged the door open and motioned me through. Stepping around him, I entered, Damien and our squabble put aside. We had a vital mission.
Aiming straight for the desk, I rifled through all the usual places. I rapped gently on the bottoms of the drawers to discern whether a secret layer hid below. Nothing. All of Lord Saridon’s neatly stacked notes pertained to the family business of textiles and the shipments coming into port.
Damien busied himself by scouring the cabinet beside the liquor cart.
He opened it—likely with his lockpick set—to reveal more ledgers.
He sat down in a wingback chair and flipped through some, creases marking his forehead.
I smiled at serious Damien, how full his lips looked, the way his eyes narrowed in concentration.
The small tics in his sharp jaw when he flipped a page—
Focus, Wren. Ogle the thief later.
All right. If I were a corrupt politician trying to hide something, where would I conceal it?
The details of the study were difficult to see in the dark, but I pushed and prodded the golden frames displaying dull forest scenes and other landscapes, hoping to find a safe.
With nothing to show for that effort, I moved on to the life-sized tiger Lord Saridon had commissioned in gold.
Unsurprisingly, it was pure metal, not a seam in sight in which to hide anything. The man sure liked his gold.
Wait. He works in textiles.
I got on my hands and knees, inspecting the round rug beside the twin set of chairs; a place for smoking cigars and probably discussing how best to screw over an opponent.
A table sat in the middle with a crystal ashtray etched with the lord’s initials in fancy script.
Feeling around the table’s sides, I rounded the rug, searching for tears or lumps.
Sweating now, I aimed for the larger rug beneath his desk. Crawling to it, I did the same as before, feeling for anything that might act as a hiding place. The corners came up empty, but…
“Damien.”
There was a shuffle of footsteps, and then he crouched beside me. Near the window, away from foot traffic, I spotted a sliver of a cut in the fabric. An incision I now noted had tiny stitches on the side.
“Knife?” I held my palm open without looking at him.
“Where’s your letter opener?”
“I left it at home so I wasn’t tempted to kill you,” I replied sweetly.
A grumble came before he placed the handle of a blade gently in my palm.
Getting as close to the sewn area as possible, I took the knife to the threads.
Damien kept the weapon sharp, and the threads ripped apart without fuss.
“I may keep this,” I threatened, but he snatched it away before I could hide it.
“Rude.”
Slipping my fingers between the top and bottom of the split rug, I felt around. I was half terrified something might bite me, like a spider with a penchant for sleeping in rugs, when I latched onto something.
Paper.
“Yes,” I said, satisfied by my own cunning. Damien didn’t seem to appreciate it.
Pulling out my findings, I laid a dark folder on the carpet.
Moonlight streamed through the window, granting enough light to see, but only barely. I squinted at the words on the first page.
“Shite.” Damien inched forward. “This is part of a ledger and an official grievance. Lord Saridon made a claim that he lost his shipment at sea.”
I flipped to the next page. A black-and-white photograph.
It depicted crates being removed from Saridon’s ship, and stamped on the bottom of the photograph was a date. A date that matched the ledger entry claiming he’d never received the wares.
I turned to the next page, curious, but it had nothing to do with his business.
You have failed to deliver the requested amount. Consequences are forthcoming. Do not make the same mistake again.
C.H.
Below, ink splattered the page, and I noticed what looked like a few tearstains marring the paper.
Cameron Hayes. Again. I doubted he’d been the one crying, though.
“My father used his pen for this.” The words sounded like they didn’t come from my mouth. They were almost an echo. His pen always left ink blots behind. Like it couldn’t contain all of its magic and begged to burst free.
“Wren.” Damien’s hand gripped my arm as I swayed. First, Grayson and his note, and then this? The consequences had to do with Lizzy being denied a gift, I knew it. The timing matched.
My father had blackmailed Lord Saridon and then taken away the chance for his daughter to receive her gift from the Fates.
“Wren,” Damien said, more loudly this time. “We need to leave.”
I wanted to rip apart the paper and set it aflame. It was yet more proof of my ignorance. I lived with the man, for Fates’ sake. I should’ve known. Should’ve—
Damien snatched the papers and shoved them into his back pocket. We needed evidence, and this was only the beginning.
“You didn’t know,” he coaxed, heaving me to my feet. “I know you didn’t.”
My lips were frozen as Damien led us out of the study and back down the stairs. In what felt like a blink, we stood outside, the fresh air doing nothing to dispel the horror seeping into my pores.
“Come on, almost there.” Damien guided me through the back gate and onto the street.
We’d done it, made it out without detection, but somehow, even after seeing Grayson’s earlier note, my world tilted on its axis.
That photograph and note had been undeniable proof that Father was the ringmaster.
A master manipulator. And worse…a possible murderer.
“I feel like I can’t do this anymore.” It was all too real; seeing the threat in his signature scrawl, watching as he paraded about the city, terrorizing lords to do his bidding. For souls. It made me want to retch into the nearest potted plant.
“Hey.” Snapping sounded by my face, and seconds later Damien’s finger and thumb grabbed my chin, forcing me to look at him. “You’re just in shock. No one wants to know their parent is—”
“Evil?” I finished. “Fates, I told myself I’d come to terms with it, but after each new shred of evidence and hearing him with Lord Hockley the other night, I just— It’s just too much.
I feel like it’s rushing in on all sides at the same time and I hate that this is the truth.
” I shook my head. It felt heavy, fuzzy.
“I chose to ignore any signs. And there were signs well before this. Well before my birthday.”
Flashes of Father leaving the house at all hours of the night. Him in his study, yelling at me to leave whenever he used that pen. The people he associated with. How those people hunched in on themselves at times, yet seemed eager to do his bidding.
I’d told myself it had been respect. That he had to be commanding to get things done safely in the ward. To keep us all safe.
What a pretty little lie I’d spun.
“You are not your father,” Damien argued forcefully.
“The mind is funny. It can make you ignore what’s right in front of your face in order to protect you.
” His gaze seared into mine, something obscure flashing across his already dim eyes.
“All I’m saying is, don’t beat yourself up.
I believe you. I might not have originally, but now that I know you, there’s not a single doubt in my head that you were unaware. ”
A tear slipped free and I hastily wiped at it. I wanted to let it all out, but not in front of Damien. When the second tear slipped free, I realized it was too late.
Arms banded around me, holding me close. “It’s all right,” Damien whispered into my hair as I wept. His hold was firm and tight despite his wound, and it was everything I needed to keep me from falling to my knees. I didn’t even have the energy to be mad at him anymore. “We can fix this, sunshine.”
My life had been a lie.
“I hate this.” I sniffled, my tears wetting Damien’s shirt. “And if you tease me later—”
“I won’t.” He brushed my hair gently aside.
I didn’t think he did gentle. “Right now, in this moment, let it all come out. Be mad. Be angry. Hurt. Sad. Whatever you need to be in order to pick yourself up again. Because you will have to pick yourself up when the time comes to end this thing. It’s either you choose defeat, or willingly accept the pain and make it a part of you.
Only then can you bottle it up and do what’s necessary. ”
Without moving from his chest, I asked, “Is that what you did?”
His heart thudded beneath my ear, my simple question wreaking havoc.
“I did when I left the orphanage.”
My arms were around him. I didn’t remember putting them there, but I found myself hugging him tighter, careful to keep clear of his left shoulder.
“They kicked us out at sixteen, and well, I didn’t have a skill to my name,” he confessed with a brittle laugh.
“I mean, I was good with sleight of hand, a bunch of us boys playing cards and such. So stealing had always been easy. It began with food, to feed myself and a couple of the others who went without because days would pass before they fed us. Sometimes, I didn’t get so lucky. ”
“How did you continue?” I asked, unable to imagine such hopelessness.
He cleared his throat, silent for a moment as he contemplated.
“Someone abandoned me at the orphanage as a baby, with nothing. And because of that, I was treated like nothing. Being the spiteful person I am, I wanted to prove them all wrong. Buy my farm, own land. I want to show them that just because I came from nothing didn’t mean I would turn into it.”
I peered up at him, his face inches from mine. “You aren’t nothing, Damien.”
One side of his mouth quirked. “I won’t be.”
“No. You aren’t now.” He truly deemed himself as nothing. I could see it. No wonder he’d left this morning.
Here I was, falling back into his orbit when he had the ability to shatter me should I fall entirely.
The kind of breaking that left a person beyond repair.
But he held me as I sobbed over a falsehood of a life.
He had agreed to help me with my quest—though his motives hadn’t been altogether altruistic at the beginning—and he had come to trust me enough that I was the person he crawled to after getting stabbed.
Damien enraged me at times. Like how he couldn’t open up and admit out loud that there was something between us. Something that could be real. Other times, he surprised me, allowed me a glimpse into his true self.
If only he showed me that self more often.
“One day I want to hear about your farm,” I said, lightening the tension in the air. “I want to hear all about the man you want to be. Can you do that?”
“Yeah, sunshine. I think I can.” He slipped his arm around me, but his body was tenser than before.
When we reached the garden behind my house, he paused. “Here.” Slipping a hand into his jacket, he all but shoved a thin book into my hands. “Get lost a little.” He smirked before walking backward, practically disappearing into the darkness.
I glanced down.
Flowers and Their Meanings: Volume One.
My heart skipped a beat, warmth replacing the icy cold of betrayal.
“You better not have stolen this!” I called out to the shadows.
I swore I heard a chuckle in the night.