Caged Kitten (All the Queen's Men #2) - Rhea Watson Page 0,46

Totally safe.

Adrenaline at an all-time high, I rubbed my sweaty, shaky hands on my thighs and continued my slow scan of the room, trying to keep busy—to not let my mind wander to the worst possible scenario. Eventually, I settled on the black nameplate in the middle of this huge desk, situated right in front of me. It had been staring at me since I’d walked in, but after weeks in either a cell, the block, or the bakery, the warden’s office was sensory overload.

Warden Lloyd Guthrie

I stared at the bright white letters, reading but not comprehending.

Warden—Lloyd—Guthrie.

I blinked down at the rectangle, everything inside going cold, and then tried and failed to reach out for it. I mean, I got my hand up, even moved it toward the name that had haunted my entire life, but it fell to my lap just before I could brush the cool obsidian.

Warden Lloyd Guthrie—

The door clicked shut behind me, and I sucked in a panicked breath, stiff as a statue, every internal alarm bell shrieking for me to run.

“Hello, kitten…”

10

Katja

This had to be a dream.

I’m dreaming. That was why the room looked like a TV set, like the stereotypical head honcho’s office. I must have seen it before on a show, a movie, hell, maybe even a play, and now my mind was messing with me. Yeah. That was it. As if Xargi didn’t screw with me enough during the daytime, now I needed a new nightmare thrown into the mix.

Only a dream.

Wake up, Katja. Just wake up.

Footsteps on hardwood—prim and precise, nothing like the heavy clunk of guard boots or the shuffling of soft-soled inmate attire. Still as stone, I stared at the overladen bookshelf on the other side of the desk, catching a faint whiff of leather that wasn’t from the high-backed chair. Leather shoes. Expensive. Paired with… peppermint. An even more delicate scent, it tickled my nostrils, begged me to turn around and face the nightmare head-on.

But I couldn’t.

I couldn’t move.

As soon as a tall, dark figure loomed in my periphery, my mind went blank. Like an overloaded computer shorting out, it all went black inside. No high-pitched whine. No racing images. No whispers in my dad’s death croak urging me to run. Just—silence, except for the drumbeat of my heart, my pulse reverberating through my entire body.

He settled into that huge, imposing chair without a word. Warden—Lloyd—Guthrie.

A handsome silver fox, but I’d known that from perusing the odd society tabloid photo after Dad died—back when I thought I should finally look into what he’d been going on and on about for years. Only the photos hadn’t done crime lord Lloyd Guthrie justice. They didn’t relay the absolute power he carried in his broad shoulders, in his large hands, in the crisp suit and the steely grey eyes that seemed to look right through me, right down to the guts.

And from the way he settled into his chair, hands folded on the mahogany desktop, eyes pinned squarely on me… It was like he’d found my very soul.

Black hair tinged with grey, white at the sideburns. Neat. Swept back. Scottish heritage with a splash of Italian thrown in, if I remembered my research—what little public information had been available, anyway. He wore a pristine black suit far too good for the warden of some crap prison, and I swore the buttons on his shirt, from the glimpses I caught beneath a shiny black tie, were pearls.

Attractive man. Tall. Strong. Lean. Hawkish.

Terrifying warlock.

My shoulders rounded, and try as I might to match his quiet ferocity, I just wanted to slink down to the hardwood and disappear through the floorboards.

“Kitten… Sweet nickname,” he mused, his voice a deep, richly aged baritone. A New Yorker, distinctly not West Coast. “What your father used to call you, isn’t it?”

My cheeks burned harder than they had since I’d arrived, no doubt a telling beet red from the way the warden’s thin mouth twisted up. I said nothing. Did nothing. Refused to even give him a nod. Lloyd Guthrie—if that obsidian plate was to be believed, if this wasn’t a dream—tapped his threaded hands on the desk once, twice, then leaned forward, his chair softly groaning.

“Do you know who I am?”

I swallowed thickly, gulping a mouthful of knives down a too-dry throat, and then nodded to his nameplate. “Warden Lloyd Guthrie.”

Pride bloomed in my chest: I didn’t stutter his name. I didn’t whisper it or choke it out. No matter how I felt on the inside, despite