waking her. I need to keep to my schedule. But I guess I was too loud, and she woke up, screamed at me to get out, and I broke the vase on accident.”
I didn’t hear a word of what she told me following I was in Miss Rose’s room. Everything else had been white noise, a static sound as my pulse pounded and blood rushed through my head.
That bitch...
Two fucking days and already she was back to terrorizing the staff with her ridiculous demands and bratty behavior.
My anger must have shown in my expression because Holly shrank back, her unblinking eyes locked to my face.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Rose, I didn’t mean to speak poorly of your family-“
I pushed to my feet and stared down at her. “Miss Rose is not my family. And you have nothing to worry about. I’ll take care of it.”
If anything, Holly’s tears helped focus me. Two days and I hadn’t been able to decide what to do with Lisbeth. Two days and I couldn’t put a finger on her behavior.
It only took two days, and already the spoiled bitch princess was back to her usual shit.
Two days...and I knew exactly how to rip the pedestal out from under her.
Lisbeth
A tiny shard of glass slid beneath my skin, drawing blood. Wincing at the nip of broken glass, I lifted my finger to inspect the damage, used my nails to slide the sliver out and then stuck my finger in my mouth to staunch the bleeding.
It was only a small wound, nothing major, but it was enough to make me hate the morning more than I already did, enough to knock me back on my ass where I sat staring at the glimmer of more shards that needed to be swept up and thrown away. I didn’t have a broom or a dustpan and dreaded having to seek out a maid to ask for help, especially after making the last one cry.
I felt terrible and made the decision to find that young woman and apologize, but first I needed to clean up this mess somehow.
Pushing to my feet, I lifted my head to the sound of hurried footsteps. Several people were coming my way from what I could gather, so I cinched my robe around my body to hide my nightgown, a smile stretching my lips to see three staff rush in my room.
“Oh, hey. Did you bring a broom, by chance? I need to clean-“
My words cut off as the staff rushed past me and a man stepped around the corner. I stumbled back in response to the sheer size of him. At six foot five, at least, he towered over me and had a shoulder span twice the width of mine.
For a moment, I thought he didn’t notice I was standing there, that he didn’t intend to claim my space, but he kept moving forward, forcing me back until my foot hit a piece of the glass and I winced from the pain.
His shoe crunched over the glass that remained, but if he noticed, I wasn’t sure because his narrowed eyes were locked to my face, and his lips were pulled in a tight scowl.
As soon as I met his stare, my mouth parting to tell him to back off, recognition hit me like a bullet.
How was it possible? My eyes rounded in disbelief while my mind whispered one name, an unthinkable repetition that fell from my lips.
I tried to shake away the thought that this could be the boy I remembered. Always such a scrawny thing, he’d never commanded the room. He had been more of a shadow than a person many noticed. But those eyes, the depth of the color, like a fine whiskey, were unmistakable.
“Callan...”
I would know those amber eyes anywhere, even if it had only been once that he made full eye contact. How was he alive?
For a moment, I was lost to the man that stood before me, the room fading off in my peripheral vision, time itself ceasing its forward motion. I was ripped back, if anything, to ten years before this moment. And while I knew the person holding my stare, I didn’t understand what he’d become.
He was a dark smear against the polished decor, a speck of dirt against the sparkling surface of glass. Roughshod and larger than life, this man not only stole the space around him, he consumed it. It took effort to drag my gaze from his so that I could run my eyes