The Spider

21

I made it over to the door, opened it a crack, and peered outside, but the hallway was empty.

“Come on! Come on!” Charlotte hissed, pushing past me, sprinting out into the hallway, and gesturing at me with her hand. “This way! This way!”

I looked at the open hallway in front of her, the one that I knew led to a set of stairs that would take me down to the first floor. Charlotte was right. I could still make my escape. But that old, nagging curiosity rose up in me, the one that Fletcher had instilled in me, along with the burning desire to find out what possible reason Sebastian could have had for drugging me.

So I turned and started walking in the opposite direction, toward the library.

“No,” Charlotte said, following me and tugging on my hand, trying to get me to stop. “This way. You have to get away before he hurts you.”

I looked down at her. “How do you know that he’s going to hurt me? Why do you keep saying that?”

Charlotte stared at me, her dark eyes full of pain, pity, and utter misery—too much misery for someone so young. She slowly pushed up the right sleeve of her black dress.

A perfect handprint bruised her bicep in deep blues, as though someone had wrapped his hand around her upper arm as tight as it would go and had then given her a vicious shake.

All the air fled from my lungs, and white stars winked on and off in front of my eyes, as though I’d been sucker-punched in the throat by a giant. If only that were the case. It would have hurt less, so much less.

“Sebastian . . . Sebastian did that to you?”

“And more,” she whispered.

A sick, sick feeling filled my stomach, making me want to vomit up the drugged champagne. “Not—not your father?”

Charlotte gave me a puzzled look, then shook her head.

That sick, sick feeling intensified, and my knees threatened to buckle, but I forced myself to swallow down the bitter bile rising in my throat and stay on my feet.

“Why? Why did he do that to you?”

“Sebastian likes to hurt people, especially me,” Charlotte said in a voice that was far too old, knowing, and matter-of-fact for a teenager. “He always has, ever since I was little. He hides it, though. From everyone but me.”

“Did you—did you ever tell your father what Sebastian was doing to you?” I could barely croak out the words.

She hesitated. “No. I wanted to, but Sebastian told me that he would hurt Papa if I ever said a word to him.”

All along, I’d thought that Cesar Vaughn was the bad guy, a dirty, rotten, low-down, despicable villain who’d been abusing his own daughter. But it wasn’t him. None of this had been his doing or his fault. Charlotte hadn’t been suffering because of him. Which meant . . . which meant . . .

I killed an innocent man.

The thought slammed into my gut like a sledgehammer, and I almost got sick right then and there. But once again, I forced myself to choke down the bile in my throat, even though it burned me like acid from the inside out.

My head was spinning in a hundred different directions, and not only because of the drugged champagne, but I bent down so that I was at eye level with Charlotte. “You go to your room, and you stay in there. You don’t come out until morning, no matter what you hear. Do you understand me?”

“Promise me that you’ll leave,” she said, pulling on my arm and trying to drag me toward the staircase again. “Don’t go talk to him. Just leave. Please. Please, please, please, just leave.”

I shook my head. “I can’t do that, sweetheart. But don’t you worry about me. Sebastian might like to hurt people, but I know how to do it too. See?”

I held my knife up where she could see it again. Charlotte gasped. Her face paled, and a spark of understanding began to burn in her dark gaze.

“You’re the one who killed Papa, aren’t you?” she whispered in a harsh, accusing voice.

I thought that my heart couldn’t possibly break any more, but the hurt, miserable, devastated look in her eyes made what was left of my black, brittle, rotten core shatter into a thousand sharp, splintered shards, each one shredding me from the inside out.

“Yes,” I said simply. “I did.”

I didn’t tell her that I was sorry, even though I was. I didn’t tell her that it was what I did as an assassin. I didn’t tell her that it was simply my own way of surviving and trying to quiet the screams in my own soul. Of trying to protect her the way that I’d so miserably failed to protect Bria all those years ago. In the end, my reasons didn’t matter. All that did matter was that I’d killed her father and that she hated me for it.

But she couldn’t possibly hate me as much as I loathed myself at this moment for taking an innocent man away from the daughter he’d been trying to protect.

Charlotte slowly backed away from me, as if she thought I was going to lunge forward and stab her with my knife. Then she whirled around and darted down the hallway, running away from me as fast as she could, each soft footfall stabbing into my chest like a red-hot poker. I watched her go, my stomach churning, churning, churning with guilt and my heart aching for how much pain I’d caused her.

My head spun around, as that languid fog threatened to take hold of me again, and I staggered back, bumping into the wall and rattling a photo there. Ironically enough, it was a picture of Sebastian in one of his business suits, smiling at the camera, although now his grin seemed more cruel than kind, his expression more smug than happy.

Sebastian . . . Sebastian knew what was going on. He was the one I needed to find, the one I needed to get answers from.

My hand tightened around the hilt of my knife—one way or another.

I pushed away from the wall and wobbled down the hallway until I reached the library. It wasn’t that far, but I didn’t pass a single soul. No guards, no housekeepers, no stuffy butlers, no one. Noise drifted up from the floor below, though. Clinking dishes, the scrape of furniture, the snap and rustle of garbage bags. The staff must all have been in the ballroom, cleaning up from Sebastian’s soiree.

I passed another set of windows. Through the glass, I could see that most of the cars had vanished, meaning that the party was over and everyone had gone home, like Charlotte had said. That fact only made me more curious about who had stayed behind to meet with Sebastian.

Well, I was going to find out.

It took me longer than it should have, since I was staggering around like a drunken sailor on shore leave, but I eventually reached the library doors. For a moment, I thought about sneaking out one of the windows and trying to cling to the side of the building like I’d done at Dawson’s mansion, but that option was foolish at best. I could barely keep my feet under me. There was no way that I had the strength to hang on to the outside of the building for any length of time, much less pull myself across the stone and over to one of the library windows.

But I didn’t have to, because the doors were wide open, the murmur of voices drifting outside to me. I recognized the deep timbre of Sebastian’s tone, but the voice that responded seemed a bit lighter.

I eased up to the doors and glanced inside, but whoever was in there with Sebastian was deeper in the library. They must be on the right side, gathered around Cesar’s desk—Sebastian’s desk now.

And I was the one who’d made it his.

I eased through the open doors and tiptoed over to the fireplace. I made sure to stay in the shadows as I peered around the corner of the stone.

Sebastian stood next to the desk, one hip resting on the edge of the antique wood, his legs stretched out in front of him, looking as casual, relaxed, and handsome as ever—if the devil could ever be considered handsome. He held a snifter of brandy in his hand, slowly swirling the amber liquid around and around. He lifted the glass to his nose and drew in a deep, satisfied breath before taking a small sip.

Savoring his victory, in so many ways.

I forced my gaze to move past him to Porter, who was leaning against one of the bookcases in the back of the room, his arms crossed over his chest, standing by like the perfect bodyguard. The giant kept his gaze trained on the person sitting in a chair in front of the desk, his bulky body tense, as though he was on high alert and expecting trouble at any moment.

“Well, I must admit that you’ve pulled this whole thing off quite brilliantly,” a low, throaty voice murmured.

I recognized the voice, and that strange, sinking sense of déjà vu swept over me again.

Mab Monroe stood up and walked over to Sebastian.