Isabelle Bishop’s electric blue eyes dance before me. I wonder if it was fear that lit them up or if that’s their color. Like broken glass. Shards and shards of it.
My dick twitches in anticipation of those eyes staring up at me when I push her to her knees. When I take her. Own her. I smile at the images. Look forward to them. And I have to force myself to come back to the why of this. To the fact that she’s a Bishop. I remind myself why I was in that chapel in the first place. To remember. To pay my respects. To tell the dead that they are not forgotten. That the time for vengeance has come. Finally.
This is what I need to keep at the forefront of my mind. Not the Bishop girl’s pretty eyes.
I turn onto the drive of the house and the gates slide open. It’s the only house on several acres of land a few miles outside of the city. The only drawback is the property it backs into. Bishop land.
The car whines as I slow. It’s built for speed. Wants it. I drive along the circular drive where the front door opens and Dex, my right-hand-man, steps out to greet me.
I climb out of the car and toss him the keys. He’s been with me for five years. He’s closer to me than my brother.
“All good?” he asks.
I nod. “What happened here?”
“She wants you. Your mother’s been up there with her for a while but she’s struggling.”
I nod, go inside. Although we’ve lived well these last five years, she’s not used to this scale of things. Or the age of the ancient mansion. The St. James estate is several centuries old and although modernized, there are plenty of dark corners and ghosts. I will teach her they don’t mean her harm. But five is a tender age.
The house is lit in soft golden light. My shoes sound as I make my way across the marble floor to the grand staircase standing as the centerpiece of the round foyer. I hurry up to her room, remembering the feel of the banister beneath my hand, the dips in the marble where it’s worn over centuries. Carpet softens my footfalls as I make my way down the curving hallway to Angelique’s room. I set my hand on the doorknob and take a breath in, banishing thoughts of The Society, of the Bishops. Of the girl with eyes like blue glass. I put on a smile and open the bedroom door.
“Daddy!” Angelique calls from the bed.
I force my smile to widen even as I take in her pale face, the shadows in her eyes. They don’t belong in a child her age and I mean to banish them. The only thing she has done wrong is being born to me for a father.
My heart constricts as I make my way across the large, primarily yellow room. My brother outdid himself.
“What are you still doing awake, sweetheart?” I ask as softly as I can while my mother quietly stands from the bed, comforting my daughter. “It’s very late.”
Angelique glances at her grandmother, then back at me. I study her eyes. Familiar. A carbon copy of my own. But that’s all she inherited from me. Her beauty comes from her mother. As does her gentle nature.
“I was scared,” she confesses. “It’s too dark here.”
I brush her wild curls over her shoulders and hug her. She feels so small. So vulnerable. “You’re safe here, Angelique. I’m here. Uncle Zeke is here. Your grandmother is here.”
I wonder sometimes if she inherited her instinctual fear the moment she was born. The day she was ripped from the safety of her mother’s womb into a violent, cruel world.
I draw in a deep, tight breath. My arms stiffen and it takes all I have to relax. To hide this part of myself from her. Because I don’t want to be on the list of things she fears.
“I’ll leave this light on for you,” my mother says, switching on a lamp across the room. “Will that make you feel better?”
“And open the curtain?” Angelique asks.
“No moon or stars tonight,” I tell her. “Only rain.”
She shrugs a shoulder. “I like rain.”
“Then we’ll leave the curtains open.”
She smiles and lays down. I bend to kiss her forehead and tuck her in.
“How long will we stay this time?” she asks. She has moved from house to house, hotel to hotel, for all her life. A girl in hiding. A girl who didn’t exist until just a few days ago.
“This is home,” I say, standing. It’s time for her to come out of hiding. Time for her to live. “We’re here to stay, Angelique.”
“You too?”
Fuck. She hasn’t forgotten how often I disappeared. Left her with her grandmother and a slew of soldiers to guard her while I tracked down her mother’s killers.