Page 76 of Lilies from Hell

“We were together all night.”

“That’s nothing to me,” he says. His gaze makes my skin crawl, but I never look away, holding his gaze as if hypnotized by his two blue eyes, until I hear footsteps in the distance that alarm me.

He seems to hear them too and reluctantly helps me down from the counter, then leaves, giving me one last sidelong glance. I try to follow his footsteps to the main room discreetly and let out a discouraging sigh when I see him disappear through the front door. Just then, my father comes out of his office and calls me, saying he needs my help with something.

“I need to move this file to this folder here,” he murmurs, pointing to a random file on the computer screen. I suppress a smile when I see the look of confusion on his face.

“Done,” I murmur when I’m finished. He just looks at me in surprise, as if it were something very complicated to do.

“Already? How did you do that so fast?” he asks, still amazed. I let out a little laugh.

“You just have to drag it, like this,” I say as I show him how to do it.

“You’re really smart,” he murmurs, still amazed.

“Dad, it’s not that hard,” I say with a smile. Then I sit down in front of him, my hands almost sweaty from the nerves.

“I wanted to ask you something.”

“Sure,” he says, looking up from the computer screen.

“How would you react if I had a boyfriend?” I ask. My hands slightly sweaty.

“Boyfriend?” He asks, raising both eyebrows. When I nod, he gives me a serious look. “Well, we agreed that you wouldn’t have one until you finished college and turned forty.”

“I don’t remember promising you that,” I say with a frown.

“Are you calling your father a liar?” I shake my head. “I don’t want you to neglect your studies. You’ll have time later to have your special friends.” He says the last part with a nasty grimace, confirming my suspicions.

Only over his dead body would he ever accept me having any kind of romantic relationship.

“Whatever you say,” I murmur, knowing I could never convince him otherwise. But how am I going to keep hiding my relationship with him for so long?

“Why do you ask?”

“Oh, nothing. I just think a classmate likes me and I was thinking it might not be a bad idea to accept a date,” I say simply.

“Tell him to get lost,” he retorts dismissively, causing me to open my eyes slightly.

“It’s just a date.”

“I won’t let anyone hurt my little princess. And I don’t like the idea of who knows who hanging around you. I’ll have to talk to Lance,” he argues, furrowing his brow.

“Don’t be dramatic.”

“Better safe than sorry. You start with simple dates and then you end up pregnant. Or even worse, married,” he says, typing something on his computer.

I get up from the couch and go to my bedroom. I don’t even want to imagine the look on his face when I tell him.

I lay down on the bed and dial his number, waiting with my teeth clenched on my lower lip for him to pick up. He never does. He must be just busy, but that thought doesn’t stop the knot in my stomach. Believing that the small possibility of him disappearing into thin air again, as he did years ago, is no longer just a possibility.

“This is the sixth one in all this time,” Denis complains, dragging the body until he throws it into a hole in the ground. Then a couple of men scatter dirt over the new corpse I got with the help of Bianca.

I knew why she agreed to be the bait for that French guy. I didn’t care, but now I want nothing else than to lay down her body close to his, beneath the dirt.

“It wouldn’t be a bad idea to open a funeral home,” he says, looking closely at the headless Frenchman’s body.

The idiot not only disobeyed me, but he dared to go even further. He thought that because he was the mayor’s son nothing would happen to him. He was clearly wrong. No one is immortal or indispensable.