Page 123 of Twisting Beauty

“My unlucky girl.” His voice was too warm, too familiar, the hint of absinthe on his breath. “So beautiful.”

My pulse slammed hard against my ribs.

Stay Rua. Stay Rua.

I sat up slowly, dragging the blanket up to my collarbone like a sleepy girl would, confused and half-awake, even as my mind scrambled for reasons why he should leave.

“Daddy?” I rubbed at my eye with the heel of my hand. “What time is it? I’m so tired. The doctor said I should be sleeping a full eight hours.”

“It’s late, pet. But you can sleep in tomorrow.”

“I had another headache today. I told Mervyn I’d have dinner in my room. Did he⁠—”

“He did.”

“I think I might be coming down with something.” I pulled the blanket higher, trying not to let the panic crack through my voice. “Honestly, I feel like I might be sick. Is that going around the manor? Maybe one of the guests had⁠—”

“Rua.” The single syllable cut through me like a string snapped clean, and I knew before he spoke again that he’d run out of patience for my excuses. “You can stop now.”

My mouth dried.

“You’ve had your time. I’ve been very patient. Very. Some men in my position would not have given you the months I have given you to settle back in. To find your feet. To remember whose home this is and whose love made it possible. I have been gentle, a leanbh.” The Irish word for child slid out of his mouth too easily, the endearment soft as a slap. “I am done being gentle.”

Christ. Christ. Christ.

His unblinking eyes were on mine, no warmth in them at all, just a flat black assessment.

He reached out a hand and brushed back a strand of hair from my face, the motion making bile lurch up the back of my throat. “You look so much like your mother tonight.”

The room narrowed.

The breath in my chest went still and small.

He knew her.

I’d been a toddler when Michael Byrne adopted me so I didn’t remember her. In the adoption file I’d found, there was a date, a hastily scrawled KD and nothing else. No photograph. No story. No name.

The woman who’d abandoned me, who’d never wanted me, had been initials on a piece of paper.

This man, this man with his hand resting on his knee in my dead twin’s bedroom, had known her. Had known her well enough to know that I looked like her.

The implications branched fast. How? When? Who is she? Is she alive. Is she⁠—

I shoved what I’d just felt down behind my ribs and locked it there. She never cared about me. Never wanted me. Left me to be raised by a monster. So I didn’t give a shite about her.

And right now, there was a monster trying to get into my bed.

I swallowed around a dry lump, but I kept my face Rua-soft.

Alistair leaned in, his eyes dragging over me, the corner of his mouth softening as if I were a meal he’d been waiting all day for.

“I’m too impatient to take this to my room tonight, pet.” His voice dropped lower. “You’ll have to keep quiet so your brother doesn’t get jealous.”

I glanced away, unable to watch him undress me with his eyes. My gaze caught on the iron vent set high in the wall.

I gulped back a gasp.

Two piercing eyes stared back at me from between the ornate grate.