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“Don’t be ridiculous, I—”
The way Lorcan slips the gun from his pocket, releases the safety catch and points it at Mickey’s head is eerily fast. He works with the skill of a man who could do this in his sleep. “Stop talking,” he growls out of the side of his mouth, his eyes still trained on me. “Are you saying the money is fake?”
“I—”
“It’s a yes or no answer, Miss Murphy.”
But the answer is stuck in my throat like a wad of cotton balls. I manage a nod.
“Fake! Of course it’s not fake!” Mickey erupts, slamming his palms against his desk and making me jump. Spittle flies from his lips. “I’d neverdreamof giving you fake money, Mr. Quinn. Do you really think I’d insult your intelligence—”
“Then prove it,” Lorcan snarls, nodding to the small, black machine on the corner of the desk. Without taking his aim off Mickey, he strides over and snatches the bundle of notes from my hand, peels one off and holds it up to the dim light. “Let’s run it through the counterfeit machine. If the light turns red, I’ll shoot you.” Then, he turns his glare back to me. “And if it goes green, I’ll shoot her.”
The blood rushes to my head, and if I wasn’t already sitting down, my legs would buckle underneath me. Before I can work up the words to protest, he slides the note through the machine.
In the nineteen years I’ve been alive, I’ve learned to trust my gut. I know what’s coming. I squeeze my eyes shut, bringing my knees up and my arms over my head, blocking out the office.
What you can’t see can’t hurt you. What you can’t see can’t hurt you. What you can’t see can’t hurt you.
A whir.
An alarm.
A gunshot.
A scream.
It comes from me. Ripping from my throat and piercing through the gap in my thighs. Strong hands grab my shoulders, but somehow I manage to slip from underneath them, running towards the door on buckling legs. I ignore the horrified-looking stripper frozen by the bar and focus on unsticking my feet from the floor, one at a time, as I stumble to the door we entered through. I’m plunged into darkness, fumbling through the corridor, the horror of what I just witnessed clutching at my throat.
Footsteps behind me. “Poppy,” a calm voice echoes down the corridor. I hate how out of place it is.How can you be so calm after you shoot a man dead?!But the horror clutching at my throat won’t let me ask the question.
I fumble along the brickwork, slamming into the walls because I’m so unsteady on my feet.
It takes no time at all for those heavy footsteps to catch up with me.
I can’t see Lorcan Quinn, but I can feel him. He throws his body against mine, wrapping his arm over mine. I struggle like a fish out of water, my throat burning from my screams, until I tire myself out. My legs finally give way, like they’ve threatened to do since the gunshot rang in my ears.
The Devil doesn’t let me fall.
“Shh,” he murmurs in my ear, pulling me closer into his chest. “It’s okay. You’re okay.”
I’m gasping for a breath that I can’t quite catch. “You’re a monster,” I croak with whatever energy I have left. “You’re pure evil.”
My words bounce off his hard body without even making a dent. His arms are relentless, refusing to let me go. “You’re okay, Poppy. You’re safe with me. I promised you that, remember?” His voice hardens. “But we need to go.”
I trip over my own feet as Lorcan pulls me further down the corridor and into the alley. The car is waiting, and Lorcan folds me into it without another word.
Familiar buildings pass by in a blur of tears and numbness, until we eventually slow to meet the iron gates of the Devil’s lair.
Lorcan spends the journey in silence, and I can’t even glance in his direction. The only sound cutting through the tension is the constant tap, tap, tapping of his cell phone.
Only when the driver comes to a stop outside the stone steps of the manor does he turn to me. “What do I have to do to stop your crying?” he says blankly. It’s so black and white for him. With every cold word that comes from his lips, he separates himself more and more from humanity. Out the window, I see Orna running down the steps of the manor towards the car, eyes wide in panic.
“You can leave me the fuck alone,” I croak, flinging myself out of the car, brushing past Orna and into the thick of the gardens.
The one small mercy is that the Devil doesn’t follow me.
Lorcan
