Into the Lion's den
1267 Words
Mia
"Thank you for coming. It means everything.”, she said as she hugged me.
I hugged her back. I was getting better at meaning it and not meaning it simultaneously.
“You look pretty in the dress”,I said to her as I just really did like her outfit.
“Thanks my love, you know I got the best fashion house to do my designs”, she said with a deep smile.
I just laughed and was a bit happy that she was happy.
I just couldn't still come to terms with the fact that the source of her happiness is this killer…
“Mum, what about your husband to be, where's he at”, I said and I saw that blushing smile on her face as she answered.
“He's with his business associates,” she said, pointing to one direction.”You could say hi.”
“Sure”, I said as I walked towards him.
Victor Hale was not difficult to locate. He occupied the center of the room the way powerful people always do.
He was taller than his photographs suggested. Dark hair silvered at the templess
For a moment before he turned I was able to watch him without being watched. He was listening to an older man speak, and his attention was complete. Then he turned.
His eyes found mine.
I had prepared for this. I had thought about it for three days — how to hold my face, what to do with my hands, how not to let five years of grief and rage show through eighteen inches of air and a handshake.
What I had not prepared for was the specific quality of his gaze. It was not the appraising look of a man assessing an attractive woman. It was something else, steadier and more deliberate.
He looked at me the way you look at something you have already decided to understand.
"Mia." His voice was low and even. "I've heard a great deal about you."
He extended his hand. His grip was firm, unhurried, exactly long enough. Nothing excessive. Nothing I could object to.
"Your home is beautiful," I said with a smile on my face. Pleasantries. Armor.
"It's your home now too. We're going to be family.", he said as I was immediately disgusted but I hid it.
The word family landed wrong. I kept my face exactly as it was.
Alex arrived at my elbow before the moment could stretch further.
He had the look of someone who had practiced being charming for so long that the charm had become genuine, messy dark hair, an easy grin, eyes that moved quickly over everything.
He took my hand and held it a beat longer than necessary. "Mia. I'm Alex. The good-looking one."
"Alex." Victor's voice carried a quiet warning, with real amusement underneath it.
Alex released my hand and spread his arms. "I'm just being welcoming."
Ryan then suddenly appeared at his brother's shoulder like they were all being called to say hi to me — and this was the thing the profiles had missed.
Ryan was not irrelevant. He was simply private. He had the same dark colouring as Victor and Alex, but where they wore their presence openly, Ryan contained his. His eyes, when they met mine, were careful in a way that felt like intelligence rather than reserve.
"Ryan Hale. Good to meet you." Then, almost immediately, his gaze moved past me — not rudely, but as if something across the room had caught his attention. I followed his look. Victor, holding court near the fireplace. Ryan had been watching his father.
The expression on Ryan's face lasted less than a second. But I had been trained, by five years of grief and research, to notice the things that disappeared quickly.
What I saw was not affection. Not contempt either.
It was the particular exhaustion of someone who has been watching the same person for a very long time and has not yet decided what to do about it.
Interesting…
Ethan found me near the end of the evening when the crowd had thinned enough that I could breathe without performing.
He was exactly what the research had promised — tall, well-dressed, a warmth in his manner that felt unaffected.
He smiled when he saw me in a way that didn't calculate anything.
"I've been looking forward to meeting you," he said. "Your mum talks about you constantly. The daughter who has everything figured out."
"I don't have anything figured out," I said with a fake smile on.
"Neither do I." The smile again, genuinely self-deprecating. "I find that's often a better foundation anyway."
We talked for twenty minutes. He asked about my work and my interests with the actual questions of someone curious, not the polished ones of someone assembling an impression.
At one point he said something quietly funny about the formality of the evening and I laughed before I could stop myself, and he looked pleased in a way that made the laugh go flat in my chest.
He was not what I needed him to be. He was better than that.
I stepped onto the balcony later to let the cold air do something for my nerves.
I heard the door behind me open and knew, without turning, who it was.
Victor stood beside me at the railing, hands resting on the stone, looking at the garden with the same attention he gave everything. The silence between us was not uncomfortable, which was itself uncomfortable. I had expected him to be easier to dislike in person.
"You seem distant this evening," he said, without looking at me.
"I'm adjusting. This is a great deal to take in.", I said, with so much confidence.
You don't expect me to be comfortable in my father's killer house, I said in my thoughts.
He turned. He was way closer now for comfort
His cologne was expensive and quiet, the kind that didn't announce itself.
"I want you to know that I care about your mother genuinely. She is not a project for me. I intend to make her happy for the rest of my life.",he said with the most reassuring look on, and I almost believed him.
That was what the profiles had tried to describe and failed — the way Victor Hale could make a statement sound like a fact that already existed, settled and inevitable, before you had a chance to question it.
"And I hope," he added, quieter, "that you and I will find our own understanding. Eventually."
He looked at me then with that same steady, deciding quality.
Before I could answer, Alex appeared at the balcony door. Victor stepped back — barely perceptible, but I had been watching for exactly that kind of movement.
"Guests are asking for you, Dad." Alex's eyes moved to me with a quick, knowing look.
Victor gave me a final glance. "We'll talk more, Mia. There's time.", he said as he walked away.
He went inside. Alex leaned against the railing beside me, close enough to be deliberate.
"A word of advice," he said, voice low and light. "My father is very good at making people feel like he's the safest person in the room."
"And is he?"he asked with a giggle.
Alex's smile didn't reach his eyes. "He's the most dangerous." He pushed off the railing. "Welcome to the family, Mia."
I stood alone on the balcony and looked down at the amber-lit garden and understood
I was literally about to do the craziest thing ever.
- Writer
