Life is short and brutal.
Lachlan is the one who makes that so, sometimes.
Master of death.
Killer.
God, he’s losing his fucking mind.
This job is making him crazy.Mimi is all that’s keeping him sane.
She is the anchor and Jules is the storm.
‘Get it together,’ he tells himself through tightly gritted teeth.
He drives back through the rain and enters the underground garage via the tunnel road.Inside the Estate, he notices his quarters have been meticulously cleaned, despite housekeeping running mornings, not afternoons.
He ignores it.
Showers, shaves.
Looks at himself in the mirror.
Grey eyes and dark hair that’s reached an inconvenient length where it no longer sits neatly, the sides thick, the longer top breaking into careless waves that curl the more he lets it grow.He either needs to cut it or settle in to let it grow another inch so he can tie it back.
He usually cuts it, but this time he thinks he’ll let it grow.
Mimi will like it, he suspects.
Sometimes, if he closes his eyes, Lachlan can still hear his father’s last breaths before his mother came in, but he can’t remember his face anymore.
It’s a blur.Others have replaced it.
Time changes everything.
That’s not a bad thing.
Not always.
He wraps his hand around theMaritattoo.
And then Lachlan goes back to work.
?
Fenwick speaks privately to Lachlan later that day, clearly conflicted, but Lachlan isshutdown furious, not interested in helping him navigate anything about it.Lachlan is making rounds,touch-stoningthe windows for correct magnetic alignment.He doesn’t stop, doesn’t look at Fenwick.Let him spill his guts, let him babble.
‘I should resign,’ the older man says, tone pitched low, ‘but I checked the contract and there’s no option whatsoever for it.’
Lachlan knows he won’t leave this place, neither of them will.
Even in death he’ll just go into the furnace, same as Clara Barnes.
Plenty of space for ashes.
No one leaves.
‘I know you’re disgusted with me,’ Fenwick presses on, the most human Lachlan has ever seen him.‘Iknowthat, but please believe me—’
