Ruthless Alpha, and his Curvy Saint

Chapter 111

Merrick’s POV

I was talking to myself by the time I reached my room.

Not loudly, but in the low continuous murmur of a man working through a problem and finding the problem increasingly unreasonable the more closely he examined it.

"Impossible," I said, to the corridor.

The corridor did not respond.

"We have the exact same face," I continued, opening my door. "This is the fundamental obstacle that no one seems to have considered when they hatched this plan, which is that I share a face with the man she wants to murder."

I removed my coat.

"...and there is no version of walking up to that woman and saying hello, I’m here to make you feel at ease that ends in anything other than..."

I sat on the edge of the bed.

Lay back.

Stared at the ceiling.

I closed my eyes, intending to think the problem through, and was asleep within approximately four minutes.

I woke to my stomach.

The loud grumbling in my stomach that showed I had missed two consecutive meals and had decided the middle of the night was the correct time to inform me.

I lay in the dark for a moment, conducting a brief internal argument about whether this was worth getting up for.

My stomach made its position clear.

I got up.

The castle at this hour was quiet. My footsteps on the stone were the loudest thing in it. The torches in the wall brackets had burned down to their lowest, throwing shadows that moved slowly.

The kitchen was empty.

Obviously - it was the middle of the night, the kitchen staff were asleep, there was no reason for anyone to be in the kitchen...

I stopped.

Stood very still.

A sound. From the direction of the storeroom off the kitchen’s back wall. Not loud - barely anything, the small shuffling friction of something being moved with the careful quietness of someone who didn’t want to be heard.

Which, in my experience, was the loudest possible advertisement that something was happening.

I set down the bread I’d found on the kitchen table. Rolled my neck once. And moved toward the storeroom with the quietness of someone who had no need to announce themselves.

The door was slightly ajar.

I pushed it open and stepped inside.

The storeroom was long and narrow, shelves on both sides loaded with the castle’s provisions - sacks, jars, the cloth-wrapped shapes of cured things. Shadows thick enough in the corners that I was working more from hearing and instinct than sight.

I moved forward between the shelves.

Listening.

There... the far end, something...

The hit landed at the back of my head with a loud bang.

Metal. A pan, probably, from the weight of the sound it made. My vision flickered briefly - not from damage, I didn’t damage that easily, but from the surprise of it. I had been hit harder. I had been hit by considerably larger people. But the audacity of it was impressive.

I turned.

Fast.

Raised my arm to strike...

She ducked.

Cleanly. Like someone who had drilled for exactly this moment.

My fist connected with the stone wall.

I felt that.

Then something hit me in the stomach - her elbow, driven in with the sharp purposeful force of someone who understood leverage, and I made a sound I had not particularly intended to make.

Right, some part of me noted, with the distant appreciation of a man taking stock during a situation. She knows what she’s doing.

I stopped attempting a measured response and simply reached into the dark, located her by the sound of her movement and the small displaced rush of air, and grabbed.

I lifted.

She came off the ground with the outraged energy of someone who could not believe this was happening to them, legs immediately beginning to kick with the fury of a woman who had not finished yet and wanted to be clear about that. One heel connected with my shin. She twisted in my grip, trying to use the momentum to break it...

I held on.

And for the first time since I’d entered the storeroom, I had enough space and enough light from the corridor behind me to actually see who I was holding.

She was off the ground, suspended, still kicking with undiminished intent, and she was looking at me with the blazing dark eyes of someone who had made a decision to kill.

I looked at her face.

Then I looked at it again.

The resemblance was extraordinary - the same structure, the same eyes, the same particular set of the jaw that I had by now spent considerable time observing on her sister. But different too. Sharper, somehow. Leaner. The features carrying a quality Angel’s had not - not harder, exactly, but more - weathered. The look of someone who had been tested in specific ways and had passed and knew it.

She was, I registered with a part of my brain I was immediately annoyed at for the observation, objectively striking.

Even upside-down and furious.

Especially, some traitorous interior voice supplied, and I told it firmly to stop.

This is Angel’s sister, I reminded myself. Your wife’s sister. The woman who hours ago was cursing your brother to a thousand consecutive deaths. Put her down, Merrick. You are not seventeen.

She had graduated, while I was having this internal exchange, from kicking to a full monologue.

"...let go of me, you absolute monster, I knew this castle was a pit of vipers but I didn’t think you’d actually be lurking in the dark like some kind of demon... put me down you overgrown, soulless, murdering..."

"I’m not going to..."

"If you think for one second that I’m afraid of you, you have severely misjudged who you’re dealing with, I have survived worse than you and I will outlast you and I will dance on your grave when they finally... put me down..."

"If I put you down, you’re going to hit me again," I said reasonably.

"Correct," she said, without a single beat of hesitation.

I looked at her.

She looked at me.

"I admire the honesty," I said.

"I don’t want your admiration, I want you to let go..."

"Terrell." I said it clearly, over the ongoing catalogue of my crimes. "My name is not Terrell."

She stopped.

All at once - the kicking, the cursing, the furious forward momentum of all of it.

In the sudden quiet, I could hear the castle settling around us.

She was looking at my face now with a different quality of attention. Not rage - assessment.

I set her down.

She landed steadily, and took one step back, which I had expected.

"You’re not him," she said.

"No."

"You have his face."

"Yes. We share the same face."

She stared at me.

"Merrick," I said. "His brother. Your other... " I caught myself. "I’m Merrick."

Agnes looked at me.

Something moved through her expression.

"The other husband," she said.

"Yes."