When We Met

CH 32 Rosaline

The plan unfolded with excruciating slowness over the next few days. One by one, our people were extracted from the dank cells and systematically integrated into the Walsh household's ranks in various guises.

The maids were disbursed to the servants' quarters, blending into the faceless sea of staff that attended to the estate's daily operations. I caught fleeting glimpses of them during rare trips outside Logan's quarters heads bowed, expressions studiously blank as they went about their tasks with mechanical efficiency.

Our soldados (soldiers)  were absorbed into Logan's security forces with equal discretion, their true loyalties buried beneath the polished facade of hired muscle. Watching them strap on the Walshs' colours and logo made my heart lurch with disquiet. But they were consummate professionals, seamlessly inhabiting their roles like reactors inhabiting new skins.

Mateo and Alejandro remained isolated from the others, no doubt by careful design. While Mateo convalesced in his luxurious prison, regaining strength under the nurse's furtive care, Alejandro was ushered into some auxiliary wing of the estate's fortifications. The pain of being separated from my hermano lanced through me like a heated blade every time I allowed myself to dwell on it.

And Yelena...my indomitable tía through family ties, remained locked in her remote cell, the location known only to Logan's inner circle. I burned with resentment at being kept from her presence, her wisdom and counsel feeling more vital than oxygen itself.

As for me, I found myself carefully ushered into life as Logan's personal "guest" a gilded lark inhabiting the grandest cage. My plush quarters adjoined his in palatial splendour, wanting for no comfort or amenity. All except the whisper of true freedom singing from beyond the damask curtains.

Logan himself proved a conundrum of contradictions whenever our paths crossed within our shared domain. One moment, he exuded the reptilian calculation and brash condescension that sparked my hatred anew. The next, glimpses of softer consideration seeped through the cracks in his armour a mindful gesture or murmured courtesy that momentarily humanised him.

"You look fetching in that shade of green," he commented one morning as I broke my fast across the small table in the airy salon. His obsidian eyes roamed over me appraisingly, but devoid of lasciviousness.

I shifted uncomfortably in the high-backed chair, keenly aware of the delicate lace edging the borrowed dress's low neckline. "If you're implying I'm starting to acclimate, you're mistaken."

One dark brow inched upward fractionally. "On the contrary, I'd expect a spirit like yours never to acclimate to captivity. But a bit of finery doesn't preclude your...appreciation for aesthetic pleasures, surely?"

Something in his tone set my teeth on edge, sizzling irritation prickling over my skin. "You flatter yourself if you think anything in this gaudy monument to vanity appeals to me beyond the pragmatic," I countered in a tight tone.

Logan regarded me with that inscrutable mask for a protracted moment before giving a minute dip of his chin. "As you say, Roalsine. Just be careful that hatred doesn't become its own form of captivity."

With that enigmatic murmur, he swept from the salon leaving me to seethe alone at his audacity in presuming to lecture me thusly. As if I owed him even the barest scrap of introspection after the atrocities orchestrated under his nose...under his very oversight.

And yet...a traitorous kernel of doubt needled at the back of my mind. What if some part of him did indeed resent the depravities his father's crusade wrought? Was that softness I occasionally glimpsed the stirrings of misgivings? Or just another mask donned to lull me into a false sense of trust? Maybe he is being genuine, and he does have this kind aura around him when he is in his quarters at the same time as me, he has this pretty smile that makes my sides warm, and that tattoo that is tucked away under his formal attire on his left side of his arm.

I shoved those unsettling thoughts aside, squaring my shoulders. Entertaining such fancies would only invite vulnerability, and I refused to surrender even that smallest shred of myself to Logan Walsh's machinations.

This was why, several times throughout those endless days of confinement, I risked everything by slipping from my gilded quarters like a spectre. Eluding the guards' watchful gazes, I prowled the serpentine hallways until I located the fragile tethers still binding me to sanity Mateo, recovering in hushed agony; Alejandro, a caged lion awaiting the chance to strike his captors.

Murmured words and fleeting touches were all we could risk to stave off the slow suffocation of our souls. But they were lifelines, precious reminders of the unbreakable cords that true familia represented.

"Soon, hermanos," I whispered fervently on one such clandestine reunion, grasping Alejandro's calloused hand in both of mine. "We'll find a way to slip these leeches' hold and be together again. All we have to do is follow this plan but not let our guard down if anything we can use this to our advantage."

His chin dipped in silent acknowledgement, but the muscle corded in his stubbled jaw spoke volumes. As did the glint of stubborn defiance burning in the depths of those enduraver's eyes. Mateo squeezed my arm with what little strength he could muster, managing a pained facsimile of a smile.

It was that quiet resolve which fueled my own fires, allowing me to slip back through the manor's shadows toward my plush accommodation before the stirrings of dawn. Back to playing the role of the pampered guest for my remaining sanctions, as the plan inexorably slid into whatever its next, fateful act would be...

The hours crawled by with agonising lethargy as I killed time flicking through the television channels in Logan's opulent living quarters. Boredom gnawed at me relentlessly in his absence, left alone to stew in impatient resentment over this gilded captivity.

The creak of an opening door jarred me from my restless channel surfing. I angled my head, fingers tightening around the remote as a young woman stepped tentatively into the room. She wasn't in uniform like the household staff, but rather in a simple cotton sundress that masked little of her lithe figure.

Our gazes met and held, her teeth catching her plump lower lip momentarily before she found her voice. "Um hi..." She ducked her chin shyly. "I just...I just wanted to greet you. Logan has been talking about you and all the other people from the Fernandez clan to me. I was so excited to meet you after how he's described you." A faint blush crept into her cheeks as she rushed on, it seemed like she doesn't talk to strangers apart form her brothers. "And he is definitely not embellishing any details. You look so pretty!"

Despite her apparent nerves, an unmistakable hunger burned in those wide, liquid eyes. For company? Attention? Something darker and more furtive? This close, I could make out the faint dusting of freckles over the bridge of her pert nose.

"Hi," I replied slowly, unable to mask my doubt as I studied her openly. "How old are you?"

She blinked those big doe eyes owlishly before giggling an unexpectedly girlish trill of laughter that caught me off guard. "Oh, I'm twenty-seven! I'm the younger of the Walsh siblings."

My brows hiked upward at that revelation. She seemed younger, especially with that shy, almost childlike demeanour. But no, she was very much a woman grown, even if her sheltered existence here had rendered her disarmingly naive.

"Oh okay, not too young then," I murmured, unable to resist another lingering visual inspection from tousled chestnut curls to the sandal-clad feet peeking from under her skirt's hem, I'm jealous of her bliss of not knowing the details of what went on in her father's clan, but then again if I didn't know and participate I would be bored out of my mind as I am now.

She didn't seem to notice my frank perusal, just ducked her chin again with a pleased smile. "Logan said you were beautiful, but pictures didn't do you justice at all..." So he does have pictures and what I saw in his room under the bed wasn't just meaningless paper, didn't ask me what I was doing in his room. I'm bored okay! I tried to smile at her but I needed to keep my guard up just because she isn't involved in the bigger scheme of things doesn't mean she can be trusted she is still a Walsh.