Set Me Free

Chapter 7

"You're officially insane."

"Seems like a fair transaction to me," I crossed my arms defiantly.

"I can't even fathom how I'd be able to even help you. And quite frankly, I don't even want to."

"I thought you'd grasp at any opportunity to related to your precious metal."

"But this is a familial issue, Maiya. I won't meddle with your personal affairs."

"Familial can't even be applied to me, don't you get it? I have no family left!" I paced backwards feeling my head shake in a fury.

"This is exactly why I don't want to get involved, look how quickly you've become so emotional in a matter of seconds."

"So what do you plan to do with me? Keep me locked up in that dungeon of a house until I give in to your whims?"

"If that's what it takes," his reply was eerily chilling which only aided the confirmation of his sincerity. This did nothing to ease my scalding anger, a stray tear sizzled across my cheek.

I stared at him in disbelief. "Do you feel no shame? Look at this empire that you own and you can't even lend a fraction of it to my means?"

"I don't feel as if I need to explain myself," his face remained impossibly still.

"I can't believe you," a fatigued scoff parted from my lips. "Nathaniel Lyon: an egotistical maniac who only looks after his own self-centered interests."

My body stumbled back with a sudden loss of energy. Nathaniel's jaw clenched firmly, his golden orbs glistening threateningly in the darkness that surrounded him. I paid less attention to his stance from my head being light: the outcome of my loss of pivotal hope. I was forced to welcome this familiar feeling that I had long gone without but, strangely, no other tears dared to fall.

I felt the purpose flee from my body pathetically which gave a physical toll as my hands reached for some sort of support. Nathaniel's eyes attentively followed my movements but still kept his impassive distance. With a buzz of his technology dressed wrist, he was notified.

"Kyle is waiting downstairs, go home." The remains of his subsiding menace were laced into the finality of his tone. He afterward turned to bear his back to me as an act to dismiss me from his presence, to face the city at his wrath below him.

Growing sick of this environment, I mustered up whatever dignity I had left to bring myself to the door and out into the hallway. The absence of people in the late-night office hours was unregistered in my ride down from my fluster in leaving the building, until my mind eased onto Kyle's form across the still street before his car.

I appreciated the silence that he permitted which folded into the cherry wood aroma that surrounded us. It acted as a soothing detox of bad energy whilst the car waltzed through the streets of New York City once again.

The flicker of illuminated streetlights lit my face from it being planted against the glass window in my tired state. My eyes closed in response, apathetic to view the city that contained me, and opened only when the car slowed to a prolonged stop. We were home.

Sandals met the concrete floor laboriously but my trot halted when Kyle called for me.

"I know that you're probably making headway straight to your bed but Mr Lyon did ask me of one more thing," he held his finger up signalling for me to wait while he used his other hand to fetch for something inside a compartment in the car. A white clean-cut box was revealed in Kyle's hand until he dropped it into mine and sat back inside. "Have a good night, Miss Haynes. I'm sure I'll see you again soon."