He hadn’t yelled in too many days. The unleashing of his volume felt like a release, admitting to himself that he was already the monster he would one day permanently become. “Belle!” Adam ignored Lucien’s pleas to calm down as he stomped through the hallway toward the staircase. “Belle!”
She scampered to the expansive foyer, running up the steps in her thin blue scrubs. Concern tugged at her features as she reached him at the top of the wide staircase. “Are you alright? Did you hurt yourself?” She looked him over, but it did nothing to soften him.
On the contrary. He chose to see her concern as meddling, which he had a low tolerance for after years of journalists trying to weasel their way into the private life of the most notorious shut-in. “Did you go into the West wing?”
Belle tilted her head at him, confused that this was the source of his upset. “Today? No. What’s wrong?”
“Have you been snooping in the West wing?”
Belle shrugged, trying not to shrink under his visible anger. He was tall, but somehow he seemed impossibly more gigantic as his temper reached new heights she hadn’t seen in person. “Of course not. I mean, you left a bunch of documents and mail on the table in the dining room last week, so I brought them up to you. I saw some letters on the table, so I mailed them out for you, but that’s all. I didn’t touch anything important.”
“Nothing important? Do you realize what you’ve done?” he shouted in her face.
Belle took a step back, shocked at how quickly they had gone from hints of closeness to out-and-out yelling. Belle refused to get louder, knowing that never worked to fuel effective communication. “Adam, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you mad. I thought I was taking something off your plate to make your workday easier.”
“No one asked you to do that! In fact, the only thing I’ve asked you to do was to stay out of the West wing!” He glanced down at himself angrily and unfastened the top button of his dress shirt, feeling foolish at how much he’d allowed her to disrupt his home since she’d come to him. “You changed my food, changed my clothes, changed my house, and now you’ve wrecked one of my oldest friendships. Are you happy?”
Belle didn’t tear up, but the pressure building behind her eyes couldn’t be ignored. She’d been yelled at before on the job by irrational patients, but Adam’s fury hit her harder than her usual layer of thick skin could fend off with a light joke. She backed away, refusing to let him see her break down. “I’m sorry. How can I fix it?”
“You can leave. Do you think this is what you were hired to do? Meddle in my things and mess up my life? You’re no longer welcome here.”
“Master, no!” Lucien begged from the top of the steps, watching with horror as the scene unfolded.
Belle’s mouth fell open, and the world seemed to go still around her. “I thought I had thirty days. Prince Henry said you would give me thirty days.”
“Henry only hired you because you’ve got a nice ass.”
Belle gaped at him, horrified that such venom could come from his lips. “Why are you doing this? Don’t talk about my body. Prince Henry hired me because I’m qualified!”
“You can’t even follow simple instructions, like ‘stay out of my space.’ Get out!” Adam roared at her. He took a menacing step forward to spook her into action, but when he saw genuine fear twisting the light and trusting eyes he’d grown to adore, guilt slashed across his chest, tightening the knot in his sternum further. She’d never been afraid of him before, but now he could see it plain as day.
Belle didn’t argue, nor did she make a move to pacify his temper. When his hand swept out to motion to the exit while he yelled again, she flinched at the gesture, worried that he meant to hit her. She fled down the stairs, ran to her bedroom and shoved as many of her things in her suitcase as she could find, leaving the many dresses and nice clothes Simone had made for her, and packing up only what she’d brought into the home. Simone tried to get the whole story out of Belle, but the tears were already starting to slide down her cheeks. She didn’t want to cry in this beautiful castle. She wouldn’t let this be a place where tears fell freely. She loved the home she’d been meticulously cleaning, and the staff that filled it with so much life.
When she whirled around, it was Audra in the doorway, sitting on her teacart with an expression of woe tugging at her porcelain features. “Please don’t go,” she begged. “The master doesn’t know what he’s saying. We can help set him straight for you.”
“I can’t stay here another minute. I’m sorry.”
“Please, Belle!”
“He fired me!” she cried, hurt that anyone would assume her incompetent, or talk down to her for something so small. “I’ve never been let go from any job ever. I graduated at the top of my class – the only nurse to come out of the West Village in seven years.”
“You can’t go out in this weather, child. The snow’s really piling up out there.”
“I don’t care. I have a nursing degree, you know,” she said as she zipped up her suitcase. “I was cleaning because I love this castle, and because I cared that he was coughing and sneezing so much from the dust. But I don’t have to put up with his crap.”
Belle ignored Audra and ran down the hallway, barely sliding on her threadbare coat before she threw open the front door, wincing as the icy blast bit at her cheeks. She hadn’t been outside in over a week, and had severely underestimated the cold. There was no turning back now, so she thrust her body into the wind, holding her hand up to shield her face from the snow that was coming down in heavy sheets. Her beaten-up old car was in the garage, which was a fair hike from the house. Her scrubs were thin. Within the first few steps, they were soaked through from the wetness of the snow that seemed mixed with a light smattering of sleet. Her coat was old, thin and had a couple holes in the sleeves.
In the distance, she heard the haunting call of the Lupine. They usually stayed away from people, but the sound of their cries sent a shiver of fear through her that rivaled the shiver of cold she was already quaking from. Still, she soldiered on, determined to run far away from the castle she loved.