Cold Blood: Billionaire Vampire's Choice #2 by V. M. Black

Author:V. M. Black [Black, V. M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Swift River Media Group
Published: 2015-06-03T06:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eleven

Cora was gone. I could feel her drawing away from me, like a thread tied to my guts being pulled, being twisted tight. My head hurt. My bones hurt. They were the first flutters of pain, and it would get worse.

It was for the best, I told myself. The bond would soon settle into its final shape, and the farther apart we were now the more elastic that would be. The assigned security team would watch over her from a distance, just in case they were needed. They wouldn’t be, of course. This wasn’t the age of poison and dagger, and no one but Tiberius, Etienne, and I suppose Jean and Clarissa should know about her, anyway. But it allayed the worst of my paranoia.

I went to the drinks cabinet and poured out a sherry—a proper sweet end for the day’s endeavors. My hands weren’t trembling anymore, I saw, and I put up the decanter and resumed my seat in the armchair and truly looked out the window that it faced for the first time in…how long? I did not remember.

The side lawn was sere and brown with the unforgiving bite of the cold, but in the pale winter light, I still saw the promise of a near spring. I took a sip of my sherry—

And almost spat it out again. I managed to swallow the mouthful with a shudder, then yanked out my phone and called for my valet.

Donnell entered through the servant’s door.

“This sherry,” I said with a wave. “When was it last changed in the decanter?”

Standing at attention, Donnell looked at the glass of sherry, then at my face. “I’m sorry, sir, but changing the sherry in the decanter has never been a part of my job. I can’t say when it was last done.”

That meant that it had been the same for at least a decade, since Donnell had taken over from his predecessor as my manservant. Had it really been that long since I had poured myself a sherry? My mind traced easily the pattern of my routine for the past several years. Shower. Breakfast in my room. Dressing. Office. Laboratory. Dinner. Meetings, if there were any to have. A brandy as a nightcap. Nowhere in that list was there a place for a sherry, so it had gone untasted, just as my books had been unread, my records unplayed, my planes unflown, my horses unridden.

How narrow my world had become, taking up a mere scrap of a life. And I had not even noticed.

“There must have been a miscommunication, then, Donnell,” I said. “Please have the decanter cleaned and new sherry poured.”

The valet hesitated. “Do you have a preference as to which vintage?”

“Rojek will know what is in the cellar now,” I said. Probably everything that Jean had not managed to work through….

“Very good, sir.”

After Donnell had left with the decanter and wineglass, I returned to the drinks cabinet, took out the bottle of brandy, and poured myself three fingers’ worth into a snifter.

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