Page 12 of Beauty

Someone’s here.

CHAPTER3

Aurora

Anxiety floods my body.

I take a step back, bumping into the window.

“They found us!” my father whisper-yells at me.

He quietly crosses the floor and picks up a lamp from the desk, holding it up like some sort of weapon.

And when the lock is finally pushed off, the door swings open, and a man storms inside, eyes like the devil. I shriek as my father chucks the lamp at him and misses.

The man charges at my father with a knife, but my father catches his wrist and holds him back. But his wounds are grave, and his body still too frail to handle the attack. He’s losing ground.

In a panic, I search for anything I can use, but all I find is a flower vase. Without thinking, I pick it up and approach the man from the back. They’re fighting for power near the bed, and all the pieces of furniture are shoved aside. My father tumbles over the bed, a knife almost in his face.

I slam the vase into the back of the man’s head as hard as I can.

It shatters into a million tiny pieces, and the man falls right on top of my father. The knife tumbles to the floor.

But the man swiftly turns around to face me, the fury on his face terrifying.

He throws a punch, and I duck for cover, picking up a shard on the way.

Right as he comes down, I jump back and hold the shard in front of me like a knife.

“Stay back!” I yell.

“Oh, you gonna play the big girl now?” he mutters.

His voice makes me tremble on my feet.

I recognize it.

He’s one of Lex’s guards.

“Come at me, then,” he growls, throwing punch after punch.

I tiptoe sideways, trying to avoid his fist, but I’m not trained, and when I slip up, he punches me right in the gut.

Oof.

My lungs feel like they got run over by a truck, and I buck and heave.

“You thought you could run from us?” The guard laughs. “Bad idea.”

Suddenly, my father rises from the bed and smacks the guard on the head with a thick book he’d found lying by the table.

The man is slapped sideways headfirst into the wooden wardrobe next to the bed, allowing me to step away.

My father gets off the bed and punches the guy, but the guard grabs his fist in midair and pushes him back. They struggle for power, and my father is definitely on the losing end.

My hand that holds the shard begins to quake.

I don’t have much time.