AS YOU MELT THIS HEART OF STONE

ANGER

"You were a light in the alley
But you were little unlucky
Doing the best that you could do
And you had the nerve to save me
'cause you saw a little good in me.
So now I will avenge you..."

                ~ Becca Stevens

--------------------------

I wasn't angry.

No, I definitely wasn't.

Why on earth would I be angry! That too for a slip of a woman wholly unconnected to me!

Why would I be angry or even care at all where she chose to go or with whom?

No, it didn't matter to me at all.

It had nothing to do with me.

So, yes, I wasn't angry or under the influence of any particular emotions.

It's just the irritable veins at my temple that continued to throb madly, resulting in a blinding headache.

I pinched the bridge of my nose and looked up from the laptop screen on the table in front of me, then rested my head on the back of the sofa.

The room was dark except the faint blue light from my laptop screen. The vastness of night sky was stretched above the glass ceiling, in all its mysterious glory of the twinkling stars and constellations, light years away from this insignificant corner of the universe, light years away from the trivialities of an insignificant, self absorbed species.

I closed my eyes, tried to reinstate the feelings of comfort which were normally associated with this place, my dane, my bedroom at my estate of Belgravia. It was among few select places where I could be completely at ease, where I could just relax or immerse into my work, not caring about a single thing in the world.

I dearly hoped that this time too, this familiar environment wouldn't fail to work at pacifying my mind.

Because, why would it? I wasn't angry. I suppose, we already established that.

I wasn't angry because she decided to go to the worst part of Tottenham, unprotected, unarmed or because she went there with that man, Nicholas Daniels, blatantly ignoring the arrangement of me accompanying her or because she just lied to me about it.

I was... how to phrase it... well, I was not in so benevolent mood right now because I felt really really stupid at my own actions, which was as rare as enrolling myself for a Hula Hula dance show.

And when I started to make the list of my stupidity, it was, surprisingly, long.

First, I entangled myself with the private affairs of my secretary;

Second, making a deal with her that I would protect her if she trusted me, which was, as I thought about it now, the height of stupid and soapy emotional move I had ever made;

Third, wasting my valuable time, energy and resources to keep her safe, to make plans to bring her out of the mess unscathed, even rearranging my own important schedule to accompany her to Tottenham;

Fourth, the urge to strangle Nicholas Daniels when he snatched her from under my nose- Hey, wait! I didn't say this! Scratch this line! Now!

"Another sign of stupidity", my inner voice said in a bored voice while filing his nail absentmindedly.

I was going to bark at my inner voice or maybe ignore it and continue with the crazy list with points like my thoughtless decision to send alpha and beta squads, my best teams, together, to protect that ungrateful, idiot, foolhardy woman-