Icarus | Z.M.

12 | Unattended

Victoria Tomlinson

"You're late."

I stared at my dad, who greeted Z and I at the door of the mansion where our weekly family dinners were held. He already looked like he was in a bad mood with me, he was frowning with his forehead creased. He had on one of his grey suits, I was sure grey was the only colour he owned because I never saw him in anything other than grey.

Z was beside me, his hand that had been hovering over my back while we walked from the car to the door was now clasped in front of him as he stood in front of my father.

I glanced at the time on my phone, it was only 7:03pm, we were hardly late.

"Apologies, sir," Z spoke from beside me with a firm voice.

"That's alright Mr. Malik, you don't need to take the blame for her," My dad gave him a soft look and then looked at me with a fake smile, "I know what those women are like"

I stared at him blankly, "And what are women like?"

"You know Victoria," He glanced between Z and I, "You take nine years to get ready for anything," he looked at Z like he was waiting for him to agree, "Isn't that right, Malik?"

Z only nodded, "Yes, sir."

I had to fight the urge to roll my eyes at them.

"Through you come," My dad says as he stood to the side and held the door open for us, greeting us with a toothy grin on his face, his hand outstretched to lead us into the building.

We walked inside and Z was a few steps behind me, I pulled a smile on my face as I greeted a few regular faces that attended the dinners each week. As usual there were groups of men all in their expensive suits drinking their expensive champagne all throughout the building.

The murmur of all the overlapping voices was almost loud enough to cancel out the faint classical music that I could hear, that I knew would be a live cellist and pianist.

It was expensive inside, white pillars along the walls that reached to the top of the high ceilings, where there were diamond and gold chandeliers swinging from the ceiling. The ceilings were all painted in a renaissance style, which was one of my favourite parts about the building. It reminded me of a museum, but it was just someones house. The floor was white tiles and there were long red and gold embellished carpets leading from the wide front entrance into each separate room.

Each step I took in the heels echoed down the hallways. I hated the way my shoes were so loud because it always caught the attention of the people I walked past. There weren't very many women at these dinners, only me and mum, so whenever there were heels, everyone would look up.

As we reached the room with the long dining table, big enough to sit at least 50 people, I felt a sudden emptiness behind me.

I glanced over my shoulder to see that Z had stopped following behind me, and instead stood against the wall beside the entrance to the room, not coming in any further.

I knew he wasn't sitting with us for dinner, I still didn't understand why because he was the only person who worked with my dad who wasn't sitting at the table. The security was stationed around the room, but Z wasn't just security, he was my bodyguard and worked with my father, doing jobs for him. People that worked with my father always had dinner with us so they could talk about jobs and business.

As I expected, when I faced the table, Louis and his bodyguard Liam were sitting down already.

It was strange to see Louis in a suit and with his hair done, and it was good to see he had put effort in tonight. Ninety nine percent of the time he would be wearing a football shirt and some sweatpants, and usually he would walk about with no shoes on and just socks.