Chapter 24
TWENTY-FOUR
Francesca didn’t give much thought to where he was taking her. She only blinked owlishly when they pulled through an ornate iron gate in an expensive neighborhood dotted with miniature mansions.
“Is this the Amauri Estate?” she asked, peering up at the house.
Luis cut the engine. Untying his end of the rope, he answered, “No. This is my parents’ house.”
A jolt of something uncomfortable broke through the haze of her shock. “Are we staying here?”
“No. We’re picking up my go-bag.” He took a long, dark look at her face. “And you’re getting washed up. Before you look in any mirrors.”
Suddenly tempted to glance in the rear view mirror, she asked, “Why? Is it that bad?”
“It’s… pretty bad.”
She cringed. If Luis thought she looked like a mess, then it had to be worse than she could even imagine — and she could imagine a lot, seeing as she could feel the blood drying on her face.
When he came around to open her door, she panicked. “I can’t meet your parents like this!”
“Trust me, they’ve seen worse,” he assured her. This time, he took a minute to tie them together again before he helped her out of the car. Handling her like she was made of spun sugar, he gently but quickly guided her up the stone steps to the grand entrance of the house.
Typing out a code on the panel next to the door, he ushered her inside.
A grand, classical foyer opened up before her, complete with a chandelier, square columns, and a curved staircase. The house didn’t seem overly large or modern in the way the mansion where the Games were held was, but tall, with high ceilings and rich, antique furnishings.
As soon as Luis closed the heavy door behind them, he tangled their fingers together and bellowed, “Ma! Mom! Who’s home? Dad?”
Francesca tensed when a cry erupted from somewhere near the top of the stairs.
At first she couldn’t really understand what she was seeing. A being of pure color and froth popped into view at the banister overlooking the first floor. And then she saw her face.
Round, rosy-cheeked, and smiling from ear to ear, it was the kind of face that belonged on a billboard selling sunscreen or teaching preschoolers their ABCs, not in a vampire’s home.
But she was, and whoever she was, she was gorgeous.
Dressed in miles of butter yellow gossamer, her bleached hair styled into a fantastical beehive, and wearing enough jewelry to blind passing m-jets, the woman looked like she had just stepped out of a Broadway dressing room.
“My baby!” the woman cried, gripping the banister. Not a moment later she turned her head to shriek, “My loves, our oldest son is home! And he’s brought his wife!”
Francesca made an awful squeaking sound deep in her throat. “Wife?”
“Mama gets the different names mixed up, so she just says husband, wife, or partner.” He shrugged.
Giving him a wide-eyed look of incredulity, she breathed, “Do you really think that’s what I was asking ab—”
She swallowed the rest of her sentence when the clatter of a woman running down the stairs interrupted her. Before she could even begin to brace herself, a storm of fabric and sugary perfume came down on them.
Soft arms squeezed Francesca in a tight hug that forced her cheek up against a rather starchy beehive. “Oh, it’s so good to meet you! I can’t believe Luis waited so long to bring you home. I always knew he’d— Oh! Oh, goodness.”
The woman had drawn backward a bit, her hands clasped around Francesca’s arms, and stared into her face with first shock, then distress. Rounding on her son, she demanded, “Luis Felipe Reyes Amauri, what on Earth happened to this woman?”
“That’s why we’re here, Mama,” he insisted. Luis ran his fingers through his hair in a gesture that was pure stress. “We were attacked in the parking garage of my apartment building. I think Malachi’s men tried to take her again.”
“I heard you pissed off that old snake,” she muttered.
Luis growled, “Felix should’ve had him put down years ago.”
In a sharp tone that was a far cry from the earlier sweetness she exuded, his mother asked Francesca, “Is all this blood yours, sweetie?”
“Um, none of it is,” she answered, wishing the floor would swallow her whole.
Luis raised his eyebrows in a very can you believe how lucky I am kind of way. “She bit the guy.”
Relief softened his mother’s features once more.
Slinging a soft arm around Francesca’s back, she praised, “Oh, fantastic. Good job, sweetie. Now don’t worry at all.
This place is locked up tighter than an elf’s asshole.
You’re completely safe. Here, let’s get you cleaned up while my son talks to his mom. ”
Luis perked up immediately. “Mom’s home?”
“Last I saw her she was in the gym, but she might’ve joined your father in the office.”
His mother watched with only a small quirk of her brow as Luis untied the knots on their wrists before stuffing the rope in his pocket. Saying nothing about it, she shooed her son away like he was a little dog rather than the towering vampire murder machine he really was.
Hugging Francesca close to her side, she soothed, “Oh, I’m just so happy you’re here. Everything will be all right, I promise. I’m Mary, by the way.”
“Um, Frankie Sinclair,” she replied, watching Luis stride away helplessly.
Mary guided her up the stairs, her long dress brushing the steps with soft, whispery sounds. “Such a cute name! Who picked it?”
“A nurse at the hospital, I think. Sinclair is just the name of the ward.”
Growing up, she didn’t know that all abandoned babies in that particular hospital received the name Sinclair. She’d always thought her and Billie sharing it was a special thing just for them, the tie that made them real family when nothing else did.
But now she knew it wasn’t special. There were a couple dozen Sinclairs with the same story, as far as she could tell, and the name Francesca was picked on a whim by one of the charge nurses in the maternity ward.
She felt Mary’s scrutinizing look but chose not to meet it. Really, it was all she could do to not fall on her face as she tried not to trip on all that fabric swirling around her.
“I see,” Mary hummed. “Where I grew up, all the foundlings in the children’s home were given the same names.
It made things easier on the staff, so they didn’t have to remember any of us as individuals.
So it was me and about twelve other Marys alongside sixteen Davids for a long time.
When I was twelve, I asked everyone to call me Bette instead.
It didn’t stick. Not that anyone really calls me Mary these days.
I’m darling or sweetness or Mama, which is obviously my favorite. ”
“Oh.” Francesca didn’t quite know what to say to that. She’d never met someone so open about being from a children’s home before. Mostly, people did their best not to talk about it. Not because it was inherently awful but because there were always too many follow-up questions.
Francesca had only met a handful of people who admitted to being from a children’s home in her life, and after one too many experiences with uncomfortable questions and pitiful looks, she decided that bringing it up just wasn’t worth it.
There was something a little shocking in how casually Mary brought it up, as if it was just another fact of her life. I’m from Ohio. I’m allergic to shellfish. Oh, also, I grew up in a children’s home.
It was almost like she saw it as normal. It was… nice.
They stepped into what Francesca could only describe as a palatial dressing, sunroom, and lounge hybrid.
The space could’ve come right out of a French rococo palace, with all its gold scrollwork, wainscoting, and silk shot wallpaper.
A massive, ornate vanity and stool set took up a corner, while lounges took another.
Mary led her across the plush carpet to an equally luxurious bathroom fitted with a tub that could’ve sat four grown people, as well as another long vanity. Attached to the bathroom was a closet the size of her apartment, from which Mary retrieved a satin robe and fresh towel.
Handing the bundle over, she babbled, “Here, sweetie. You take as long of a shower as you need. I’ll have the cook make you some soup. It’ll be so nice to have another eater around— Oh, no, don’t!”
Too late, Francesca turned to face the shower and was met by her own reflection.
A faint bruise was forming near her temple.
Her hair was a rat’s nest. The smoky eye shadow she wore for work was a smudged disaster.
Dried blood left dark tracks down her chin and neck.
It was also smeared across her cheeks, showing exactly how ferocious she’d been when she tore that piece off her attacker.
“Fuck!” She jumped back like the thing in the mirror might try and get her. Francesca covered her eyes and moaned, “Oh gods, you cannot meet me like this!”
Mary clicked her tongue and firmly steered Francesca away from the mirror. “No, no, we’re not doing that. You survived an attack no worse for wear. That’s what matters.”
“But all this is my fault,” she moaned, collapsing onto the vanity’s stool.
A new low, feminine voice drifted from the doorway. “What’s your fault?”
Francesca’s head jerked up to find a willowy beauty leaning against the door jamb. Long limbed, copper-skinned, dressed in expensive workout attire, and carrying a head of raven hair, she looked every inch the vampire the fangs made her.
Gaze bouncing between the two women, she mumbled, “I’m sorry, who…”
“Isabelle,” the brunette answered. “Luis and Milo’s other mother and this one’s mate, alongside our husband, as she calls him.”
On second look, the resemblance popped out at her, entirely obvious. It was in the straight nose, the skin, the crow’s feet. Even the eyebrows were the same. This was his biological mother.
Aw, fuck, she thought, burying her bloody face in her hands again.
Mary rubbed her back in soothing circles.
“You have nothing to feel bad about,” she soothed.
“Vampires are just a really nasty sort of competitive. I didn’t understand that either when I met Isabelle.
And the mess I caused! Good gods, you have no idea.
But everything worked out, just like it will for you. ”
“Our son is threatening to hunt Malachi down himself,” Isabelle informed her wife. “Young Felix is banishing him to a safe house.”
“Our son takes after you,” Mary replied, somewhat impatiently. “There’s no reason for him to take on Malachi by himself. That man has had a grudge against us since that awful business with little Ginny. It’s best if he just gets out of the way and keeps Frankie safe.”
Isabelle clearly wasn’t a fan of that idea. Her sloped nose wrinkled when she argued, “We could guard his anchor while he hunts. Besides, I’d like to get to know the woman who’ll bear my grandchildren.”
She paused before shifting her laser-like intensity to Francesca. “Miss Sinclair, can you fight? Mary couldn’t when we met and it proved extremely inconvenient.”
“Um…” Gesturing helplessly to her face, she tried, “I bit a chunk out of a vampire’s arm today. Does that count?”
Isabelle’s dark eyebrows raised in an uncanny echo of her son’s favorite expression. “It’s a start.”
“Let’s not interrogate the woman just yet,” Mary protested. “She’s had a hard night.”
The brunette sniffed. “Our son intends to make her his anchor at the earliest opportunity. There isn’t much time to decide if we like her or not.”
Mary opened her mouth to protest, but Francesca stopped her. Figuring she was already in the shitter and a little bit of extra crap wouldn’t make a difference, she asked, “What do you want to know?”
Stepping away from the door jamb, Isabella prowled into the room on silent feet. She didn’t blink when she held Francesca’s stare. “Who are your parents?”
“I was adopted by Will and Donna Woods when I was five.”
Isabelle pursed her lips. “They didn’t change your name?”
“I’d had it for five years. They thought it might upset me to change it,” Francesca answered. To sever that last link with Billie would’ve killed her, so she was fiercely glad her parents had the foresight to keep it.
“Biological parents?”
“Don’t know, don’t care. All I got from them was a weird blood type and a good ass.
” She held the vampire’s stare, her fingers curling in her lap.
“I was born here, in Grim’s Mercy Hospital and given up the same hour.
I spent the first five years in a children’s home before my parents found me and we moved to the Elvish Protectorate. ”
While Mary made soft sounds of empathy, Isabelle remained stone-faced. “Education.”
“Bachelor’s in history.”
The woman’s dark eyes gleamed. “Tell me why you volunteered for the Blood Games when our son had already clearly communicated his interest.”
Stumbling a bit for the first time, Francesca swallowed hard. Word really did travel fast in the syndicate, or perhaps simply among Amauris.
Picking her words carefully, she explained, “I don’t know that he did communicate it clearly. I was under the impression that he just wanted a casual relationship, which wouldn’t work for me.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m not interested in them,” she answered honestly. “And especially not with someone I had real feelings for.”
Isabelle’s eyes narrowed. “Even when he could’ve offered you the financial help you so clearly needed?”
Francesca stood up from the stool. Lifting her chin, she answered, “Especially then. I needed the money to help my parents and to find someone who’s been missing a long time.
I was offered a chance to get it and I took it.
That was naive of me, sure, but I don’t think a lot of people would’ve hesitated.
It never even crossed my mind to try using Luis for his money.
And if you don’t believe me, you can ask him how many times I’ve turned his help down — today. ”
Still, Isabelle’s expression didn’t change. Stepping closer, she leaned down from her great height to look deeply into Francesca’s eyes when she asked, “Do you love our son, Francesca Sinclair?”
“Yes,” she breathed, “and that scares the shit out of me.”
A beat passed before a slow, predatory smile spread across Isabelle’s perfect mouth. “Good,” she declared, pressing one barely there kiss to her cheek, then the other. Practically floating back to her wife, she added, “I expect a grandchild by next year.”
“I would very much like to take a shower now,” Francesca announced a little too loudly.
Smothering a smile, Mary scurried to the door, where her mate tucked her into her side. “Just call if you need anything, all right?”
“Right,” she answered, watching the door close. Padding over to the shower, she muttered to herself, “You know, I thought I’d know when I got married.”