5. Drake
CHAPTER FIVE
Adults crowded the space, and despite my age, I already reached most of their chests.
I wouldn’t be underfoot like the other sniveling, drooling children at the meetup.
Some of them I already knew, Julian Rossi, for example.
A close friend whose family worked with mine, though to what end I didn’t know.
It was my first time attending such an event.
“Neutral ground,” Dad had said. And though Mom had spent hours pleading with him not to take me, when he asked, I insisted I was a big boy, old enough to accompany him for work.
I didn’t need to understand the complexities of why so many groups were gathering downtown so late in the afternoon it was practically night.
What mattered was being allowed up past my bedtime and getting into shenanigans with Julian.
“Stay out here, son. Touch nothing, and don’t go anywhere,” Dad ordered. He nodded at the bodyguard staying behind to monitor me before vanishing through a set of double doors with most of the other adults.
Julian’s father and uncle patted him on the head and joined my father in the secret room beyond the doors. Adults flooded into that space, and a spark of curiosity made me wonder what I was missing. Why did Dad want to bring me along but keep me from the action?
Something was happening, that much I was certain of. Dad didn’t give away his inner thoughts or feelings like others might. He carried a subtlety, an air, that I grew to pick up on just by being in close contact with him. And the recent events had unsettled him in a way I’d never seen before.
Julian and I exchanged a glance, mischievous intent gleaming in our eyes as the adults settled in and left us with nothing more than bodyguards who were contracted to obey our every whim.
There were kitchens on the second floor we’d passed on our way up.
And as if we shared one brain cell and it simply bounced between us, my best friend and I turned to face the guards in the corner, preparing to demand treats from downstairs.
A pop of color sitting prim and proper on the couch along the wall snagged my notice. Julian and I both halted, heads slowly rotating in tandem to take in the little girl about our age. She wore a purple dress, white tights, and had a mess of wild curls slipping free from her pigtails.
And she wasn’t paying attention to me in the slightest. Which really wasn’t fair if you think about it. My dad was important, I was important, and everyone had a right to know about me and my importance. But she buried her nose in a book, quite a thick book for a nine-year-old.
Julian raised his brows and we silently communicated again. The sweets could wait. We had a new distraction.
Who was this girl? Who were her parents? Did they work with my dad? Why was she here? And most importantly, why wasn’t she paying attention to me?
I had to correct that.
With all the swagger of an overconfident nine-year-old, I approached the little girl. Julian obediently followed, equally curious. She smiled to herself at whatever in her book kept her attention from me. Her shiny black shoes swung back and forth, and her pale eyes darted across the pages.
“Hello there,” I said.
She didn’t look up. In fact, she had the gall to smile at the words in her lap. Then she giggled and turned the page.
A flare of anger shot through me. How dare she ignore me? I was very important.
“I said hello!” I stomped my foot.
“It’s not nice to ignore people,” Julian added.
Still, she didn’t look up. The girl was so engrossed in her book, in whatever world kept her from paying attention to me. And that wouldn’t do, not at all.
I had to do whatever was necessary to get her attention. The first idea popped into my head, flaring to life like a lightbulb. My hand shot out, latched onto the top of her open book, and yanked.
With her book snatched from her lap, the girl finally looked up. And it was a massive relief, honestly, to have those blue eyes like a winter sky on me. Even if they were narrowed, even if she grimaced, her angered expression didn’t seem like a warning when her attention felt like a victory.
“Rends-moi ?a, méchant petit rat!” Rapid nonsense flew from her lips. The girl slipped off the couch, waving her hands in a flurry.
Instinct seized me, and I held the book over her head. Even presumably around the same age, she was much smaller than me. With my advantage, I kept the book out of reach.
More unintelligible words darted past her lips, and she made desperate grabs for the book in my hand. She jumped and her fingers grazed the front cover. She was close and smelled like something sweet and flowery. Since when did girls smell good?
“Go long,” I told Julian. His dark eyes sparked with understanding.
He ran across the room right as I tossed the book.
He caught it, and the girl whirled around, stomping her foot and practically growling.
But now she was paying attention to Julian, and my stomach twisted into knots.
For some reason, I didn’t like that. When she made a run for my best friend, I lifted my hands, gesturing for him to throw it back.
And we laughed, watching her run back and forth between us. That language I didn’t know spilled from her. Every so often, an English word escaped the rest, and each one matched her righteous fury.
“Bad.”
Another throw over her head.
“Mean.”
Another catch before sailing over her pigtails again.
“Nasty boys.”
Her cheeks turned pink, and red framed her eyes. Unshed tears gathered behind the fence of her lashes, swelling higher and higher each time we kept her precious book out of reach, making her run for it.
Her obvious upset didn’t register with me, not at that age and not in that state of mind.
Most of what she said was in another language, and that meant nothing to me despite how pretty the words sounded on her tongue.
All I needed was her attention. It only made sense that I should do whatever was necessary to get her to focus on me.
Julian and I laughed and laughed. Laughed at her expense, the way she scampered back and forth like a mouse trapped between two vicious kittens, laughed at the tears refusing to break from her eyes, laughed because she was our pawn on the game board.
Guards around the room were exchanging glances. Kids being kids only went so far. Where was the line when, with one complaint, I could have someone stripped of their job? We were children, but we had far too much power of our own.
I caught the book, barking with mad laughter over my triumph. The little girl rushed toward us, glaring and intent on getting her precious pages back. She slammed into me, arms thrashing wildly in front of my face.
A villainous grin slashed across my face as I stood on the tips of my toes, keeping her book out of reach. Her angry words were empty threats, since I simply didn’t understand them. It made me laugh again, smirking down at her because no matter how mad she was, her eyes were on me.
She lowered her arms, panting and flushed from sprinting back and forth. Then her brows knitted together, and her lips thinned into a line. A searing determination simmered in her gaze as it flicked over me. A calculating, almost frightening look. It made me hesitate.
The girl was already so close, pressed against me. I had nowhere to go when she latched onto the lifted arm holding her book. She moved in a blur of unruly curls and purple fabric, and pain flared through my arm as her teeth sank into my bicep.
A thud echoed through the room as the book dropped from my hand. A cry followed as I howled in pain.
Julian rushed forward, checking me over. Simultaneously, the guards my father left finally peeled themselves from their places against the wall and swooped low to check me over. “Let’s take him downstairs for ice,” one said.
The last thing I remembered before they led me downstairs with Julian hot on my heels was the triumphant grin on that little girl’s face. No one bested me. I stewed for the rest of the night. No one got the upper hand in my presence, and for that, I’d seek revenge if we ever crossed paths again.
16 YEARS AGO
After years of preparation, it was finally my turn to join my older brother at the prestigious private school in London, St. Henry’s.
I wasn’t nervous the entire summer as I finished my lessons with my private tutors and packed for the trip.
I wasn’t nervous during the seven-hour flight from New York to London.
Not when I had my mother and father with me, and Arty was just as eager to reunite with his friends in the seat beside me.
I knew everything there was to know about the school. I had to know everything all the time. I had to be prepared, just like Mother taught me to be. We lived in a dangerous world with dangerous people. So, I spent days and weeks and months studying any morsel of information I could get my hands on.
At twelve years old, I was close to the cutoff for this school year.
I’d be one of the oldest in my grade, but that mattered little.
The only thing that truly mattered was if I would finally make friends.
Back in the States I didn’t have a lot of opportunities to spend time with other kids my age.
The type of life my parents lived made it impossible to establish friendships with anyone outside of our designated circles.
But not at St. Henry’s. It was a dedicated school to the children of families like ours. More than once I heard my parents refer to it as “neutral ground” and “a safe place.” And if Arty could make friends at this school, then so could I.
It was all I wanted. I was determined to make this place my home for the next seven years, get the best grades, and make countless friends. So no, I wasn’t nervous when I had all of that to look forward to.