11. Four Days Until Bonding
Chapter eleven
Four Days Until Bonding
Carrson
I leave Laurel asleep in my bed in Ashford Manor, the same room I’ve slept in since I was a kid.
Thomson and Samantha wait for me in the kitchen downstairs.
I texted asking for them to meet me. When I enter the room, Thomson’s sitting at the small table in the breakfast nook and all I can see of Samantha is the back of her head since she’s buried in our large walk-in pantry.
I call out a greeting to them.
“Can I have a muffin?” Samantha asks.
I say yes and she walks out with two, one in each hand. There’s already a bite out of one which means she started eating it before I agreed, but then that makes sense. She’s never been one to wait for permission.
“Your housekeeper makes the best muffins,” she mumbles around a mouthful. “I wish she’d teach mine.”
I chuckle. “Mrs. Beckswith once made my father eat plain toast for four days because he asked for the recipe. He wanted to patent it, make them in bulk, and sell them in grocery stores.”
Thomson snorts at that.
I pour myself a cup of coffee and sit beside Thomson. While Samantha rummages through the refrigerator for something to drink, I lower my voice.
“Rose? Anything?”
“I thought I had a lead.” Thomson’s voice lowers with mine. “A pregnant woman from the strip club was sighted in Mexico.”
“And?”
He shakes his head. “She died in a car crash.”
“Was it her?”
“I got access to the autopsy report.” His expression turns grim. “The fetal DNA wasn’t a paternal match to your father.”
My breath leaves me in a rush. Frustration comes first because another clue has led nowhere. Then comes a quieter grief for a woman I never knew.
“Keep looking,” I tell him.
Armed with a glass of orange juice, Samantha takes a seat across from us.
“What’s up?” she asks.
“We need to find a way to protect Laurel from what’s coming.” I run a hand through my hair. “Do you know what Jack meant when he said we had to do Sealed by Sight?”
They both nod, their eyes on the table and their cheeks red.
“Mother told me that night,” Sam says. “Laurel’s going to freak out when it happens. It’s not as big a deal to us, but to her? I can’t imagine.”
“It makes sense in a disturbing way,” Thomson muses. “They had to make sure the bonded couples were actually having sex.”
Sam wrinkles her nose. “That’s so weird.”
“I don’t want to put Laurel through that.” I scrub a hand down my face. “We need to get her out of here before the bonding.”
“You know that won’t work,” Sam says calmly. “The Order will track her down. Drag her back.”
I stare down at the table. “I know, and now it’s more complicated.”
“How so?” asks Thomson.
“Turns out her dad’s from The Order. His real name is Stanson Bellefleur.”
Samantha sets her glass down so hard I’m surprised it doesn’t crack. “Bellefleur? Like that spooky estate in the woods?” She points out the window to the dense forest that makes up most of my father's property. “The one we used to dare each other to go into when we were kids?”
Thomson joins in. “We were too scared to ever do it. Even you, Carrson.”
“That’s the one. It belongs to Laurel, although The Order seized it when her dad was removed from the path.”
“Wow.” Samantha’s eyebrows climb toward her hairline. “How’d she take the news?”
“Like Laurel,” I say. “She asked questions. Stayed brave.” I wrap my hands around my mug. “But it took a toll. I can tell. Now she’s one of us, at least partly. Even if I can get her away, there’s no escaping that.”
I tell them the rest of it. How Laurel was abducted by Silas. What he told her. Jackson’s addiction. Once I’m done, we’re quiet for a minute, all of us contemplating.
“You’d better hurry whatever you’re planning to do with Laurel.” Sam breaks the silence. “The bonding is only four days away. The prebonding masquerade ball is the day after tomorrow. Families are flooding into town. Have you seen the ballroom?”
I shake my head. “We just got here last night.”
“Your father’s having it repainted. Dark blue this time. The chandeliers cleaned and the floor polished.”
She points out the window, where work trucks have pulled up so they can unload supplies. One has a yellow bumper sticker. Bee Happy, it says. Whoever drives that must not have a father like mine. A hawk-nosed man gets out and grabs a ladder, swinging it over his shoulder.
“In another day or so this house will be swarming," says Sam. "This is going to be the biggest party The Order’s thrown in fifty years. Bigger than the President’s inauguration celebration last year. Everyone wants to see Laurel, the outsider the prince chose.”
“They’ll be disappointed,” I say. “Not so much of an outsider now.”
“Are you kidding?” Sam leans forward, a gleam in her eye. “This’ll make them more feral. It’s like fate. Kismet that she came back to us. They’ll see it as proof that we’re superior. Like blood always finds its way home.”
Brickson enters the room. “Your father wants you in his office,” he tells me. He nods to Thomson. “You too.” Then, because he’s an asshole, he adds on a snarled, “Now.”
I lift a hand in dismissal, a gesture I’ve seen my father use a hundred times. “We’ll be there in a minute.”
He leaves and I turn back to my friends.
“Don’t worry,” Sam says. “I’ll stay with Laurel. Show her around. Entertain her. Make sure she stays out of her own head.”
“Thanks.” I manage a shaky smile. “I appreciate it.”
She tosses her hair. “It’s the least I can do, since I did try to kill her that one time.”
“One time?” I growl, my mood darkening at the memories.
She grins. “Okay, maybe it was more than once. The point is she’s safe with me now.”
Thomson and I head toward my father’s office, which sits just off the kitchen.
The room is dark, with wood-paneled walls and thick curtains. Father’s desk is tidy as usual, holding only a couple of neatly stacked piles of paper and a single pen illuminated by the lamp.
“Come in, boys.” He beckons us closer.
Thomson and I take the two upholstered chairs in front of him. I slouch while Thomson sits ramrod straight.
“I have a mission for you two,” Father says, steepling his hands and resting his chin against them.
“What, no ‘How’s it going? Good to have you home for break?’” I ask, unable to stop myself from goading him. It’s a habit left over from when I was younger, when I’d do anything to get his attention, even if it was negative.
“We don’t have time to waste on pleasantries,” he says. “You have work to do.”
I sit up straighter. “I’m not leaving Laurel alone.”
Father sighs, aggravated. “She’s not alone.
There are plenty of people here. Samantha or one of the other girls can stay with her, if you’re so worried.
” He picks up the pen and spins it in his palm, a trick that used to fascinate me as a child.
“Besides, some in The Order question your loyalty. They whisper that your entanglement with the Bellefleur girl makes you weak. Compromised. Going proves you’re committed to our goals. That the Ashford name remains strong.”
“Of course.” I roll my eyes. “Wouldn’t want a bunch of gossips slandering the esteemed Ashford name—”
“This isn’t a joke,” Father cuts in, his voice sharp. “The Beaumonts are breathing down our necks. They’re on the brink of inciting a mutiny of a magnitude The Order has never seen before. It’s time to do damage control, Son.”
“And the solution is to send us to murder someone. Makes perfect sense.” I don’t bother to hide my sarcasm. “Where are you sending us?”
“New York.”
“New York? We were just there yesterday.”
“This is the city. Manhattan, not upstate where Shady Grove is.” He reaches into a drawer, pulls out a manila folder, and slides it across the desk.
I lean forward, taking it. I turn through the pages, skimming each one, while he waits in silence.
“A hacker?” I ask. “Why does The Order care about some random hacker?”
“This isn’t just any hacker,” Father says. “He’s good. CIA-trained, though he works freelance now. Last week, he breached one of our most restricted servers.”
“What was on it?”
“Our accounts. Holdings. Shell companies. Private correspondence.” His expression doesn’t change, but his hands flatten against the desk. “Names of people who have spent generations making sure no one knows what The Order really is.”
I go still. “He got all that?”
“He didn’t download it, not that we can tell.” Father’s gaze shifts to the fireplace behind me, where low flames dance. “Our guys think he stumbled onto it by accident, but once he was in he spent a long time looking around. We can’t afford to let that go.”
“So it’s a kill order?” I work to keep my voice steady, unemotional.
It isn’t the first time Father has ordered me to take a life for The Order, and I doubt it will be the last. A mission has always done something to me.
It reduces the noise of the world to quiet.
Simple goals: a name, a location, a threat.
There’s no room for questions when every minute has a purpose.
I like the chase and then the fight, the chance to use the lessons Father and my instructors drilled into me. It makes me feel alive, useful, worthy.
Maybe that’s wrong, but I can’t pretend it isn’t there. Inside me.
Before Laurel, duty was enough. I did what I was told, then carried the aftermath alone. The faces that haunt my nightmares. The knowledge that somewhere, someone lost a person because The Order decided they were a threat.
This time is harder.
Laurel is upstairs, exhausted from a day where The Order tore apart everything she thought she knew. She would not look at this and see duty the way I do, the way I was raised to.
She would see a choice.
She would ask what this hacker actually did. Whether looking in the wrong place at the wrong time is enough to deserve a death sentence. Whether obeying my father is worth the price I pay. The pieces of my soul that die with every life I take.
The truth is, I don’t have a good answer for her.
If I’m going to have to face Laurel, and my conscience, after coming back from this, I’m sure as hell not doing it for free.
“We’ll go, under two conditions,” I tell Father, keeping my expression neutral.
After all, he’s the one who taught me to negotiate from a place of logic rather than emotion.
“One, you promise to keep Laurel safe. While I’m gone but after that too.
I want her under the full protection of the Ashford name.
” I tick them off my fingers. “Two, you restore her inheritance. I want her name, money, and property returned to her since she’s the rightful owner. ”
“Her family lost those rights when her father was removed from the path.”
“Well, she’s about to be bonded to me, which puts her right back on the fucking path, wouldn’t you agree?”
“Profanity is unnecessary,” Father, the same man who used to wash my mouth out with soap when I swore, tuts.
“The fuck it is. You’re about to send us out on a job we might not come back from.
I’m sure as shit going to ensure Laurel can survive without me.
” I lean forward, put my elbows on my knees.
“And if I return to find that you let anything happen to her, you can expect to lose me as an heir. All your hard work, the Ashford legacy, will be for nothing.”
“What are you implying?”
I firm my jaw, let him see my determination.
“From now on you can consider her life tied to mine. If she dies, I have no problem putting the revolver you trained me to use into my mouth and pulling the trigger. The Ashford line will end with you.” I lower my voice.
“Don’t test me on this, Father. I mean it. ”
Thomson raises his eyebrows from where he sits. This is the hardest I’ve ever pushed back on my father, but then again, I’ve never had so much on the line before.
A woman I want to come home to.
A woman I need to protect if I don’t make it home.
Father has no tells, has deliberately trained them out of himself. If he played poker, he’d win every game. So I have no idea which way his decision will go until he opens his mouth and says, “Agreed.”
“Fantastic.” I smile. “When do we leave?”