Chapter 1 #2
Uncle Niles shrugs. “It’s not your fault, son.” Following me to my seat, he leans in. “Slippery baby. Long-term side effects. No sense of humor.”
I snicker, giving him a grateful pat on the back.
“When did you two start dating?” Mom’s voice echoes from down the hall.
Did Krimson bring a girl over?
To my confusion, my brother saunters in with a strange look widening his heterochromatic eyes. His giant, muscular frame takes up the entryway as he pauses to communicate something. A warning directed to me. And as his twin, I know I’m about to be sucker-punched.
“Sapphire!” Mom trails in behind Krimson, holding someone’s hand. “Look who’s joining us for dinner!”
Short, white-blonde, baby-blue-eyed, gorgeous Mabel Rose.
My. Best. Friend.
Our eyes clash as she greets everyone with that bright, glittering smile of hers. Those pink cheeks, glossy lips, and thick eyebrows captivate any audience. Though that grin slips as she processes my face. My look of shock. Her look of shock. It’s as if she’s surprised to see me.
In my own house!
Mabel Rose parts her lips, glances at Niklaus who has taken his seat across from me. Why is she looking at him?
“You didn’t tell me Mabel Rose and Niklaus were dating, Sapph!” Mom says, ushering my dead best friend to her seat next to the clinical-grade malignant narcissist.
Dating.
They’re dating.
The shock sitting in my stomach like a rock, turns to hot, burning coals.
“What the fuck?” The sound barely makes its way past my lips.
“Respond after dinner,” Krimson whispers next to me.
Respond. Don’t react. It’s his award-winning advice when I have a meltdown. I’ve had these quick bursts of fury that get the best of me since I was five.
But how the hell am I supposed to sit here and pretend like someone didn’t just perform open-heart surgery on me while I’m wide awake?
“What. The. Fuck…” I whisper again.
“It’s still pretty new,” Mabel Rose responds to my mother. She walks with her head down until claiming the seat next to Niklaus. They exchange a look, and he pats her thigh reassuringly.
Anger lashes through me, sawing my molars together, launching a flare-up of acid reflux. I stare at them together with bulging, unrelenting eyes.
Krimson’s foot brushes mine. “You’re going to burst a blood vessel.”
My heart bucks in my chest as Mabel Rose meets my eyes again, then turns away to scratch a fictional itch on her ankle.
“Let’s hope I die of internal bleeding then,” I respond.
He chuckles.
Mabel Rose has been my best friend since starting school when we were five.
She helped me wipe the saliva off my face after I moronically confessed my love for the slippery baby.
She was there almost every time he made me cry.
She might be the only person, other than my brother, that knows of how evil and horrendous Niklaus Demechnef has been to me.
And yet…
“So, how the hell did this cute little…thing start between you two?” I ask with a critical smile.
“Sapphire,” Krimson warns.
“The night of your birthday party,” Niklaus answers like he’s been waiting his entire life to hit me with this one. Right in the jugular. And it fucking stings.
My innards buckle down as I catch fire.
“Eight. Months. Ago?” I grit through my teeth.
Mabel-The-Coward-Rose doesn’t look up from her hands twisting in her lap.
I’ll gut her.
Under the table, Krimson snatches my clenched fist. He squeezes over and over again.
The act makes me want to cry in his arms. My best friend has been hiding a secret relationship with Niklaus Demechnef for eight fucking months?
! My mind zooms through different insignificant moments I should have caught on to.
Her not wanting to talk about secret meetings with a crush she’s had for a while.
I didn’t press because I figured he was ugly, and she was embarrassed. But this makes far more sense.
“Very good, Spitfire. And here I wasn’t sure if you were any good in mathematics.”
I rise from my seat. But a ginormous hand lands on my shoulder to keep me from moving.
“Who the fuck taught you to speak to a woman like that?” A gravelly, masculine voice slices through the tension in the air. An alpha presence. A booming tone of authority.
It reminds me of what everyone says my dad was like.
But of course, it couldn’t be him.
It’s his best friend.
I whip my head around to see Uncle Warrose standing behind me, burning his stare into Niklaus like he’s about to beat me to that steak knife. He’s still in his raven-black General’s uniform. Sleek feathers, weapons strapped across his body, and ferocious tattoos trailing up the sides of his neck.
“Hello, Uncle Warrose,” Niklaus purrs like he isn’t sweating his ass off at the size of the great oak behind me. Like he isn’t contemplating leaving the dinner early.
“Don’t hello me.” My uncle turns to the right. “Niles, that’s some real parental authority you’re exhibiting right now. I walk in for two seconds and already hear the immediate disrespect spewing out of your kid.”
For a moment, I feel bad for the way my Uncle Niles opens and closes his mouth. He looks just as helpless as I feel in his son’s presence.
“What’d he do now?” Aunt Marilynn walks in with Aunt Ruth coming up behind her in that beautifully carved chair.
“Just insulting Sapphire again,” I mutter in her direction.
Aunt Marilynn casually walks around the table, lifts her milky white hand, and smacks Niklaus on the back of his stupid head. Exactly like how Grandpa always does to Uncle Niles.
“Apologize,” she says calmly, with radiant blue eyes that puncture through him.
Niklaus cracks his neck, redirects those deceivingly beautiful ocean eyes toward me, and smirks. “I’m sorry, Spitfire. I’m sure you’re very good in mathematics.”
But oh, that stare is communicating a thousand other insults.
With just my thumb, I trace the carvings on the table again.
The carvings my father made with a steady hand.
How different from him I feel as mine isn’t steady at all.
It’s trembling.