Chapter 11 Royal #2
Smiling to myself, I send her a message back.
Royal:
How crazy?
She’s not on any of the main camera feeds. I hesitate for a minute. Invasion of privacy. The reason you locked this camera was so people wouldn’t be able to watch her.
My own logic doesn’t stop me from throwing the password into the locked channel and instantly pulling up her bedroom’s feed.
Seeing her safe in her room warms my insides and awakens the parts of myself I’ve deadened to get work done. After a few seconds of watching her, I’m already feeling lighter.
I take in her room and try to find changes. The most obvious is the ugly Christmas dress in plastic, hung up on the back of her bedroom door.
Leticia is flopped down on the bed, like she walked over and threw herself butt first onto it. Her feet hang off over the side, her phone held up above her face.
I look back down at my phone and find what she must have sent.
Leticia:
I mean, not enough that it’s distracting me from getting stuff done, but I’m definitely not not thinking about it.
Royal:
I don’t know, are you ready to handle the truth?
What if we’re a secret cult and there’s some naked moon dancing involved? Are you ready for that kind of truth?
I don’t love lying to her, but it’s not my place to tell her the family secret, and it’s not something Valor mentioned to me directly. For all I know, he’ll manufacture a fake secret to get her off his case. Thus, the two-week comment.
Leticia:
Bahaha, fine. You win. Don’t tell me. What did you do today?
Royal:
Working on some dark web shit. I really don’t want to talk about it. Distract me?
Make me forget there’s anything bad in the world. The thought unsettles me in a new way. What if there’s more than simply keeping an eye on the newly minted family ‘friend’ and more to do with . . .
I look at the phone screen and see an indicator of typing. The bubbles show up, and I expect a message to come through, but the dancing dots stop. On the monitor, Leticia has rolled to her stomach and is shuffling forward on to the bed.
It’s not a sexy maneuver by any means, but her, in bed, has my blood pumping, and now, with her skirt flat at her sides, it’s clear her ass doesn’t need a big bow to draw attention to it.
When did I get to be such a horndog?
She looks at her phone for another moment before tapping a spot on the screen.
A message comes through.
Leticia:
Well, you’ve asked the most boring person in the world to distract you. I left my user manuals in the kitchen.
With a smile, I know exactly what to say. I disconnect the laptop from the displays and take it, with her room’s feed on display, over to my bed. I mimic how she’s lying before sending back a message of my own.
Royal:
Ahh, so you escaped the kitchen?
Leticia:
Fortunately, I’ve escaped until at least tomorrow morning. If I’m lucky, until tomorrow afternoon. The parents have other brunch plans before their flight to Italy and Berto is busy.
Mimicking her position is incredibly uncomfortable for me. I roll back over, choosing to look only at my phone rather than both screens. Dragging down the top corner of my phone, I check the clock. It’s only two hours before dinner, meaning Valor and Kerrianne will be here soon with Antonella.
A little downtime with our mate won’t make the computer run the program slower. My wolf argues.
I had been assisting the bot and running other tasks, but it’s nothing I need to be doing right this second.
And the truth is . . . with the shit I’ve seen today, I need a bright spot, or I won’t be in any shape for dinner.
Want to see her. My wolf pushes toward the laptop. I roll to my side and click around a little until my screen goes dark and my projector takes over. A large version of Leticia’s bedroom is now painted across my ceiling, giving almost a more immersive experience.
Lying here, looking at her, seeps into my consciousness. I look forward to my interactions with Leticia. She’s not just an acquaintance, a potential ally, not anymore.
Royal:
What do you do when you’re not in the kitchen? What do the couple of hours, assuming you sleep 8 hours, look like for you?
Leticia jolts, sitting up, and I try to figure out why. She’s staring at her phone, hands covering her mouth like it did something bad.
My hackles rise. The wolf stands at attention, trying to decipher the threat.
I pick up my laptop again, leaving her bedroom on my ceiling. I check other cameras, the one in the hall, the one on the stairs, but there’s nothing.
I reactivate the sound on her camera, hoping it’ll pick up whatever happened that startled her. I try so desperately to figure out the problem, but all I see is the beautiful blonde looking at her phone.
She picks it up and shakes her head before dropping it back to the bed, defeated. “I can’t believe I sent that.”
I look at my phone and see the notification I missed, distracted by her reaction.
Leticia:
Honestly, I normally throw on some TV and try to forget.
Forget what? My wolf pushes, still unsettled.
I wish it was harder to figure out. Adrenaline falls out of my system, and exhaustion starts to settle in.
Royal:
Forget? Forget who you are and what life is?
Cause honestly? Same.
I try to be relatable. But the image I scrubbed off the internet has me afraid I’m going to learn something a lot darker about life in the D’Medici penthouse.
Leticia picks up her phone. Delicately lying it flat in one hand, she taps it open with the other. As she reads the message, her shoulders slacken and she sits back, curling herself up into a ball.
Leticia:
I’ve never told anyone that before. I don’t feel like this all the time. I try to be positive about it.
But sometimes the reality that I’m just the next Mrs. Mafia Wife crushes everything I love about myself.
Royal:
No matter how good we are at living our lives, we can’t ever truly forget we’re the children of mobsters.
I’ve been working on stuff today outside my normal scope. I mean, it’s still hacking and technology so that’s not —
What I’m saying is: I’ll never understand what it’s like to be you, but I’m here.
We can distract each other from the bad. Like right now, texting you is the highest point in my day.
I feel weird spamming her with text messages. So I stop and lie back down, looking up at her bedroom again.
Leticia flops down on her bed kinda like I’m lying. She types for a little bit, and then my phone pings.
Leticia:
I really am glad I’m not alone. I’ve never really had a friend before. I’ve had family, and Antonella is absolutely a friend, but at the end of the day she had to help me because we’re blood related.
Those words hurt me on her behalf. My wolf growls. That isolation would never happen in our life. With our pack, someone’s always around. Someone’s always available. Even though I mostly prefer to work alone, I always have someone to talk to.
We’ll be the friend she deserves. My wolf assures me.