Chapter 24 Royal
ROYAL
“NORMAL” OR SOMETHING
“Royal,” Kerrianne whispers, waking me up from a fitful sleep. “Grandma says I’m not supposed to wake you up, only see if you’re awake to offer you pancakes.”
“Yes, please,” I whisper back without opening my eyes. “With chocolate chips.”
Kerrianne flops down over the top of me in a hug before darting up the stairs, yelling, “He wants pancakes and chocolate chips. I want chocolate chips too.”
With a groan, I climb out of bed. My leg is stiff, and I struggle to throw it over the side of the bed. Valor’s job of packing and wrapping the wound held through the night, but it doesn’t stop blood from soaking through the bandage.
It takes a monumental effort, and I hobble to my bathroom. I don’t remember coming home last night. I don’t remember anything after Dad set a bowl of soup in front of me.
I take a piss standing, luckily managing not to fall over. But when I’m done, I close the lid and grab the tablet off its charger from the cupboard above the toilet. After snagging the wound caddy from the shelf above that, I sit down to sort out my life.
Maybe I should take care of my wound first, but even without my wolf awake, there’s one thing I need to do.
My phone is backed up to the cloud in six places, and I pull a clone onto the tablet. I ignore the fifty million notifications and home in on the only person I can’t take care of in person today.
Leticia sent me seven total messages.
Leticia:
Ready to call?
Ope, did you miss my text? My food is hot, I’m going to eat.
Those two were sent fifteen minutes apart.
An hour later, I got two more.
Leticia:
I really wish you would have told me we couldn’t call today if you hadn’t meant to be here.
In the event you still want to be friends, I’m turning my phone to silent so I don’t get distracted while studying.
I deserve a whole lot worse than those two messages. So much worse. There are only two more from last night.
Leticia:
All done studying for my final.
Proof of life. At least let me know something bad didn’t happen to you?
My chest aches, and I rub at the spot before reading the last one.
Leticia:
Good morning. Please don’t be dead.
No reply is better than what I can tell her right now. I don’t even know what my world looks like, and it isn’t fair to beg forgiveness and swear I’ll be better behaved, only to have that crushed by what Dad and Valor may have to say today.
Bloodied mess contained to my bathroom with the door closed to hide it away from Kerrianne, I get myself and my tablet up the stairs one painfully irritating step at a time.
Who thought a lair in the basement was a good idea? Why couldn’t it be on the main level of the house?
My wolf wakes up, the painkillers or sedatives Valor gave me last night slowly wearing off, and he reminds me of that time in high school. I came home, missing baseball practice, to find Mom and Dad getting handsy on the kitchen counter.
Fair enough. Lair in the basement is safer most of the time.
“I told her not to wake you up.” Mom sighs, looking me over. “How’s the leg?”
“My trash bin needs to go out, but it’s healing.” I turn off the burner she’s standing in front of on the stove and pull her into a hug.
Unprocessed emotions from yesterday well up with tears in my eyes, and I try hard to shove them down. But Mom wraps her arms around me and squeezes hard, and I’m on the verge of falling apart.
“Not in front of Kerrianne,” I beg her.
Mom lets go, and she has tears in her eyes too. “You shouldn’t have let them use me as a threat. I’m old, but I’m not that old. We’d have fought them off together. You could have been hurt.” She looks down at my leg. “More.”
I nod and don’t argue with her. The choices I made yesterday weigh a million pounds. Had I not let them take me, would Antonella still be human? Would Mom be alive? Would Kerrianne?
“Just trying to be grateful we’re all alive.” I clear my throat and step away.
She turns the burner back on and resumes flipping pancakes. I pull one off the top of the stack. The heat of it burns my fingertips, but I stuff it into my mouth and breathe around it with my jaw hanging open, trying to cool it off enough that I can chew and swallow.
“At least one of my sons learned manners.” Dad rolls his eyes when he sees me.
Swallowing, I snark back. “Yeah, sure, Valor chews with his mouth closed, but when was the last time he took out the trash?”
“He doesn’t even live here.” Mom laughs, and the tension in the room eases. “Kerrianne is playing upstairs with that old train set. So if you two are going to talk before I serve breakfast, get to it.”
“What do I need to do?” I dive straight into it while pulling up a to-do list on the tablet.
“Obviously, full system sweeps. Go through Neil and his family’s financials and all their data usage — phones, security systems, the whole nine yards.
Everything turned inside out. I thought maybe tomorrow I’d go over —”
“Royal.” Dad stops me. “None of that has to be done today. I went through Neil’s phone.
” His voice cracks, and it’s then that another wave of sadness hits me because Neil is Dad’s brother.
“There were only text messages with those already caught and dead. I don’t think he has other accomplices out there.
That we need to worry about any sort of immediate attack. ”
I sit in the silence and the weight of that, feeling the barrage of emotions that come with now being safe and acknowledging the brush of death I’d faced. My fingers shake, and it’s hard for me to turn the screen off on the tablet.
“Valor asked that we be the ones to tell Antonella’s cousin, Leticia, about the family secret. Apparently, she’s the one we need to worry about figuring it out. With how close they are, Antonella is likely to fail at keeping the secret from her. Unintentionally, of course.”
“Yeah, she’s wicked smart,” I add without thinking. I scrunch up my features. “Can we pretend I didn’t just say that out loud?”
“Nope,” Dad answers.
I draw a slow breath, letting my face relax. “Alright, it’s nothing, but Leticia and I have been talking since that first time she went over to dinner at Valor’s.”
“Nothing?” Mom’s voice makes it clear she’s doing the impossible and reading into what she doesn’t know is happening.
Dad draws a deep breath. “Royal, be careful with her. I don’t need to tell you, but I will anyway, we can’t afford any sort of altercation with the D’Medicis, and I’m sure Gregorio would love a fight. He wasn’t happy about the truce to start with.”
“I am being careful. We’re just friends. Nothing’s happened between us.” God, do I hope that sounded true. Neither Mom nor Dad calls bullshit on that. “I’ll figure out Leticia’s finals schedule at the university, and I’ll bring her out to the house and show her.”
“Take her to Valor’s. Leticia is more familiar with it since she’s been there.
I’m keeping Kerrianne here. You can feed Captain.
” Mom delegates and decides how this is all going to go.
“It has to be soon though. Your brother wants it done before Antonella gets herself together. Since they talk a lot, he doesn’t want too many questions unanswered in texts. ”
“Yes, I’ll take care of it.” I nod. It’s harrowing to be the one who has to show a human their wolf, and it goes against everything we’re taught. With Dad telling me not to dig too much into things, at least I have something to do. “Do I need to feed the prisoner too?”
“No, Jack and Declan are taking care of that. They’re both pissed off at him and promise to keep him alive but make him miserable.” Dad almost laughs, and I remember that’s where Valor gets it from. The unhinged.
Dad can both grieve his brother and talk about torturing him, in the same conversation, and be completely okay with it.
Lord save me if Valor and I ever come to head like that.
“You’re sure about telling Leticia the family secret?” My leg throbs, and I hobble over to the informal dining room table before pulling out two chairs, one for my leg and one for me to sit on.
“Is Leticia really that smart?” Dad comes to sit with me at the table.
Probably smarter. I go with the more diplomatic answer. “Yes. She’s smart enough to work out that there’s something seriously wrong or different with Antonella.”
“I know it goes against tradition, but there are exceptions to rules for a reason. We’ll need to control the narrative, then.
Make sure Leticia knows what’s at stake if she lets the secret out.
It’s better that we take control of the situation than be blindsided, not knowing what to do. ” Dad’s word on it is final.
“Is it okay if I do it tomorrow? I just need the day to . . .” The truth is, I don’t know what I need the day to do, but the bare minimum is to apologize for ghosting her.
“Sometime this week, before Valor and Antonella return, is the most important part.” Dad censors himself as Kerrianne comes in from the living room.
“Are pancakes ready yet?” She twirls the skirt of her dress around her, spinning in a tight circle, and then frolics over to the table. “I bet I can eat as many as Royal.”
“Oh yeah?” I narrow my eyes across the table. “Little thing like you going to eat more than a big thing like me?”
“My stomach is bigger. I’m still growing. Dad says you’re not growing.” She nods exuberantly and pulls out her chair to sit down at the table.
“You’re on, pup-squeak.” I smile at her and try to just be present in the moment for her like Valor would want me to be.