Total pages in book: 95
Estimated words: 91847 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 459(@200wpm)___ 367(@250wpm)___ 306(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91847 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 459(@200wpm)___ 367(@250wpm)___ 306(@300wpm)
“Sure,” he says, gaze following Caius up the stairs. He doesn’t like him any more than I do.
I carry the things into Santos’s office and set them on the desk, casually glancing through them. I find a box addressed to me.When I open it, I see it’s an iPhone. Santos came through. I take it out of its box and push the button to switch it on. As the welcome message flashes on the screen, Odin appears in the doorway.
“Hey. What is it?”
I hold up the phone and walk out into the hallway. “The phone Santos ordered.”
He smiles wide. “I’ll help you get it set up over lunch.”
“Someone say lunch?” Caius asks, hopping down the stairs with a duffel bag.
Odin and I exchange a glance.
“Oh, come on. Don’t be that way. I miss the cooking here.” He drops his duffel at the door and walks toward us. “Besides,” he starts, stepping between us and setting his hand at my lower back to guide me toward the kitchen as if I were an invalid. “I could use some company. Ana and I broke it off this morning.”
I look up at him. He has his free hand over his heart like he’s hurt. He’s not. I can hear it in his cool tone.
“Did you?” I ask, stepping away and folding my arms across my chest.
He grins. “She’s very clingy and possessive. Never did like that kind of woman. And she has a thing for you, Mad Elena.”
“Why are you such an asshole?” I walk away from him.
He catches up, takes my arm, and spins me around. “That was in poor taste. I’m sorry.”
“Fine. Let go.”
“She’s a bitch,” he says. “You were right about her.”
“I never said she was a bitch.” I tug free. And as far as being a bitch, she is, but I never told him that, did I?
“But you think it, and she is. Just being honest. Let’s eat. I’m starving.”
18
SANTOS
I stalk into the private room of the spa that caters to Avarice’s elite and find my mother relaxed in a chair with four attendants around her. Two are polishing her fingernails, the other two her toenails.
“Santos.” She sits up from her leaning position, clearly surprised.
“Out. Everyone. Now,” I command.
The four attendants glance from me to my mother to each other.
“I said out!”
“Go,” Mom tells them as they’re scrambling to their feet, tripping over each other to get out.
Once the door is closed, I pull up a chair and sit facing my mother, looking at her confused expression as she waves her hands in the air to dry the nails.
“I wish I could say it’s nice to see you, but that was simply embarrassing.”
“Embarrassing you was the furthest thing from my mind.”
“They’re going to have to start from scratch,” she says with a glance at her fingernails. “I hope you have a good reason for this.”
She’s barely finished when I slap the report Rick printed for me on the table in front of her. It’s a flimsy thing, and it rattles, an open bottle of blood-red nail polish flying over the edge and landing on its side. It doesn’t break, but varnish begins to pour out of it.
But my mom doesn’t even look. I’m not sure she even heard the crash. Her eyes are glued to that report, and her face has gone deathly white.
“Does he know?” I ask, my voice sounding foreign. The betrayal feels like a fucking knife in my back.
It takes her an eternity to look up at me, and when she does, her vivid blue eyes swim in tears.
“Where did you get this?” she asks, the first of those tears catching on her eyelashes.
“Does he know?”
She shakes her head, wiping away her tears with the backs of her hands, careful not to smear still-wet polish on her cheeks.
I exhale. Because I’m relieved. If Caius knew and kept it from me, that would have been the real knife in my back. Because my brother and I, it’s always been us. No matter what. He’s always been at my side through everything, and I need him.
“Where did you get it?”
“Did Dad know?”
“No. No one did.”
“How about Commander Avery?”
She watches me, studying me, her eyes clear again. They bounce between mine as if she’s trying to figure out how best to answer.
“It’s not a hard question. Did Commander Avery know that Caius is his son?”
To hear it out loud, it’s like a slap to the face both to me and, from the looks of it, to her. She shakes her head slowly.
I get up, push my hand through my hair, and pace the room once, twice. “I don’t understand.”
“Santos, sit down.”
I shake my head.
“Sit. I’ll explain it, but just sit. Give me a minute.”
I look at my mother and see something I’ve never seen before. Fear. It’s in her eyes. If she didn’t keep regular Botox appointments, I think her forehead would be creased with wrinkles. So, I sit.