Page 57 of Cruel Crown

“Is her mother alive as well? I asked sardonically.

“Nope, she blew up.” Bas did fireworks signals with his hands.

We walked all the way up toward one of the towers. Bas said there were a lot of secret entrances in case there was ever an attack.

We stopped by a door, and before he opened the door, he looked at me. “She’s going to be pissed. She never introduced me to her grandfather. I just followed her one day.”

I pushed him to the side and walked through the door.

The room wasn’t very big, but it was warm. Warmer than Daphne’s and my room. There was a small living room and a bed, with a door I assumed was for the bathroom. Lying on a bed that looked fancier than the ones in the hospitals was a man. He was still tall and broad despite having a wrinkled face. He still had a lot of hair; it was all white now, but he looked like he could still kick arse.

Daphne was standing next to him, and on his bed was a laptop. Both of them turned to look at me, twin sets of wolf eyes glaring at me.

He looked me up and down and started to talk to Daphne in Russian. She sounded sexy, but I was annoyed.

“You do know I know you two are talking about me.”

Bastian didn’t care; he went and grabbed the laptop that was on the bed and turned it around to see what they were talking about.

“I’d say Sid and Erin are lost to us. I saw them with Paco—that hate has been brewing, and I think he’s going to do it this year.”

“That explains why I never heard from Isabel,” Daphne said.

“Are you sure?” Daphne’s grandfather asked Bas. His English was fluent, as was his Russian.

“Can someone tell me what’s going on?”

“Lesson number one, don’t speak unless spoken to,” Daphne’s grandfather said.

I was about to reply when I noticed Daphne biting her lip, trying to suppress a smile.

“Sorry, old man, I’m not very good with directions,” I said as I walked toward them to see what they were looking at.

“It shows.”

I ignored the comment and stared at the computer. It was a complex world map. It showed regions and was color-coded, and when they hovered the mouse over a dot, a headshot appeared, along with nationality and record.

There were at least three hundred dots.

“What is all of this?”

“Sekten agents,” Daphne answered without looking at me.

“Where are they?” I asked, referring to the fact that there wasn’t even half of that here.

“He’s a bit slow, isn’t he?”

“Quite the opposite actually.” I grinned. “I was Mensa qualified as a preteen.”

Daphne snorted.

“You two are adorable; you make me sick,” Bas said dryly.

Daphne’s grandfather looked from her to me, and he started to spew off in Russian.

“Can you two speak in another language? English, Spanish, French. German, something I can fucking understand.”

Bas was moving something on the computer and replied, “They’re talking shit about you.”

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