Page 156 of Vengeful Princess

The woman had an unhealthy obsession with young men. She’d tried hitting on me, but I’d given her short shrift. After the second time, she avoided me, which suited me just fine.

I watched as she clocked our little group and then the press pack outside. Any remaining color in her cheeks drained away, probably because she didn’t want her mug posted all over the Daily Mail Online.

None of us did, frankly.

Landon hadn’t noticed her. He was too busy stroking Thea’s hip and dropping kisses into her hair. If my father hadn’t been two feet away, I might have ripped her away from him, but it wasn’t worth riling him up anymore.

Elaine’s glasses concealed her eyes, but from the way she tensed up, she didn’t appreciate seeing Landon’s hands all over Thea. It was pretty fucking obvious Lan and Thea were a thing. Even my father had noticed, which was good because he’d assume she was with Lan not me.

The bitch’s lip curled in annoyance. Then she caught me grinning and forced a smile.

“Cassian. Lovely to see you.” Thea looked around and saw Elaine at the same time Lan did. The color leeched from Lan’s face while Thea glared. Thankfully, my father chose that moment to announce we were leaving.

“Derek’s waiting outside the back entrance. We need to get out of here before more reporters arrive. Fuck knows who called them,” he muttered under his breath.

Normally, he’d be all over the press. Publicity was his oxygen, and he loved having an opportunity to wax lyrical on camera, but not this morning. There were too many variables, not least the fact Lan and Thea were here.

“What’s going on?” Elaine asked in an imperious voice. Mr. Green, who was hovering nearby, ready to lick my father’s shoes, stepped forward.

“Just a small misunderstanding, madam. If you’d like to leave without any bother, we can call a cab for you.”

Elaine huffed some more and checked her phone. “Thank you, that would be most agreeable.” She threw one last venomous look at Landon and Thea before following Mr. Green to the concierge’s desk.

Father pushed his phone back in his pocket.

“Let’s go,” he barked.

“Look after our girl,” I said to Landon as I brushed past him.

“Always,” he replied.

83

Milo

The coffee machine burbled, breaking the silence in our apartment while outside, rain fell in gray sheets as students scurried across the lawn.

The guys were down in London. When I got back last night, Dario wasn’t around either, which was a relief. I had no clue what he got up to when he wasn’t in class. He rarely said two words to any of us, unless Thea’s name came up. Then he had plenty to say. Mostly vile shit I refused to listen to.

When he first arrived, Cassian tried being nice to him. Offered to show him around - the usual crap. But he wasn’t interested. And once he found out we knew Thea, he decided we were all his enemy.

What he thought of us meant nothing to me, but I didn’t like how antagonistic he was about Thea. Whatever beef he had with her was more than a minor disagreement. His hatred ran way deeper than her spurning his advances or some other stupid shit could explain.

If I could figure out who she was, it would help. But so far, all my programs had come up with zilch. Whoever erased her identity did a good job.

But I’d keep trying.

Eventually, something would ping and I’d finally get a potential lead. I was nothing if not patient.

I took my espresso and placed it on the coffee table, intending to catch up on work for a program I was writing. Dad had given me a project to work on, a new AI he was developing. He hadn’t given me any details, but I’d seen enough of the source code to figure out it was for tracking anomalies in financial transactions.

I opened up my laptop and checked to see if any notifications had appeared from the programs running in the background. To my surprise, there was a hit relating to an old medical file on a child admitted to a small regional hospital in Calabria

The child had a very similar name: Theadora. She’d been admitted with a serious infection. The record mentioned a gunshot wound, which was unusual for a 12-year-old. But the odd thing was, when I cross-referenced the file, there was no corroborating information; no record of Theadora di Luca whatsoever.

My program found the file stored on an archived server instead of the main database, which was probably why it had been overlooked.

I opened the digital photos attached to the file and squinted hard. The quality wasn’t amazing, but the girl on my screen was the spitting image of Thea, albeit much younger.

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