Page 32 of Twisted Kings

“How? I thought there were enough distractions set up to keep them away!”

“Some hikers saw the fire and heard gunshots, according to the call. Unfortunately, the call got put through to the one diligent officer left on duty while the rest chased their owntails, so he called in backup from the anti-organized crime department.”

“Shit. They need to get out of there before the cops arrive. If they are caught, Declan will wash his hands of this.”

“It’ll be fine,” Eden said, not looking at all concerned about the prospect of the guys being swept up in an anti-mafia operation.

We watched as Milo monitored the local CCTV and listened to what the local cops were saying over their encrypted channels. I had no clue how he did any of this, or how he understood Italian, but when I’d asked, all he said was I didn’t need to know. Which told me jack shit.

He really was a dickhead at times.

“Are they OK?” I pressed. The stress of the rescue operation was giving me an ulcer. Doctor Google had warned me I was in serious danger of internal bleeding and a perforated stomach. Eden had caught me Googling ‘death by perforated stomach’ and recommended I drink more whiskey. While I assumed she was joking, I had, in fact, taken her word for it. This was probably why my head hurt almost as much as my gut. Or maybe I had a brain tumor?

Shit! I pulled out my phone to Google the symptoms of a brain tumor.

Agonizing pain in one’s head: check.

Nausea: check.

Blurred vision: check.

Mental confusion: check.

Personality changes… Hmm… I had been feeling depressed the last few days. And I couldn’t recall the last time I jacked off. Did that count?

Eden looked over my shoulder to see what I was reading and snorted loudly.

“Try Googling hypochondria.”

“Hypo-what now? Is that serious?” Fuck me, I didn’t need any more problems. Hypoconduit sounded awful. Did it mean I might start losing my mind? Before I could question Eden about the exact spelling, Milo’s phone pinged.

“They just boarded the plane.” We all breathed a collective sigh of relief.

“They got Thea, right?”

“Yeah.” The complete lack of inflection threw me for a moment until I remembered this was Milo. My friend had the emotional range of a slug.

“Oh thank God! Now I can relax!” Eden collapsed dramatically on the sofa and grabbed the remote control.

“What the fuck are you doing?”

“Um, what does it look like?” Her forehead scrunched up as she stared at me in confusion.

“We need to get to the airport!”

“It’s a three-hour flight. Cool your jets.”

“She’s right,” Milo confirmed, pulling his headphones off and shutting down his computer. “Three hours and 19 minutes to be exact, although there’s a headwind, so my calculations suggest they are due to land in two hours and 59 minutes.”

Eden wasn’t listening. I watched as she settled on some dumb-as-fuck reality TV show where a selection of fame-hungry men and women stayed in a villa on some tropical island while cameras watched them 24/7. It struck me as a hideous concept. Did these people not understand how fucked up fame was? How intrusive it was when paparazzi followed you every time you set foot outside?

As Lord Stuart Rothmore’s son, I’d always attracted a lot of interest, but since the sex tape, I couldn’t take a shit without someone trying to pap me. Now I knew how Cassian felt. And for him, it was a whole lot worse. To say my father was pissedabout the sex tape was no exaggeration, but it didn’t come close to Lucian’s reaction.

At least I wasn’t under house arrest with all my tech devices confiscated. Or so Lucian thought. I’d had no problems leaving the UK with our band of brothers. And Eden. Dad had barely spoken to me since the sex tape story broke. He’d been too busy consoling investors after news of this year’s Whiskey of the Year winner leaked, and funnily enough, it wasn’t a Rothmore one.

It was all bullshit. Our family was rich as fuck, irrespective of whether Rothmore won stupid awards. Deep down, I didn’t think my father was that bothered. He seemed more concerned that I’d gone against his wishes by not keeping Elaine on his side.

If he lost control of me, he no longer had a lapdog to order around. Isla wasn’t under his influence anymore, and my mom never really had been.

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