Page 75 of Broken King

I shake my head. Tomorrow’s lunch may not happen if Kate doesn’t like what I have to say today.

“Not sure it’s going to happen yet. I’ll know later, though.”

Worry settles into Eleanor’s features. “Why? I thought it was all planned out and all you needed to do was decide what to eat.”

“It still may happen. I just won’t know until after this afternoon.”

She nods and returns to whatever she’s making. “Okay. Just let me know.”

As I try to calm my nerves about talking to Kate in a matter of a few minutes, Sabrina comes rushing into the room. Flustered, she flails her arms around but doesn’t say anything. I look over at Eleanor, but she doesn’t understand what’s happening any more than I do.

“What’s wrong?” I ask, unsure what could make her act like this.

In a frantic voice, she says, “Matthias and Ava went out for a little while, and I’m watching the boys. Matty’s taking a nap, but when I went to take Theo out of his crib, I couldn’t find him.”

“Couldn’t find him?” Eleanor says, echoing Sabrina’s exact words.

The nanny covers her face with her hands and sobs, “I couldn’t find him! He’s nowhere in the house!”

Jesus! What the hell could have happened to Theo?

I jump up, nearly knocking over my bottle of water. “He’s got to be here somewhere. He’s a baby. It’s not like he can go far. He can only crawl, right?”

Sabrina nods, dropping her hands from her face. “Yes.”

Eleanor quickly turns off the stove and pushes the pot to the back burner. “Oh my God! That sweet little baby. There must be some explanation for where he is, right?”

I don’t know who she’s asking. All I know is my heart’s racing a hundred miles a minute.

“You check downstairs here. I’ll check upstairs,” I say to Sabrina.

“Oh, I’ll look down here too,” Eleanor says in a teary voice.

“Then I’ll go upstairs with Ronan,” Sabrina says, following me out of the kitchen.

Racing toward the front stairs, I take them by two to the second floor, not bothering to wait for her. “Theo! It’s Uncle Ronan. Where are you, little guy?”

Behind me as I walk into the first bedroom that used to be Kellen’s, I hear Sabrina practically sob as she reaches the top of the stairs, “Oh, Theo! Where are you? Come out so I know you’re okay.”

After quickly rushing through Kellen’s old bedroom and bathroom, I don’t find the baby. Where could he be? The kid couldn’t have made it that far. How he got out on his own is another question. Isn’t Sabrina supposed to be watching him at all times?

I move to Matthias’s old room next, but a fast look in here and the bathroom shows Theo isn’t here either. With each second I can’t find him, I start to really worry. If something happened to little Theo, I don’t know what my brother and Ava will do.

Sabrina stands in the center of the hallway calling his name while I go into my room. Since I just walked out of here not ten minutes ago, I doubt he’s in here, but it can’t hurt to give it a check. As I suspected, the baby isn’t in this room either.

Heading out to the hallway, I yell downstairs to Eleanor, “Did you find him?”

The fear in her voice is palpable when she calls back to me, “No! You don’t see any sign up him up there?”

“No! Keep looking, and I’ll keep looking through the bedrooms.”

Now I’m really scared, so I storm into Marius’s room and find him kicked back on his bed wearing only a pair of black shorts watching some war movie. He gives me a look like he plans to tell me exactly where I need to fuck off with barging in on his private spot, but I immediately shake my head.

“Not now, Marius. Little Theo is missing. Sabrina said she couldn’t find him when she went in to get him from his crib.”

Horror fills his expression, and he jumps up off the bed. “What do you mean she can’t find him? He’s barely a year old, for Christ’s sake! He can’t even walk. Where could he go?”

I march into his bathroom and scan the room. He’s not here either.

---