Page 74 of King of Lies
The piano strains of an old Billy Joel tune fill the car softly, reminding me that life isn’t sunshine and rainbows and I need to remember that more hard knocks are handed down than not. And I should have already learned this particular lesson long before Rhys Alexander crashed into my life and made me fall in love with him.
But that’s just how it goes.
My phone rings and I press my eyes closed. I know exactly who it is. I don’t want to answer but that’s not right. I owe him an ending. I slide my finger across the cool glass to unlock it.
Chapter 29
Keep her safe
Rhys
Ishouldn’t have come on this trip; it was a fool’s errand. I promised my dad that I would find out who was leading the Golden Serpents, a European based global faction undermining independent nations with the goal of global power.
When I was twenty-one, my father first told me the ways of the world, and how it was our sworn duty to protect our nation and its people. I laughed in his face. It sounded like a bad G.I. Joe movie. But then he told me of their history, and ours as the world’s guardians.
It was also when I found out that my stepmother and my father were not a love match, instead an arranged match for power and alliances. I didn’t know that my dad could be so cold and callous like that, until recently when he handed me three dossiers of young women connected to other powerful guardians and told me to pick a wife. I thought he was mad. Now, I can’t imagine my life without Stella in it.
We kept my brother, Taylor, in the dark for as long as we could. He doesn’t know about Stella or the other two women I was supposed to court. I took one look at her in that book shop in America and knew that she was the one. It also helped to know that her parents were murdered by the same group as my mother and, now, my father. We have so much in common and she has no idea.
I definitely didn’t expect to fall in love with her. Maybe eventually a mutual respect and companionship, but Stella is it. She says I have caveman behavior but it’s only for her. She does something to me to make me be this … primal. I need her in a way I have never needed another woman.
In fact, I should be with her now. There is no new information to be had from these people. This was a waste of fucking time.
My phone rings and I pick it up with frustration. I see Leo’s name and answer it immediately, “Aye.”
“She’s leaving,” he says instantly, and my blood runs cold.
“Excuse me.”
“She’s leaving,” he repeats. “I tried to talk her out of it but she’s in a state.”
“Well, distract her,” I order. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
“She’s called for the car.”
“What’s happened?” I demand.
“She knows,” he says. “I have my suspicions on who, but someone slipped her the dossier the king gave you on her along with some other more … unsavory photos of your previous transgressions.”
“Fuck,” I bite out.
“That’s about the way of it.”
“I don’t like this,” I tell him.
“I don’t either,” he says. “She’s coming now. I have to go.”
“Keep her safe. It’s your number one priority.” Because I don’t know what I would do in a world without her.
“Always,” he says and then he rings off.
He says he has his suspicions and I do too.
Just before my father died, he told me not to trust my stepmother along with a lot of other information I never knew, including the fact that she’s been fucking my brother under our father’s roof for the better part of a year. He was right. Even before he was murdered—and hewasmurdered, healthy vibrant men in the prime of their lives with teams of personal doctors don’t just waste away like that unless they’ve had some help. In this particular case, that help was poison. Seems Stepmummy doesn’t like to get her hands dirty.
The murderous bitch.
She’s been all over me ever since I brought Stella home, and last night, when she spilled half a bloody bottle of her perfume on me, I had no doubt she was hatching a plan. It became clear to me what that plan was when my beautiful bride-to-be turned her lush curves away from me for the first time since we met.
