Page 13 of Evil Villain (The Royal Court)

“But you didn’t,” Kyle replied. He had a firm grip on Brayden’s hand and refused to let go. Regardless of the hits he’d taken, he was standing tall, unphased. “I didn’t die. None of us did. We know that you were backed into a corner.”

All of the fight in Brayden deflated and tears filled the corners of his eyes. “I thought you were going to die. I thought I killed you. Just let me leave. I don’t deserve—”

“Brayden!” Kyle snapped. “Look at me.” Brayden slowly lifted his head and looked at Kyle. “Why am I still here?”

“I don’t know,” Brayden said.

“Yes you do,” Kyle replied quickly. “Didn’t I already tell you? I’m not going anywhere.” My whole body covered with goosebumps as Kyle placed both of his hands on either side of Brayden’s neck and looked directly into his eyes. Brayden’s hands came up to rest on Kyle’s wrists, and all at once I realized that ‘a lot’ hardly covered what I’d missed. “They aren’t mad. I mean, they’re mad at the situation, but they aren’t mad atyou. They just want to talk. Will you talk to them please?”

“You won’t leave?” Brayden asked.

Kyle flashed a small, warm smile. “Where would I go?”

Brayden nodded and Kyle pulled his hands away from Brayden, but stayed close to him as they turned to walk towards us. With each step, Brayden dwarfed more and more between his own shoulders, but one he was close enough, I charged forward. He winced, but I threw my arms around his shoulders in a hug.

“Um,” Brayden said in my ear. “What?”

He never did hug me back, but I chalked it up to shock as I backed up and smiled at him. “Hey. I’m happy to see you.”

“Really?” he asked.

“Yeah. I’m glad you’re okay, and though I do want to hit you a little,” I admitted, “I’m not going to. Right now, you’re the best lead we have to finding Connor and Deon. If you’re sorry for what happened, at all, you’ll tell us everything you know.”

Brayden gave Nathan a sideways glance. Nathan nodded, then he looked back at me. “Okay. I swear. I’ll tell you everything.”

5

Deon

It was a quiet morning at Felicity’s when I finally woke up for the day. I’d gotten in the habit of sleeping until damn near noon, because each minute I spent awake, I hated that I wasn’t doing something to track down Connor. Felicity had spoken with Venom and he was working on getting one of his contacts in line to meet with me. Felicity had this contact’s info, but Venom insisted on talking to him first. While we were waiting, I’d settled into lounging around, which it turned out, I hated.

“Good morning,” Felicity said as I entered the living room. Concrete was laying on the floor in front of her and looked up with a happy pant as I entered the room. “Or rather, good afternoon.”

“Hey.” I walked in and sat down in one of the arm chairs and Concrete walked over for some pets, which he got. “Did you sleep okay?”

“I did. How about you?” I nodded and she smiled. “Good. Do you want me to make you something for lunch?”

“Maybe in a little bit,” I replied. “Have you heard from Venom?”

“Not yet,” she said. “He’s working on it, Deon. You just have to be patient.”

“Connor could be trying to kill my brother or Cherri as we speak,” I said. “I don’t like just sitting around. I want to do something.”

“Well, surely your brother has social media. Cherri too. Why don’t you use my computer to check on them? You can’t make contact with them, but you could see if any of them have updated recently so that you know they’re safe. Or what about your mom?”

The idea of at least being able to see Nathan, or possibly even Cherri or my mom felt like doing more than nothing. “Yeah. Okay, that’d be good.”

“Okay. Wait here.” Felicity stood up and walked out of the living room and returned a few minutes later with her laptop in hand. She opened it, entering her password, then she handed it to me. “I’m already logged in on all the major socials, so just browse around as me, and even if someone happens to see it somehow, they’ll think it’s just some random woman.”

“Thanks, Felicity.”

I started with my mom. She was old school and just had the basic posts and pictures page that everyone had when social media became popular. It was easy enough to find her doing a search of her first and last name, and relief quickly settled in when I saw that she had posted just earlier that day. I scrolled through her posts, noticing that her statuses covered the same basic things—food, thoughts on her favorite shows, frustrations with work—but then I came across one that confused me a little.

From about two days prior, there was a post about her being sad to say goodbye to her roommate. A few people had commented on it, mostly coworkers, but no one saidwhothe roommate was. Had my mom been living with someone? The entire four years I was locked up, she never got a roommate, why all of a sudden after I disappeared? Grief?

I spent a little bit of time scrolling through her page, trying to find any information about who this roommate was, but though she alluded to the roommate a few additional times over the course of a handful of months, she never said the roommate’s name or even mentioned a gender. It freaked me out a little to think that someone random had been living with my mom, but she didn’t seem to be forced into anything, and was sad they were gone now.

I’d just have to add it to the list of many questions that needed answering.

---