Page 14 of Evil Villain (The Royal Court)

Once I was confident that I had an understanding of what my mom was up to, I turned my attention to Nathan, and his results weren’t nearly as inspiring. He, along with most the members of The Royal Court, hadn’t updated their social media much in the past six months. There was the odd passing selfie, mostly by Colette, and each of them had shared a memory or two of the year prior’s summer season, but I anticipated they were sharing them mostly in the place of a lack of those happy feelings this year.

I did see a sweet selfie of Nathan and Nikita which led me to believe that they were maybe together, finally, but there was very little to tell me how any of them were doingtoday.

“Disappointing news?” Felicity said, walking back into the room yet again with a bowl of chili. She set it on the table next to me and walked around to stand behind me.

“Just no news,” I said.

“No news is good news.” She pointed at the picture of Nathan and Nikita I was looking at. “Who are they?”

“The guy is my brother, Nathan, and that woman is one of his best friends of all time, Nikita. They look pretty friendly though, they may actually be together now,” I explained.

“Don’t sound so happy for him.”

“Well, I actually am happy for him, but he was supposed to be looking after Cherri for me, and I don’t know how much attention Nikita would let him pay to her.”

“How come?”

I thought of the one, brief interaction I’d seen Cherri and Nikita have and how contentious it was. “Not only do Nikita and Cherri not care for one another very much, but Nathan and Cherri dated for years.”

“Your brother dated your girl?” Felicity asked. “Knowingly?”

“Yeah, but…” I shrugged. “Connor is such a fucked-up man, I havenoidea how much of Nathan’s bullshit was him and how much was Connor manipulating him. I don’t even think I really know my brother.”

“You wanna get to know him?” Felicity said.

“I’d like to. We had about a year together when we were preteens, but I didn’t like being away from my mom. That’s what set Connor off I think, the fact that I left. Nathan’s apologized to me, and when we were kids we actually got along really well.”

“If you can just get Connor out of the mix, you two will be much better off.” She scoffed. “Hell, half the country will be much better off.” Then she slapped my shoulder. “Show me this girl.Cherri. You’ve talked about her nonstop.”

She wasn’t telling any lies. Sometimes I felt like as long as I said Cherri’s name from time to time it would keep her near me somehow. It was just like when I was behind bars, I did whatever I could to remind myself of the incredible woman that I once had. With any luck, she’d have moved on by now, but I’d always love her. Nothing would ever change that.

I navigated through Nathan’s friends list to Cherri’s page. There were no new pictures of her, and the most recent one was the selfie she took on the day of Nathan’s birthday party first semester. Her signature, long blond hair and crystal blue eyes were just as perfect as I remembered, and I would have given up anything in order to just hold her and talk to her.

“Oh wow,” Felicity said. “She’s a knockout.”

“Tell me about it,” I replied.

“Oh my god,” Felicity whined, then she pinched my cheek. “Look at you. Your expression got all soft and sweet. I didn’t think you were capable.”

“Shut up,” I grumbled, but a small smile came to my face anyway. “You see her. How could I not?”

“I hope I get to meet this girl someday. I gotta give her my mom once-over. How does yourrealmom feel about her?” Felicity asked.

“Adores her. You would too. I know it sounds cheesy and cliche, but she’s perfect.” Felicity put her hands to her mouth and I closed the computer. “Alright, we’re done with that.” I missed Cherri too much to continue having that conversation anyway.

“Do you feel better at least?” Felicity asked. She walked from behind me and went and sat down on the couch, with Concrete following her in search of head scratches.

“I wish I could call Nathan,” I said honestly. “The last time we spoke, Connor’s goons grabbed me, and he probably thinks I’m dead.” I looked at Felicity. “Nathan’s careful. He has to be using an untraceable phone at this point. I won’t share any information. Just call him from your phone and tell him I’m okay.”

“It’s not a good idea, D,” Felicity said. “Even if one person immediately knows that we contacted them, if Connor has people watching them, which he no doubt does, if they change pace at all in a way that would suggest you’re okay, they could snatch him, and then they’re just a call log away from knowing where you are.”

“We’ll tell him to del—”

“You know as well as I do that anything is recoverable on a phone,” Felicity said. “Unless you have a hyper hacker at your fingertips.”

A friendly face immediately came to mind. Technically, Nathandidhave a hyper hacker at his fingertips, but whether or not the two of them were even speaking to one another was a mystery to me. If hewasworking with Sicily, he’d probably already advised against answering unknown numbers, so it probably wasn’t going to work to call from Felicity’s phone regardless once I thought about it.

“Yeah,” I settled for.

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