Page 65 of Evil Villain (The Royal Court)

“Huh,” Brayden said. “It’s rare that I’m not causing the fighting.” He smiled at Kyle. “It’s nice.”

Kyle wrapped an arm around Brayden and pulled him close, and I simply laughed. “Damn. The Royal Court has changed quite a bit. I don’t even recognize you.” Nathan was leaning his head against his hand on the arm of the couch. “You aren’t gonna do your weird king thing and simmer ‘em down?”

“I no longer have control of this train. I just have the prestige honor of sitting in the driver’s seat so that I’m the first one to hit the wall when we crash,” Nathan said flatly.

“Damn,” I said again. “I was about to ask what I missed, but I’m not entirely sure I want to know.”

“I’ll tell you what you missed,” Sicily said. “Avery would put me on her list.” He winked at Avery and smacked a kiss in her direction and Alistair shifted immediately. Sicily scrambled away with a yelp and sat next to the couch where Felicity and Concrete were. “It was a joke. Just lightening the mood.”

“Getting back to your question Deon,” Felicity said. “It sounds to me like your friends have been on quite the hunt for you. Some of the tactics they tried, I hate that I didn’t think of them first.”

“Really?” I asked. “All of you?”

Sicily nodded. “Colette has been my little tech monster. The rest of them have helped, but she and I have been checking pings off your unknown number for weeks trying to track you down.”

“And Brayden has put in a ton of work trying to find Connor,” Cherri added in. “Everyone is doing their part though. We’ve been working nonstop, it feels like.”

I looked at Colette and Brayden, the two people I might have previously considered the snobbiest, shallowest members of The Royal Court, and they were looking back at me with nothing but smiles. In fact, I could see it in all of them, they werehappyto see me. The Royal Court had not been my group of friends before everything went ass up. I had Cherri, and through Cherri I’d begun developing something of a friendship with Avery and Alistair, but other than that, I thought very poorly of all of them, Nathan included.

In just that one day, the one where everything changed, I realized that my understanding of The Royal Court wasn’t just skewed, it was totally off. When push came to shove, they dropped everything to rush to Nathan’s aid. Even Cherri, who had just had a horrible experience with Nathan, was committed to finding and saving him within 24 hours. These people, whether they realized it or not, were committed to each other in a way most people never found.

The fact that they extended that commitment to me when they barely knew me was a true tell of the wonderful people that they were. “Well, I’m appreciative,” I said. Squeezing Cherri around the waist, I smiled. “You guys kept my girl safe, you kept my brother safe, my best friend. You’ve been trying to stop my shithead sperm donor, and you’ve been looking out for one another. I couldn’t thank you as much as I wanted if I tried. Howdidyou eventually find me?”

“That was a combo effort between Sicily and Nathan,” Cherri said. “Nathan had a couple of Connor’s goons being held by some people he knew and they were able to swipe their phones. Sicily was able to break in and compare the info in their phones to the info he and Colette had gotten from the pings off the number you were calling Nathan and I from, and we realized you’d been near the prison. Once we realized you hadn’t gone back to prison, we guessed you must have visited and both Sicily and I remembered you mentioning Venom, so I went and spoke to him. He gave me Felicity’s address and here we are.”

“You met my dad?” I asked. “What’d you think?”

“He’s pretty great,” Cherri said. “He was super helpful and really nice. He loves you a lot, Deon.”

It gave me a warm, fuzzy feeling in my stomach knowing that Cherri and Venom had the chance to meet.

“Did you get anywhere with Connor?” Felicity asked.

“Not far,” Nathan said. “Like Cherri said, Brayden sort of broke his back trying to sort out his connection to Connor, but it led to a totally cleaned out warehouse in North Postings.”

Both Felicity and I sat up a little straighter. “A place Connor had been before?” Felicity asked.

“Yeah, but he’d completely cleared it out, even tore the walls down, by the time we got there,” Cherri said.

I looked across at Felicity. “Would this be helpful to Nico?”

She nodded. “Definitely. If he knows a specific place, he could find the guy.”

“Who?” Kyle asked.

I looked straight at Nathan. “Felicity and Venom know a guy that has about as many connections as Connor does. We currently have him hot on Connor’s trail, and he’s getting close. Knowing an actual warehouse that Connor had used though. That’s golden information.”

“Can you write down the address for me?” Felicity asked. Nathan immediately pulled out his phone and started flicking through it. When he found the info, Felicity gave him her number and he sent the info over. She smiled up at me. “As soon as we’re done, I’ll go tell Nico.”

That was when it hit me. These were my friends and the brother I was so desperate to get back to. They’d managed to stay out of Connor’s clutches up to that point, and even if they hadn’t, adding me to the mix wasn’t going to make them anymoreof a target—they already had Nathan.

“Done,” I said quietly, then looked at Felicity. Cherri was in my lap, and I knew I couldn’t be separated from her again. Nathan was there, and I was excited to be back around him again. “I’ll be going back with them, won’t I?”

Felicity nodded. “I’ve been talking to them about everything. How safe they’ve managed to stay and the fact that they’re taking Connor head on, and I think that would be best. You’ve been wanting to go back to Cherri and Nathan this entire time, now you finally get to.” For some reason, that left a knot in the pit of my stomach. Cherri must have noticed it, because she started to rub my back and rested her head on top of mine. Tears slowly rose to Felicity’s eyes and I had to bite back my own emotion. “Dammit, Deon. I cried in the bathroom about this for like twenty minutes this morning just so I’d be okay. Don’t look so sad, it’s heartbreaking.”

“I am sad though,” I said. Concrete was snoozing in Felicity’s lap despite the loudness in the room, and Felicity looked so normal in her spot on the couch. “I liked this life too.”

“Getting shot aside?” Felicity asked.

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