“She’s right. They hire a whole team of people to make sure whatever kids attend have a blast. Especially the Christmas dinner. Last year they made a winter wonderland indoor playscape that looked like walking into a snow globe,” Shay explains.
Jamie squeaks, clapping her hands together.
This is how it should be.
She’s finally just being a kid, excited at the prospect of a party where she can play and be with her friends.
“Ky and Kell are going to flip when they find out about this,” she exclaims, bouncing in her seat. All thoughts of the tenders and fries gone.
“How’s school?” I ask. It’s been a while since we’ve sat down and talked.
She plucks a fry from her plate, popping it in her mouth and chewing before she answers. “Amazing, but weird. Like ever since you got picked or whatever, everyone’s tried to be my friend. But I don’t pay them any mind. They weren’t shooting with me in the gym.”
Shay chokes on her drink and quickly picks up a napkin to wipe the excess soda from her chin. “What do you know about that?”
Jamie picks up another fry and shrugs. “I’m just saying that none of them were trying to talk to me when I first moved here. I’m only hanging with my day-one friends. Not the ones who want to be my friend because my sister got picked to play some weird game.”
“How do you know what’s going on?” I probe. I haven’t mentioned anything outside of why we had to move. I didn’t want them to know about the Selection.
“I’m not an idiot, Ry. We moved into some mansion out of nowhere. Then everyone at school kept talking about the heirs picking their choices for a wife. And poof, those same heirs are always around. Especially that red-headed one.” She pauses. “I like him best, by the way. If you have to pick one, make sure it’s him and not the broody one who walks around like he has a stick up his butt.”
I wonder which one it could be. It sounds a lot like Liam or Rowan.
Shay voices my question. “Which one is that? Long hair or short hair?”
“The one with the short black hair,” Jamie replies, then returns her focus to finishing her food.
Rowan. I snort. He definitely is a broody asshole. Lately, however, he’s been a bit nicer. He and Liam. They both have tried talking to me, or I catch them staring, especially Liam.
The look in his eyes when Karl was inside of me is definitely what I used to get off in the shower this morning.
“Ouch!” I shout, rubbing my shin with the back of my calf. “What was that for?”
“For the look on your face. Not in front of the kid,” Shay teases.
I cover my face with my hands. I know I’m beet red.
“No need to hide on my account. It’s not like I haven’t seen the look on her face before. She gets it whenever she’s thinking about one of the heirs,” Jamie confesses, and I want to slide under the table and hide.
“Eat your damn food so we can go,” I mutter, and Shay cackles.
Turning to Shay, I say, “Traitor. I’m deducting fifty points from your friendship points,” as I join her in laughing.
“You two are weird,” Jamie states, lifting her drink to her lips.
“Better to be weird than to be boring,” I rib before finally diving into my food.
We spend the remainder of the meal joking and discussing the upcoming holidays. This is exactly what I needed. Just a day with my girl to relax and forget for a moment that shit is still on the horizon.
LIAM
“You really should just keep me on the Fraternitas payroll, you know that, right?” Colt jokes.
“Right, because the Jacobis are so hard up for cash,” I retort, making him laugh.
Colter Jacobi isn’t what I’d call a nice guy- fuck, he and his twin, Cooper, aren’t even in the same stratosphere as the word nice, but they know their shit.
I’ve been working on this lead for the last few days, ever since that night.
I grit my teeth at the memory of Emma between Karl and August.
Fuck, my dick is going to fall off at this rate.
The lead on Madeline was a dead end, but it did get us a lead I’ve been working on for far longer.
Colt’s question jolts me back into the conversation. “Are you going to be at the big Groveton versus Lincoln-Wood game this year? You know that shit is going to be epic, and the parties are going to be even wilder,” he asks as his fingers fly across his keyboard.
I shake my head, “No, we’re not making it to Texas this year, not with all the bullshit going on here. When we’re at LWU next fall, we’ll definitely be on the field to kick your asses.”
That makes the psycho fucker cackle. “Right. Did you forget GU is literally number one in the nation? I mean, LWU is a close second, but…” he trails off.
I stick my middle finger up at the screen. I’m on track to leading Calloway to its fourth undefeated season as quarterback. “Whatever fucker. Were you able to find anything new?”
He and Coop have been working on helping me locate the bitch ass motherfuckers that attempted to kidnap me, and successfully kidnapped Karl, five years ago.
“Yeah, hold on, I’m sending you over a file I got from King.”
“Vasyl?” I question, and he nods, confirming it is indeed the crazy Bratva fuck.
My computer pings.
“Viktor and Aleksi Lenkov. Bottom feeders of the sex trafficking world. Viktor was killed two years ago, but Aleksi is hiding out in upstate New York close to the Canadian border. We still can’t find this Elena chick, but we’ll keep digging,” Colt states, reading off the rest of the information I’ve been searching for, for the last two years.
I snort at the irony that the brothers’ surname means defender of men. Too bad there will be no one to defend Aleksi from me-his brother escaped his fate by dying. He’s lucky I don’t find his grave and piss on it. Hell, after I question and kill his brother, I might do just that.
Colter interrupts my sadistic thoughts with his own favor.”Okay, is everything set for Eva Rose?”
New Book: Back Home to Marry Off Myself
Loredana’s father left the family for his mistress, leaving them to fend for themselves abroad. When life was at its toughest, her father showed up with “good news” after 8 years of absence: To marry off Loredana to a paralyzed son of the wealthy Mendelsohn family.