My house was tucked down a driveway that made me question having cars this nice. It was slightly up a hill and posed a problem if you didn’t know how to drive a lowered car properly.
Modern.
Lots of windows.
Private backyard I never used.
Bedrooms that were lifeless.
Plants and art my mother picked out, because she was overbearing.
Everything stark white, helping me contrast my darkness.
My closet seemed too quiet without her trying to sneak around.
Sneaking around Death’s closet seemed ironic. Vic set her up to fail, I just didn’t know why… yet. He eventually always shows his hand without trying.
Wearing a suit was the equivalent of putting me in a straitjacket. It doesn’t make me less crazy and feels too tight to begin with. At least Vic knew my taste enough to pick one out that was tailored and all black.
It was tradition that on night one, for dinner, we all wore suits with the snake pin attached to the lapel, showing proudly, like I was supposed to be.
The only people who were proud were the ones old enough to reap the benefits of being in a secret society. The rest of us weren’t privy to enough other than being their servants to the bigger picture.
Abigail never showed. No real shock there.
When you offer to see behind the curtain, most people don’t want to know the evil responsible for the world.
I would have thought less of her if she showed up here again, after me pointing a gun at her and being practically a stranger to her still.
At least she had brains to match that beauty.
Driving up was the best part. The mountains were covered in fog, the thick redwoods closed you in, and the roads were anything but straight. It was quiet out here, until we let the haunted run wild.
That’s when the quiet shrieked and echoed in my head. Most people didn’t scream before death; that’s a misconception perpetuated by fear—fear the Clave probably planted in the first place.
We wanted you scared.
We wanted you to be sheep to the slaughter.
We wanted to manipulate you in the only way that made you think it was your idea all along.
And the problems? Well, I took care of those.
My father was a descendent of all the men that came before us—albeit, dead now, making him in charge along with Vic, Khaos, and Bowen’s fathers.
The Clave bloodlines of the four families were tied together for life. Hate them or love them, but choosing your family wasn’t an option here.
My father, Roman Rothschild, wasn’t your typical dad. He wore heavy rings, and you only ever noticed when they were back handing you for being smart. Roman wasn’t afraid to get his hands dirty; he spent his youth in the same position as me: fixing, killing, lying…
Only better.
We weren’t cut from the same cloth though.
He enjoyed being the monster he was. I didn’t.
My car jarred against the small rocks covering the long driveway up to the estate: Balmoral Castle. It was bigger than actually needed gothic structure on a hilltop with no trees except to line the property.
It was beautiful, but held a lot of ugly. I made sure my outside, covered in tattoos, matched how ugly it was inside my head.
No deception here.
Putting my car in park along with the rest of the Porsches, BMWs, Audis, and other expensive toys, I sat there for a moment, contemplating not actually getting out until someone dragged me.
Fishing out the spare mushrooms I kept in the center console, I wondered if Abigail showing up at my house would have made it easier to focus tonight.
Protecting her instead of myself would have been easier.
Shoving a mushroom past my lips, I got out of my car in the suit I didn’t want to be wearing.
The Hunt was three days, consisting of a dinner filled with networking and gloating, a hunt of those we deemed problems, and a ceremony hailing the abundance we have been blessed with.
Three days of pure, unrivaled bullshit.
If I could sign the guest list and go home, letting them pretend I was there, I would.
The 4H was the party trick of this shit. Parading us around like we were a fucking circus act, born weird, so why not embrace it?
Funny how when you’re the party trick, freak, birth defect, etc., you can’t quite see it that way. You see it in a way that makes you feel like stagnant prosperity.
ABIGAIL
Jus and I shared an apartment in Venice. It was modest and big enough that it didn’t feel like we were colliding every minute or breaking the bank.
She was a good roommate in all her rebel vibes glory. She was always fighting some great injustice, which made her name kind of ironic, but everyone was afraid to make that joke. I was pretty sure she’d find a way to castrate you with just a look.
She wasn’t the kind of tough that was built on insecurities or the kind of tough that forced your eyes to roll back with annoyance at every soaked-in-sarcasm one-liner dropping from her mouth like punches. She was a bad bitch who just learned to use her magic for good.
That’s actually how we met: She was holding a protesting sign outside the town hall. I didn’t pay her much mind until the protesters stopped to berate me for supporting the senator inside where I needed to go… because that made sense.
One of the local officials had been just accused of sexual harassment, and the world hadn’t caught fire yet. Honestly, I was tallying the counts against men, and I thought for sure if we hit a certain number of offenses, we would see the scales tip in our direction.
Now, I wished that were true, but the sad truth of an office of all women and four men in power told me that it didn’t matter how loud we were. We needed to take matters into our own hands.
Jus saved me from the interrogation that day. She was the one that stopped the other women from turning on me, and who knows? She may have even stopped them from throwing food or paint if I didn’t heed their warnings.
“Spill. Why are you not on Vic’s desk anymore?” She uncapped the ice cream pints and dug spoons into the tops as I kicked my heels off.
Today was the most agonizing day of work I’ve had in too long. It dragged on like Vic probably willed it to.
“It’s a long story…” My voice was strained and jaw tight as the thought of explaining it again.
“What did you do to piss him off?”
“Not get in and out of Grimm’s house without being seen. Guess that’s all it takes. I’m not gonna argue with him. It’s their company, and if I like my paychecks, I’ll be quiet and sit pretty.”
“You have more power than you think…”
After taking one bit of the ice cream, I left it on the counter to run a bath. Every part of me was tired from being bored.
Grimm’s offer to join him at some secret event their families do was the most stimulating. He was my boss, and I was determined to have a say in where the lines were drawn this time. I wasn’t letting opportunity and power push me into breaking into someone’s house because my boss said to.
I only knew it was a secret, family, invite-only event, because I was the one who had the invites drawn up. Vic was practically giddy for months thinking of the event.
Fucking weirdo.
Who is excited for family events? Never mind whatever you call an event with their families in the secluded mountains for three days.
No, thanks.
Now that I lived in California with my family back in Chicago, it almost made me regret my own words mocking Vic’s happiness.