I had no frame of mind to know if the meetings he was discussing were boring or not, but my lips still parted and said, “They’re awful.”
Was this my real life? The one that I’d had all along? It seemed pretty nice. Living with Cherri, getting to work with my brother. Those were all things I’d dreamed of.
A pounding on the door had all of our heads whipping around. Cherri walked around the island and disappeared from the kitchen, and after giving Nathan a confused look, we stood up to follow. We were just about to pass through the door frame when Connor rounded the corner. He had an arm curled around Cherri’s neck, damn near choking her, with a gun pressed to her head.
“Cherri!” I bellowed.
“I’ve had just about enough of this.” Connor moved his gun briefly and shot at Nathan. Two bullets sunk into his chest, and he crumpled to the ground. I looked down at him laying on the ground, his eyes wide open, but he was unmoving and blood was spilling from his chest.
He was dead.
I looked back at Connor. “I’m gonna fucking kill you.”
I stepped forward, but his gun went back to Cherri’s head. “No, I don’t think you will. I’m going to kill you, and then I’m going to kill her.” He ran his gun along her face, pushing some of her hair back. “Though, maybe we’ll have a little bit of… fun first.”
“I’m not going to let you hurt her!” I screamed.
Connor pointed his gun at me. “You don’t have a choice.”
His gun fired and a bullet flew at me. “Deon!” Cherri screamed.
My head whipped up just as Felicity’s computer went smashing to the ground. Concrete let out a loud bark. The screen had a litany of colored lines flashing over it, and pieces of the casing were scattered across the kitchen floor. I’d broken it for sure.
“Fuck,” I said.
Images of Nathan’s dead body and Cherri being held by Connor were permanent fixtures in my mind. It was just a wonderful dream turned into a shitty nightmare, but I was shaking and sweating. Carefully, I started to pick up the pieces of the laptop and put them on the table. I’d have to offer to buy Felicity a new one once I was no longer on the run. Hopefully her stuff was backed up.
I glanced up at the clock above the microwave to see how long I’d been out and my heart stopped.
It said it was just after three in the morning.
“Felicity?” I called out, but there was no response.
In an instant, I abandoned the laptop and opened the door to the garage, but Felicity’s car wasn’t inside. She wasn’t back home yet, and it had been six hours. I rushed around the house checking all the rooms just in case, but there was no doubt about it, Felicity hadn’t yet been home. Dread filled my body as my mind started to imagine the worse.
Did someone trying to find me figure out that Felicity was the one helping me, and if so, did they snatch her or simply kill her?
19
Cherri
To say that I was overwhelmed by the information my parents had given me would be an understatement. After everything The Royal Court had all learned and unearthed together, there was still so much we didn't know about just how wide a net of manipulation Connor had cast. From my friends to my parents, he’d poisoned so many waters that I was beginning to think I’d never swim safely again.
But I wasn’t going down without a fight.
“Good morning, angel,” my dad said sweetly as I walked into the kitchen. “Mom and Gus are gone already. They had already planned on breakfast with one of Gus’ friends and his mom.”
“That's okay,” I said. “I would have felt bad if their plans got canceled because of me. I gotta get back to Nathan’s anyway. We've got a few new leads to follow.”
My dad was looking over his phone at the coffee pot, but glanced up at me at that. “Leads?”
“Yeah. We’re trying to find Deon and stop Connor.” I sat down at one of the bar stools. “Some people Nathan knows had some useful info, and my friend Sicily is trying to zero in on where Deon may be using an unknown number he was calling Nathan and me from.”
“Cherri, that sounds dangerous. If you have information, you should give it to the police and let them take care of it.”
“Connor has pull with the police. Any information we give them would just get back to him, and besides, Deon is still on parole from when the police conveniently assumed we had something to do with that dead body. If they catch him, they’ll drag him back to prison, and that’s only if they don’t turn him over to Connor first.”
“But—”
“Dad, I know this isn’t going to make you feel any better, but we’ve already been through much worse. We stick together and have people helping us. I’ll be okay. This is just something I have to do.”
My dad watched me with anguish, likely feeling both guilty and helpless. I got up and walked over to where he was standing and gave him a hug. He squeezed me so tight it started to hurt, and even when I tried to pull away, he held on.
Finally, he released me, but kept a hand resting on my arm. “Please be safe.”
“I will, and I’ll visit again really soon, I promise.” I stood up on my tippy-toes to kiss him on his cheek. “I love you.”
“I love you.”
With one last quick hug, I gathered my keys and phone and left.
Avery said she’d come back and get me, but it was still early and I didn’t want to bother her. I took a cab home instead. When I got inside, everyone was sitting around in the living room, apart from Sicily, who I assumed was upstairs.
“Hey,” Avery greeted as I walked in. “I told you I'd come back for you.”
“I know, but I wanted some alone time. The conversation with my parents did not go as I expected it to.” I flopped down onto one of the couches next to Avery.
“Did they take it really hard or something?” Alistair asked.
I looked across the room to where Nathan was sitting on the ground in front of Nikita. “Turns out, your dad handpicked me to be your trophy.”
The statement sucked the energy out of the room. “What?” Nathan said. “I picked you. To hurt Deon.”
I chuckled. “That's what he let you believe. I'm not sure why, but Connor wanted to hurt Deon long before you did. Maybe because of what his mom did? He promoted my dad and moved us near Deon, then he told my dad before Deon got arrested that he was unsafe, and that they needed to keep me away from him. Even his mom. Then not long after Deon went to prison, he promoted my dad again, and moved us out here to be near you.”
“You think Connor had something to do with Deon going to prison to begin with?” Colette asked.
Nathan sighed. “I’ve been thinking that could be the case for a while, but if he met and picked you out before that, he had something premeditated for long before I got mad and wanted to get my revenge on Deon.”
“Jeez,” Kyle said. “How long has Connor been manipulating all of our lives?”
“Since before birth,” Nathan hissed. “And I played right into it.”
“You didn't know,” Nikita and I said in unison.