Brayden scoffed and dropped onto the couch. “Well, that was anticlimactic.”
“Deon,” Nathan said. “It’s your birthday.”
I stood in silence for a moment, trying to wrap my head around that information. The last time I celebrated my birthday, I was still locked up, days away from getting out. Venom got cupcakes from the commissary and pretended the wrappers were candles because we couldn’t have real ones. He even forced me to blow out the fake flames.
Had it already been a year since that happened?
“Today’s the fifteenth?” I said.
“Uh huh,” Avery said, then she fanned out towards the table with the cake on it and a single present. “Happy birthday, and welcome home.”
“Wow,” Cherri said. “I didn’t realize at all.” She looked at me. “Happy birthday.”
I leaned down and kissed her, thinking that being reunited was about the best gift she could give me. “Thank you.”
“Actually, none of us really realized it was already that late in the summer. Sicily still thought it was June,” Nathan said.
“For like three minutes,” Sicily grumbled.
“I opened my phone when Nikki called me to tell me where you guys were and I saw the reminder on my calendar. So we threw this together. It’s not much, but I hope you like it,” he explained.
I set a hand on Nathan’s shoulder. “It’s awesome. Thank you.”
Like them, the day of the year had been totally lost on me up that point. Part of me felt bad for denying Felicity the joy of celebrating with me, but maybe her not knowing made it at least slightly easier to let me leave.
I approached the table and a smile slowly came to my face. The present was a very small box, and I picked it up and turned around to face the group. Nathan nodded his head at me and said, “Open it,” and I lifted the top off. Inside was a key ring with several different keys on it. I pulled it out and Nathan walked over. “This key,” he said as he grabbed a brand new silver one, “is for the front door here.” He grabbed the next one. “For Nikki and my house in the back.” The next key was a wider, brass key. “This is the key to your office at L.C.E.” Then he grabbed the last key. “And this is the key to your new Tesla. It’s still registered in my name until your name is cleared, then I’ll transfer the title.”
“Wow,” I said. “I… wow. Thanks.”
“Hey, uh, Avery, Ali. Would you guys be willing to bring me to visit with my parents?” Cherri asked suddenly. “I’d like to let them know we found Deon. Nikki, Brayden, will you guys come too? I want them to meet you.”
Alistair nodded. “Of course.”
Brayden and Nikita both smiled at me and gave their own nods of affirmation. Cherri walked over to me, gave me a quick kiss, and then the four of them left without another word.
“I’m exhausted, so I’m gonna go nap for a bit,” Kyle said, leaving the room shortly thereafter.
“Sicily, we probably should clean up our mess,” Colette said. “Jax can help.”
Jaxon let out a frustrated sigh. “I guess.”
“Yeah. Let’s do it!” Sicily led the way out of the room, tapping me on my shoulder as I passed, and then I was left with just Nathan.
“That wasn’t subtle,” Nathan said.
“No, but whatever,” I responded.
Nathan pointed outside. “Wanna go talk?”
“I think that’d be good.”
Nathan led me over to the sliding glass doors in the back of his house, then we walked down the winding path to the very same gazebo where Nathan had caught Cherri and me before. It was one of the nicer gifts he’d ever given her, knowing that she loved a quiet, natural place to sit sometimes, so it didn’t surprise me that he’d kept it.
“I’m honestly a little shocked to see you still living here,” I said. “After your mom and Connor, I’d have thought you would have left a you-shaped hole in the wall.”
“I thought about it,” Nathan said. “But I don’t hate it here. I completely renovated the inside and it’s sort of the official house of The Royal Court now.”
“You’re like one of the social media groups that all lives together and films crazy videos,” I said.
Nathan nodded. “I never realized that, but it’s pretty on brand for us, honestly.”
I snickered. “Maybe y’all. Not me.”
“Well, there’s a room for you up there too, so get used to it. You’re one of us now, whether you like it or not,” Nathan said.
I sighed. “Is it weird that I sort of like it?”
“To be fair, I did offer you a position in The Royal Court before,” Nathan said.
“Oh, you mean when you cleared out an entire classroom, sat on top of a desk like some sort of shitty dictator, and threatened me?” I said. “Can’t imagine why I turned that offer down.”
He rolled his eyes. “Fair.”
“I’ve learned a lot about our father,” I said. “Venom, our meeting behind bars wasn’t just random. He used him to frame me for the death of some random guy. Apparently Felicity is one of the many women he’d manipulated and he was able to use her to get to him.”
Nathan’s nostrils flared with anger. “I shouldn’t be surprised. I’ll do you one better. He handpicked Cherri years before you met her. He moved her family here, intentionally near you. It’s still uncertain if his original plan was for her to be with you, or if he always intended to have me snatch her from you, but regardless, he’d been in control over her family from even before she moved here.”
“God,” I barked. “This guy is a fucking piece of shit.”
“No disagreements there, but I do have to say, sometimes I find myself being a little, I don’t know, grateful. I mean, if it weren’t for him, Cherri wouldn’t be here. I wouldn’t know any of my friends. Hell, who knows if you and I would have ever met. For all his fucking around with us, he did leave a little bit of good in his wake.”
“I suppose,” I said. “I’m not acknowledging that to him though.”
“No, never,” Nathan replied. “No, next time I see him, I’ll be taking him down, and that’ll be it.”
“We have to keep him alive,” I said, and Nathan’s eyes widened at me. “I know, but he’s the reason Venom is locked up. The only way he’ll be able to get out is if we can prove that Connor was on bullshit when he was working with Venom. If we kill him, there will be no way to do that.”
“I really want him dead, Deon,” Nathan said. “He killed my mom.”
“I’m not saying anything specific, I’m just saying, once he’s locked up, Venom’s men will have access to him and it probably won’t be pretty. I want him six feet under too, but if we jump the gun, we’ll never be able to clean up all the messes he’s made.”
Nathan sighed. “I guess I’d better get started on trying to come up with a new way to entice him to do what we want, if it’s not going to be a barrel down his throat.”
“Thanks,” I said.
“Wanna hear something else insane?” Nathan asked. “You are an officer of our company.”