Broken Empire A Reverse Harem High School Bully Romance - Callie Rose Page 0,12

That’s Adam Pierce. He became friends with your mother and her group of friends in college. He wasn’t a classmate of theirs at Oak Park. He came from… lower stock.”

My eyebrows flew up at her words. God, does she have any fucking idea how stuck up she sounds?

“You mean he was poor?”

“No.” She shook her head, pursing her lips. “He had money. But he was from newer money. Just a different caliber of person, that’s all.”

I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from snapping at her. The hallway suddenly seemed too crowded with both of us in it, and her gentle, floral perfume seemed to stifle me. I cleared my throat, carefully avoiding looking at her. “What happened to him?”

“Adam?” She let out a breath, waving a dismissive hand. “I don’t know. He was never truly part of the group, I don’t think. He wasn’t from around here, and he left just as quickly as he appeared.”

Jesus. She could even make “wasn’t from around here” sound like an insult. As if being born anywhere but Roseland automatically made someone a lesser person.

I glanced back at the picture again, taking in the entire group of my mother and her school friends. I wondered for a moment what they had been called. Had the student body at Oak Park known them as royals too?

Despite the assistance of the crutches, my good leg was shaking and my body was starting to ache. I had several bruises on my left leg, although no bones had been broken.

“You need to lie down.” Jacqueline’s voice was sharp, and when I glanced over at her, she was finally looking directly at me. Her lips were pressed into a line, but something like worry darkened her eyes. “You shouldn’t have walked up three flights by yourself. To—do what? Look at a photograph? If you want something, send Avery or one of the others to get it for you.”

“I wasn’t gonna make Avery take a framed picture off the wall and bring it downstairs just so I could see it,” I muttered, backing away from the picture in question and turning to head back down the steps.

“Why not? That’s what she’s here for.”

Jacqueline followed closely behind me, and when I started trying to navigate the steps down with my crutches, she gave a tsk.

It was more awkward going down than coming up; I had to hunch over to place the rubber ends of the crutches on the step below, and the action made me feel like I was about to pitch forward and tumble down the staircase. After only a few steps, I stopped, breathing hard.

“Oh, for—”

My grandmother’s heels clicked as she came up beside me and tugged the crutches out of my hand, wrapping her arm around my waist to support me. She laid them gently on the stairs, then secured my arm around her shoulders.

“My crutches—” I cast a glance back over my shoulder as we took a step down.

“Leave them. I’ll send Avery up to fetch them.” There was a beat, then she added, “That really is what she’s here for, Talia. And we pay her well for her service. You don’t have to be afraid to ask her for help.”

I didn’t quite know what to say to that, or to the fact that my grandma had apparently thought she needed to explain herself to me. So I didn’t say anything.

It took what felt like a thousand years for us to reach the ground floor, and when we hit the flat surface, we both let out twin sighs of relief.

She helped me hobble the rest of the way to my room and deposited me on the bed. As I crawled up the mattress on shaky arms and legs, she crossed to the dresser and collected a few pills. Then she grabbed the glass of water from the nightstand and handed it all to me.

“It’s a little early, but I think you’ll be all right to take these.” She watched me until I swallowed them, then took the glass back and set it down. “I’ll have Avery bring down the crutches. And if there are any other pictures you want to look at, let her know. She’ll get them for you.”

There was a mildly chastising tone to my grandmother’s voice, and she glanced at me once more with an assessing gaze before she turned and left.

I lay propped up on the bed, staring after her and wondering what to do with that small, reluctant show