Queen of Quarantine (Brutal Boys of Everlake Prep #4) - Caroline Peckham Page 0,215

that urge in me.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Kyan growled beside me, but the woman ignored him, her eyes glued to me.

“You’re Adriana Munt,” she said.

“Um, no I’m not.” I glanced at Troy who was eyeing me with interest. “Who is this?” I demanded of him.

“This is Karen Munt,” he said.

“Your mother,” she added, smirking at me and my heart locked up as I refused those words with every scrap of my being. What kind of sick joke was this?

“No,” I said calmly, keeping my expression neutral as my Night Keepers stared at me from both sides. “My mother left when I was a toddler, she abandoned us-”

“Your father stole you and your sister from me,” Karen snarled, her eyes flaring with anger and my pulse thumped heavily in my ears as I shook my head.

“Bullshit,” I snapped.

“You’re not really one for drama, Father,” Saint cut in. “What is this about?”

“It’s as she says,” Troy replied with a shrug. “She is the girl’s mother.”

“Well, you know what?” I hissed at this bitch Karen. “I don’t give a damn who you are. If you’re standing beside that monster in those fucking robes, you’re my enemy and nothing else.” My heart pounded furiously against my ribs as I glared at her, rejecting her with everything I was. Even if what she said was true, I’d never had a care in my heart for a mother who’d walked out on me, so I wasn’t about to start caring about one who was a part of Royaume D’elite.

Karen’s nose scrunched a little as she regarded me. “You’re not listening, Adriana-”

“Call me that again and I’ll cut out your tongue,” I spat as Blake shifted beside me, violence pouring from his posture alone.

“Fine,” Karen sighed. “Tatum, then. Look, let’s go and speak in private. I’ll explain everything.”

“I’m not going anywhere with you,” I scoffed.

“And if you try and take her from us, I’ll kill all of you,” Kyan growled dangerously.

“And how will you manage that unarmed?” Troy asked as his creepy little friends released low laughs behind him.

“You’d be surprised what I’m capable of.” Kyan took a step forward and I pressed a hand to his chest, giving him a firm look to hold him back.

We were unarmed and there was no way I was going to let any of my Night Keepers die for me. The others were all tensing and grouping closer to me too and I knew they were just as desperate to protect me. But I wouldn’t see them throw their lives away. We couldn’t fight, we had to wait for an opportunity to run and the only way to give us any chance of that was to stall them. Troy gave a sharp nod to the men behind us and they moved forward to restrain my boys.

“Tell me right here,” I demanded of the woman who claimed to be my mother. “Tell me the truth.”

She sighed and Troy checked his watch impatiently. “Five minutes, then we must move this along,” he muttered.

Karen nodded, moving another step closer to me as she considered her words. “I have been working on projects funded by Troy and Royaume D’elite for years. Long before you or your sister were in my life. I fell for your father after we briefly worked in a lab together in Chicago. Of course, for the first few years of our marriage, he had no idea what my work really entailed, and I had no intention of telling him. He always thought of himself as so moral. He wouldn’t have understood the need for the things I was working on.”

“Like what?” I growled, forcing myself to tolerate this conversation as I glanced around, hunting for a way out, a gun, a plan.

“Biological weapons mostly,” she said lightly like it was nothing and my attention was snared, a violent jolt running through my chest.

“Like the Hades Virus?” Nash gritted out and she cast him a fleeting glance before turning back to me.

“Yes, eventually I created it. Though not before I had my daughters. It was never meant to be used in this country, not initially anyway. But then your father discovered what I was doing. He broke into my lab, God only knows how long he’d suspected what I was up to. And when he found out the truth, he couldn’t stomach it. He didn’t understand the need for the bioweapons which my people and I made and sold on the black market. It was too much for him to