Road To Fire (Broken Crown Trilogy #1) - Maria Luis Page 0,69
Angeles. Sunny, fun LA, land of celebrities and sandy beaches. Or so I’ve been told.”
I go still, watching her closely. “Then your parents died.”
She nods curtly, wrapping her arms around her middle as though she can contain all of her hurt. “They were down to visit me from York, the way they did every other month. I was at work, of course, over in SoHo—I’m a recovering workaholic, in case you missed that memo. They wanted to visit Big Ben, and I waved them off that morning.” Her features crack, her mouth quivering with anguish. “I thought nothing of it, Saxon. I stood in my kitchen, rinsing their plates from breakfast, and waved them off. No hug. No kiss on the cheek. No mentions of I love you or Be safe before the door closed shut behind them.”
Christ.
Words, forever elusive, escape me. I stand there, mute, and watch devastation sweep over her as though she’s stuck in a time warp, doomed to experience that day all over again and suffer the emotional fallout.
“I was on the phone with a client when my coworker shoved her mobile at me and pointed at the article she’d pulled up. I barely gave it another thought. A protest breaking out in London? It’s not like that’s anything new. But this . . .” Swallowing, Isla furls her hand into a fist and brings it to her mouth, waiting, gathering her thoughts. A single tear slips over her cheek before she swipes it away, like its very existence embarrasses her. “They never came home. I waited up all night, one eye on the clock as annoyance burned away to worry and worry finally spiraled into fear.”
My fingers itch to reach for her, to drag her into my arms and offer comfort that I haven’t received myself in years, long before our return to England. The last person to hug me was Guy. The time before that? Pa, the day King John scarred me. Age-old self-restraint keeps me chained to the table, immobilized. “When did you find out they’d been killed?”
“The next day. Half-past six. The sun had barely risen when I heard banging on the front door. Foolishly, I thought”—she offers a bitter laugh—“well, I thought perhaps they’d had a wild night out in the City. Gone to a play, perhaps, or rode the London Eye. Mum begged Dad for years to go on it but he never wanted to spend the money. Seeing two officers standing there instead, with pity on their faces, was all the news I needed. They were dead, I was alone, save for Peter and Josie, and the world as I knew it ended.”
I’d felt the same when Pa was murdered.
Henry Godwin may have failed, big time, in finding Princess Evangeline’s killer, but his death turned our family upside down. His replacement at Holyrood ushered us out of England within days, setting us up in a hovel of a flat in Paris.
“It’ll only be temporary,” Jayme Paul told us as he led us into our new home, “just long enough for us to know that whatever Henry did or didn’t do won’t end up on your heads.”
We had nothing. Little money beyond what Holyrood sent us monthly. Paranoia that accompanied us each time we fled the dark flat in search of sun and fresh air. In London, at least, Pa had made the most out of our tiny home in Whitechapel. He hung pictures on the walls; cooked us horrid-tasting meals that we pretended to eat happily before spitting out into our napkins when he glanced away; and he tutored us, daily, sitting down every morning to go over our maths and history, since boys who don’t exist on record can’t exactly attend school without raising eyebrows.
Mum, God rest her soul, hadn’t been able to even move from the loo to her bed on her own, let alone keep three boys under the age of fourteen on the straight and narrow.
Guy fed us; he clothed us.
He stole what we needed to survive, never uttering a word of animosity when Damien cried because he was hungry and I asked, time and again, when we could return home to London.
Guy had been saddled with two brothers to raise on his own. Instead of crumbling under the weight of expectation, he gave us more than we could have ever dreamt of. He taught me to use my fists, as well as my wits. He snuck Damien into local classes because our youngest brother