Secret Beast - Amelia Wilde Page 0,3

voice is rising again and I struggle to bring it back down. “That will be so helpful.”

“We can all be helpful to each other, I think.” Caroline looks me in the eye, then Cash, then takes a step back so she can survey us both. “The two of you are adults. It’s time you impressed upon your father that he is a member of this family, and members of this family do their part.”

“We’ll talk to him, won’t we, Hales?” Cash winks at me, and I latch on to that wink like a lifeline. My dad doesn’t care about money. He doesn’t care about prestige. He cares about changing the world with his inventions.

Caroline could stop him from doing all that. A few well-placed words from her, and no investor in the country will work with him. I underestimated her. I underestimated how much it would matter if my dad wanted to spend his time working instead of socializing at the Constantine compound. I can’t let her crush him. Not the man who read to me every night before I fell asleep. The man who let me stand on a workbench next to him while he sketched out his latest invention. The man who hung my coat up for me not even an hour ago.

“We’ll talk to him tonight.” I put on my biggest, bravest smile. It’s directly proportional to my terror. I can’t let my father sign that deal. Whatever happens. “As soon as he gets home. Did you want to wait for him, Aunt Caroline, or—”

“No.” She tugs one elegant glove up to her wrist, then the other. “I have things to attend to this evening.” She leans across and kisses my cheek, then steps in to do the same for Cash. “Behave yourselves, you two. And give your father my best.”

2

Haley

Dad’s not home for dinner.

I put off cooking, hoping he’ll walk in the door with a bag of takeout.

“You have to stop going in there,” Cash calls from the living room to where I’m standing in the kitchen, staring into the sink like it’ll give me a plan for putting food on the table when anything could be happening to our father. “He’s not going to magically appear.”

I pace back out to the living room and check the driveway for signs of an approaching car. Nothing. “We have to do something.”

“There’s nothing to do.” Cash rubs both hands over his hair and sags back against the couch, neck cushioned by tensed arms. “Not until he comes home. Unless you want to attack the Morelli family. If we start a war, maybe no one will wonder what Dad was doing.”

“I’m not saying we attack them.” We don’t have a lot of options for doing that, anyway. A bunch of kitchen knives and some half-finished inventions. I have a wild, ridiculous vision of charging at them with the color-changing wind chime. “I’m saying we do something other than sitting here.”

“You haven’t been sitting,” Cash points out. “You’ve been walking back and forth from here to the kitchen for two hours.” He’s not even pretending to look at his laptop. I’ve been pacing, but Cash has been holding his empty coffee cup for the better part of forty-five minutes. “He’ll come back.”

“I don’t think he will.” I’m headed for the stairs to his workshop before I realize what I’m doing. Footsteps come along behind me.

“What are you looking for?”

“He had to write down the address. He wouldn’t have remembered it otherwise.” The workshop is a long, wide space, with workbenches along the back wall. Lights attached to moving bits of metal and plastic give the space a dim glow. I find the light switch without looking. Dad replaced the fluorescent bulbs with special ones that are meant to mimic sunlight. He claims this means he can work longer hours without missing the benefits of being outside.

I push away the morbid thought that he might never be inside our home again and concentrate on the notepads.

Yellow legal pads. White scratch pads. One from the grocery store that they gave out last Valentine’s Day. Most of these are piled up near Dad’s computer, wedged into a corner of the workbench. Pages on pages of notes.

And on top of all the notepads—his phone. My shoulders drop.

“What is it?” Cash asks.

“Dad’s phone.” I pick it up and hold it high so he can see it. “He left it here. We can’t even call him. What if he stalled somewhere? What if he’s stranded on