I would kill them. One by one. Slowly and painfully. And then I would drink myself into an early grave. Or court death until it found me somehow.
“Tell me everything,” I commanded, instinctively taking charge. “Get Maria in here. Get the homeschool tutor. They might know something. Are you tracking her phone?” I barked out, wondering if these idiots had their heads completely up their asses.
“We just realized they were gone,” one of them stammered. I wanted to ask him what the fuck he’d been doing this whole time if they hadn’t laid eyes on her for an hour. But I didn’t. I was too busy calling Cain and getting Trace to track her phone. I hung up and started pacing, knowing the next few minutes would be agony.
With any luck, I would have a location in ten. I would know if she’d done this deliberately. I would know if she’d been taken. I’d know if she was dead or alive.
If she had done this to amuse herself, or to torture me, there would be repercussions for that, too. I prayed that was true. I could handle that. I could go on living.
The world would still have those two beautiful girls in it.
I put my head in my hands and tried not to curse at the sky. Tried not to rail at God and the heavens. It was too soon to go down that rabbit hole. I didn’t know the situation yet. But there was a terrible, foreboding feeling in my gut.
Where the fuck had they gone without their guards? And why?
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Francesca
“Do they always have to follow us?”
I looked at my daughter in surprise. That was the last thing I had expected her to say. But I could tell it wasn’t a casual question.
We had been snuggling in bed, watching morning cartoons and eating breakfast. Angelique was just getting to the age where she cared what she wore. So we were talking about going shopping.
“The guards?”
She nodded, her pretty little face somber.
“What bothers you about that?” I asked, pulling her closer and nibbling on her hair like a giraffe to make her laugh. “They are there to keep us safe.”
“People stare,” she said after a pause, tentatively. As if she was afraid to tell me. Her soft voice was serious. She sounded so adult in that moment, it nearly broke my heart. “They know we are different.”
That gave me pause. I couldn’t lie, I knew exactly what she meant. I knew how she felt, more than I cared to admit. She wanted to be normal. How much I related to that! I remembered being a little girl, alternately embracing being different from other people and being special and wanting to escape it all.
Wanting to fit in.
That feeling grew. Especially as I got older. I recalled wanting to buck the system for the first time when they forbade me from seeing Vincent. From being friends with him. That happened when our family stopped being on good terms with his.
I pressed a kiss to her hair.
“What if we sneak away for a little while?” I asked, knowing my team would never agree. No one would agree. In fact, it would piss off literally every person under my roof.
One in particular, who wasn’t here at the moment.
Vincent would lose his ever loving mind if he knew what we were planning.
But if we just snuck out to a few shops . . . if we came back before anyone noticed . . . what would be the harm?
My girl deserved a day off. A day of freedom. After what we’d been through, we both did.
And I didn’t want to share this rite of passage with anyone. Especially not my guards. I loved them all like family, but I wanted some mother and daughter time. Just us girls.
It sounded like heaven.
“Let’s get dressed. But leave your robe over your clothes,” I whispered. I knew all the tricks when it came to outsmarting the guards. It wasn’t easy, but it could be done.
Lord knew, I had snuck out a few times in my not-very-wild teenage years. I’d wanted to run amok, but I hadn’t had the courage to do more than wander around the city. I never had the chance to go to a party, sadly. Or to sneak out to see a boy. But I had gone shopping a few times and bought all kinds of clothes my father never allowed me to wear.
I smiled, remembering how I had danced around my bedroom to terrible pop music in trendy outfits and put on too much makeup. It was a necessary part of growing up, really. And there was no way in hell I was letting her do it alone.
Plus, it was time for my little girl to get her first training bra. I’d been looking online for new things for her. But this would be much more fun.