Page 57 of Royally Ruined

Fire burned all around us. I sliced Lula’s bonds and pulled her into my arms. The tape was gone, her voice broken in my ears as I considered the black room that would kill us if the men didn’t first. “Help me,” she groaned. My strong sister was frozen with fear. I saw bruises on her arms and rage infected me—what had they done to her? “Please, help me. Tell me it’ll be all right.”

“It’ll be fine,” I whispered, knowing it wouldn’t. Something clicked; it was another gun, and I didn’t know where it was. Bullets hammered off the wall beside my cheek. We couldn’t turn toward the exit—they’d shoot us in an instant. Ducking, I began to run deeper into the mill. There were the stairs leading to the second floor. Hurrying up them, I felt a wooden beam splinter next to me—a bullet. Then another. Flames glowed in the stairwell, smoke thicker than cream chasing us patiently wherever we ran. It was dark outside, the stars taunting us through a long wall of dusty windows.

In my arms, Lula coughed. We were going to suffocate. After all I’d done, it still wasn’t enough.

Then I looked at the windows again.

“Do it,” she croaked, reading my mind.

“There’s nothing to break them with, Lula!”

“Do it!”

She was telling me to risk our lives. That she was okay with it, even if I wasn’t.

Holding her close, I tried to shield her as we jumped through the glass. The frame exploded, shards of the window spinning like razor blades in the air. My eyebrow began to sear; one of the pieces had cut me open straight down to the bridge of my nose. I was blinded by pain, my ears ringing.

We landed heavily; she gasped and whimpered. Fuck, I hated to hear her like that.

Behind and above us, huge plumes of black smoke billowed. The mill was being chewed apart by the fire. I was sure that we were going to be chased, so I scooped Lula up and ran toward my car at the bottom of the hill.

It wasn’t until I set her in the passenger seat that I saw her wounds. Her whole front had been cut open, slashes decorating her body from collar to navel.

“I’m so sorry, Lula, I’m sorry. This is all because of me.” I was rambling and I couldn’t stop.

My sister smiled up at me, tears and blood staining her pearly dress. Why did she always have to wear white? It made her injuries seem even worse. She said, “No. It’s my fault. I did this.”

“Shh, you’re losing too much blood.”

“Costello,listen.” A hint of her haughty self returned. There was a fierceness in the set of her jaw. Even so, she couldn’t smooth the raw guilt in her fracturing voice. “I went to the police station. I was just trying to help, and you said not to tell Dad, so ...”

My heart shrank into a hard marble. I couldn’t speak. I only listened to her spill her shameful secret while I cranked the key in the ignition to get us away from there.

“One of the cops, he took me aside and said he could help. That he knew about the men after you, he’d been watching them.” Wincing, she pressed her arms to her stomach. I drove faster, my ears straining to listen. “He said I was in danger. That our whole family was, because of Dad’s legacy. Somehow he knew so much ... and he was so nice, so confident. He looked me in the eye and promised he’d go after the men who were threatening you. Then he insisted he drive me home, to make sure I got somewhere safe. He promised everything would be okay.”

In the mirror I saw the blood streaking down my face. Okay? This was anything but.

“Costello ... it’s all fuzzy. But I know what he did to me once we were alone on the road. That cop, he attacked me—tied me up. He delivered me to Romeo and his men.”

A dirty cop working for strangers who wanted us dead and didn’t fear the retribution of our family?

If I wasn’t in such a panic, I’d have looked at all the pieces of this attack and tried to make sense of it. All I could think about was getting Lula help.

My car’s tires streaked rubber over the parking lot in front of our estate’s huge garage. I was shouting for help before I opened the doors, my already-ragged lungs tearing more with my desperation.

I’ll never forget the horror in my parents’ eyes. Or the accusation in my father’s.

It was sometime later—after our doctor had arrived and patched Lula up, then tended to my wounds—that Maverick took me aside. We stood outside the door to the room Lula was resting in. I think he arranged that on purpose, knowing that with her so nearby, I’d be reminded of the incident and tell him all the details.

“What happened?” he asked me, his strong hands squeezing my shoulders.

His blue eyes rolled with fear ... with anger and barely contained disgust. He wanted to hate someone, and I knew that if I told him what Lula had done, there was a chance she’d take the blame for this.

Opening my mouth, I told my first lie. “I was in trouble, and I went to the cops for help. They set me up ... but Lula took the fall with me. This is my fault.”

My father’s lips spread out, thin and white. “You went to thecopsto solve your problems for you? Costello, I raised you better than that.”

“Yes,” I whispered. “You did.”

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