Page 80 of Royally Ruined

There were a few other women, too, no doubt daughters of the family. One young woman with cinnamon-colored eyes glanced at me, then let her attention glide toward Hawthorne. She stiffened, ducking her head and pretending to be invested in her chocolate strawberries.

“Do you know her?” I whispered to him as we sat near my father at the head.

Thorne shrugged, rocking back in his chair with a vague smirk. “Don’t think so. Maybe I’ll have to get her number. Unless we aren’t allowed to sleep with the enemy?”

Kain elbowed him. “Fucking hell, man.”

Maverick arrived at his chair. At every meeting I’d been to, our guests had risen at the sight of my father. Here, not a single chair scraped backward. I felt the air vibrate with anticipation: Would my father say something? Would Kurtis buckle?

Lifting his eyes slowly, the head of the Valentines smiled sweetly, cleared his throat, and stood. The rest of his kin copied him instantly, well-trained monkeys. “Maverick Badd,” Kurtis said smoothly. “Thanks for hosting us.”

“Sit,” he said, settling at the head of the table. “There’s no need for pretense here.”

Kurtis’s smile twitched, and he and the others sat again. It was a power move to make them all stand and then pretend it wasn’t needed. “I appreciate pretense. Keeps things peaceful.”

“Peaceful!” I snapped, unable to stop myself. “That’s what you’d call letting Darien run around like a rabid animal because he was humiliated by his mistakes?”

Across from me, the gold-eyed stranger covered his mouth and chuckled. Kurtis glared at him, hissing a quick, “Larchmont.” Then he faced me with that fucking smile. “Costello, correct?”

“You know who I am,” I replied coolly.

Kurtis linked his hands. Everyone was watching us. “You say that with some accusation.”

“Are you daring me to formally accuse you?”

His eyebrows inched upward. “We believe in evidence here, hm? I admit that we’reveryembarrassed by the lie Darien spread that caused so much fuss for you all.”

“That’s putting it mildly,” Thorne mumbled.

“But,” Kurtis went on, not slowing down, “the recording graciously obtained by your local PD has cleared things up. So maybe you should speak plainly and tell us what you can factually say I’ve done to wrong you?”

I started to lean forward. From the corner of my eye, I caught Maverick’s warning glare. With great control I pulled myself into my chair and straightened up. “I ran into several men at that warehouse. One of them attacked me when I was nineteen. The other was a cop who claimed to be working for you.”

“Which cop?” Kurtis asked politely.

His smile was turning my stomach. Maverick spoke first. “Horace Max.” My father glanced from me to Kurtis, then to the rest of the table, as if forcing them to be included. “We looked into him once he was booked into the Boston jail for questioning. He’s the same man that tricked my daughter into falling into a trap set by a man named Romeo Frisk.”

My knuckles ached from how I was gripping my knees under the table. The longer I sat across from the same people who were responsible for so much of the strife in my life and my family’s lives, the harder it was not to leap across the table and dig a fork into their skulls.

It wasn’t Kurtis who spoke, but his wife. Valencia’s eyes were hooded, as if she were fighting sleep. She slid them my way. “This man, Horace, do you have any proof he was being paid by us?”

“He told me—”

“Proof,” she said, cutting me off. Her tone was low and soft, making me strain to hear her. “You could be lying. He could be lying. How do any of us know?”

Heat washed up my neck. “I wouldn’t lie.”

Across from me, the gold-eyed man—Larchmont?—chuckled. “Sorry, but didn’t you lie to your whole family for weeks about that girl? What was her name again, Whiskey?”

“Scotch,” I hissed.

“Same difference.” He picked at a finger sandwich, slowly dissecting it on his plate. “Your own family can’t trust your word. Why would we?”

I was boiling with hate, working at my tongue with my molars as I thought over my response. Hands came down loudly on the table, jostling the silverware. Francesca was half standing, her eyes wild. “If he says this Horace guy was working for you, then it’s the truth!”

Disbelief left me speechless. She looked at me, then away quickly, sitting with her nose in the air. Larchmont eyed her with a twisted smirk, wiping his hands on a napkin. “Such certainty!”

Voices started to break out at the table, people getting riled up by this push and pull. Maverick’s fist on the tabletop was far sharper than Fran’s hands had been. In the sudden quiet he said, “Enough. You ask us for proof, but maybe we should get down to the why of all this. You tried to use Darien’s blunder to instigate a war between our families. And if everything about Horace is true, you attempted the same ten years ago. Why?”

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