Page 54 of Unleash Hades
She placed her hands on the table, opening them palm towards me in a surrendering gesture.
“I chose you of all the Caledonia agents because I think that you have more skin in the game. That you and I are on the same side, and want the same results.” Then she became somber. Deadly serious. “It would make me very happy to see him away from the Laurent family. Both the ones born to it, and the ones adopted.”
The Laurent family, not the Davenport one.
Both Cali and Chloe had adopted their sons… surely she meant Cali’s twin brats too.
I took a deep breath, and nodded.
I had promised to keep them all safe. There was nothing left for us to say.
Chapter 17
Calissandra
JFK Airport, New York
The hum of theplane’s air conditioner set me on edge. There was no such thing as silence in the modern world. There was always a motor, machine, or electric current that ran through everything, even in the most rural of places. There were always cars, radios, machines, or even the slight hum of someone’s headphones as it rested in the conch of their ear.
There was nothing natural in my world. Everything was manufactured.
That was especially true of the plane to England. Unlike Richard, my boys and I flew commercial airlines - though we indulged in first class.
In many ways, my family considered England home. It was ancestral, after all. An old thing passed down in the family on my mother’s side.
Before I shepherded my boys into the towncar, I had dropped off food for Rafe, and told him I’d be gone. But the doorman would have breakfast for him while I was gone.
Today’s fortune cookie wisdom was, “Before you worry about the world, worry about the world that lives in you.”
I thought that was nice. Or maybe it was a criticism? I wasn’t sure.
“Did you call Aunty Chloe?” Romulus asked, his eager eyes gazing at me from his seat.
My little rule follower was already buckled in, a book in his hand as people in economy class shuffled down the aisle between us.
“Oh!” I said, as if I had forgotten that task. I hadn’t. I had just been putting it off.
My father had been French. Anglo-French. He had roots on both sides of the channel. But his ancestral home was Calais, and my mum was an English barrister. When my Mum passed from astroke, he leaned more into his roots. In a way, it was a crutch. He raised us in a way that made him more comfortable.
I smiled, thinking about how my sister had that adorable French accent. She sounded just like our father. Maybe I didn’t talk to her much anymore, but she did interviews. I had watched the footage of her kidnapping again and again. I tortured myself with it to feel the pain of our separation.
Feeling the pain was better than just the quiet absence.
And each time, I admired her strength, her stubbornness. I admired the way she stared death in the face and cussed it out in that beautiful voice.
“I’ll call her right now,” I said, pulling my phone from my purse, my shaking thumb hovering over the button.
“Coucou!” A high-pitched voice called.
Bellamy came, dressed from head to toe in green and gold phoenixes. His luggage matched his outfit as he placed it in the overhead bin. “I am so excited that you decided to tack our mission into your family trip.”
Bellamy belted himself into the aisle seat beside me, squishing me to the window.
“Yoohoo, Rom,” Bellamy said with a little finger wave. “Are you excited to go to Cambridge? Does the semester really start so early?”
“No,” my son said with a smile. “We’re going to the family house in Leeds first, and then mum is going on her trip. Are you… are you going that way?”
“No,” I said, at the same time Bellamy said, “Yes!”
