Page 31 of Bitter Prince
Now Amon Leone? He would definitely be a candidate. I sighed dreamily. I really, really liked him. He was gorgeous, and something about him made my heart race every single time I thought about him.
It could be the men he killed, my reason warned, but I promptly shut it down. It was a minor obstacle, and obviously the other guys were bad guys, right? I mentally slapped myself. Maybe I was more like our father than I cared to admit.
“She just wants to make sure we’re alive,” I signed.
“If we answer our texts, we’re alive,” Phoenix pointed out. It was a valid point, but I wasn’t in the mood to argue.
“Here we are. All set,” Grandma’s husband announced. He was her fourth and richest husband. Grandma was rich too, but for whatever reason, she really believed in marriage, and just like every other aging movie star from the ’60s, she kept getting married. Phoenix and I joked that she was trying to beat Elizabeth Taylor’s number. After all, she was halfway there.
“Thank you, Grandpa Glasgow.” His silver-white hair and smiling face came into view and I waved. “How are you girls?”
“Good,” we both signed.
“What’s up?” I asked.
Grandma answered in ASL and spoke for Grandpa Glasgow’s benefit since he still struggled to pick it up. “Nothing. Can’t I see my granddaughters without needing a reason?”
“You saw us just last week,” Phoenix remarked. You might not have been able to hear it in her tone, but annoyance was clear on her face. I knew she felt like Grandma was suffocating her, making her feel incapable. She was plenty capable.
I put my palm on my sister’s leg and patted it, hoping it’d calm her.
“I want to see you every day.” Grandma’s eyes flitted to her husband who nodded his agreement to whatever those two had going on. “We want you two to come to the UK and spend the summer with us.”
I felt my sister stiffen and I did the same. I picked up an extra design class this summer, but it’d only keep me busy for three of the eight weeks. Scrambling for an excuse, I blurted out the first thing that came to mind. “We can’t. We’re going to Italy. Papà demanded it.”
Silence followed. Phoenix burned a hole in my cheek and I realized I didn’t sign for her benefit, which I remedied immediately. “I just told Grandma that we can’t come to the UK because Papà demanded we come to Italy.”
I gave her a pointed look. She nodded and turned to face the screen. “That’s right. He said we have to come. Or else—”
Grandma sat up straight. “Or else what?”
I groaned inwardly. Sometimes it felt like she lived to battle Papà on everything. She thrived on conflict, Phoenix hated it, and I wasn’t quite sure where I stood with it.
“Or he’ll come visit us here,” I quickly added, sharing a fleeting glance with my sister. “We’d rather not have him visit us here since he still thinks we’re living in school dorms.”
Grandma’s shoulders relaxed and she smiled. “We sure fooled him, didn’t we?”
“We did,” Phoenix agreed. “What’s new with you both?”
For the next twenty minutes, Grandpa Glasgow talked about his grandchildren—triplets, nonetheless—while Phoenix, Grandma, and I had to keep stifling our yawns. The triplets were cute, but we’d met them at the wedding and they’d thrown a gigantic tantrum. It was the best birth control ever, not that Phoenix or I were sexually active.
When we finally hung up, we let out a collective sigh. “I can’t believe we’d rather go to Papà’s place than visit Grandma,” I signed. “Italy’s the last place I want to go. Why couldn’t we have thought of something better?”
“Maybe we can just go for a few days,” Phoenix suggested. “Take everyone with us.”
Isla poked her head through the cracked door, her fiery curls framing her face. “Did I eavesdrop right and hear you say you’re going to Italy?”
A second later, Raven and Athena were busting into my room too. It took all of five minutes to make plans and another ten to confirm it with Papà in the group chat that we rarely used.
And the whole time, my gut churned at the thought of going back to where it all started.
17
REINA
Books, notes, drawings, and instruments were scattered all over our cozy apartment. There were even sticky notes in the bathroom. In French and English. I itched to clean and organize, but I knew the girls would kill me and then make new notes all over again.
So I’d wait until exams were behind us.
