Page 27 of Pretty Lethal
WILDER
“Here,” Kai says, setting a fancy-looking envelope in front of me where I’m eating my cereal at the kitchen table. “Was in the mail for you this morning.”
I lift it up, frowning at the eloquent, swirly script citing my name and address.
“Looks like a wedding invitation,” Emilia says from beside me, and when I glance her way, I find her also frowning at the envelope in my hands. “Who’s it from?”
I shrug, flipping it over and none-too-carefully rip it open to reveal an invitation.
Mr. Wilder Clearwater,
You are hereby formally invitedto the Clearwater’s annual Christmas party this Saturday, December 3rd at 7 pm.
I snort,tossing it onto the table. “Yeah, no thanks.”
“You should go,” Emilia says, retrieving the discarded invite as Hawk comes over to read it over her shoulder, before passing it to Kai.
“She’s right,” Kai agrees. “It would be a good opportunity to do some spying on your grandfather. Didn’t you say he told you that his house had been in the family since they came to America? Your whole family is entrenched in the King’s Elite so there’s bound to be information squirreled away in that house somewhere.”
Mmm, he has a point. Although Ireallydon’t want to go to some stupid, lame-ass party.
“I’ll go with you if you want,” Emilia offers, brushing her shoulder against mine.
Despite how much I’d love her company—she might even make the whole ordeal bearable—I shake my head. “Thanks, but that’s alright. I won’t make you suffer alongside me.”
If I show up with her on my arm, it will only paint a target on her back, and I point-blank refuse to do anything that might put her on the King’s radar. You can be guaranteed that this party will be teaming with the members of the King’s Elite, probably storing away every bit of potential blackmail material that they can get their grubby little hands on.
Setting all thoughts of the dreaded party aside, I grab my backpack and Emilia and I head to the Ridgeway Campus while Hawk and Kai go to Nocturnal Enterprises.
I’ve literally just stepped foot on campus when my phone buzzes in my pocket, and I groan inwardly when I pull it out and stare at the notification on my lock screen.
“Who’s that?” Emilia asks, noticing my instant change in mood.
“Robbie. He wants me to stop by later.” I glance over at her as we continue our path across campus toward her classroom. “Probably wants an update.”
Emilia grimaces. “What are you going to tell him?”
I shrug. “I have to tell him the truth, right? If I tell him I have nothing, he’ll just keep me on her until I do find something. Can’t play dumb and say I can’t find dirt on her for the rest of the semester.”
We walk in silence for a bit while she chews on her lower lip, clearly mulling something over. “Do you think Robbie would understand if you tried to tell him you don’t want to do this?” she eventually asks. “Weren’t you friends before all of this?”
“We were, or rather, I thought we were. Now, I’m not so sure. It’s clear he’ll always take the family’s side, and I saw the way he watched my grandfather at that dinner. He looks up to him. Practically worships the ground he walks on. They all do. It was weird as fuck.”
I can still picture that dinner vividly. The way everyone looked to my grandfather. It’s apparent he’s the patriarch of the family, but it was more than that. They looked at him with a mix of awe and fear, glancing his way before answering even a simple question as though he was a puppeteer holding the string to their responses. It was like they couldn’t even breathe without his approval.
Weird. As. Fuck.
“He won’t be on my side with this,” I state resolutely, knowing for a fact that that’s the case. He—along with everyone else in that family—will do whatever they have to in order to appease my grandfather, and it’s clear that the path to his approval is through the King’s Elite. It’s obviously a large part of our family history—the origins of which were laid out to me at the dinner and damn near bored me to death—and he’s determined to see our family’s continuation with it for generations to come.
“Alright, well then, we’ll just have to figure it out on our own,” Emilia says, a determined set to her jaw. “At least they aren’t asking you to betray Hawk again or any of the rest of us. Though, I hate the thought of this innocent girl getting caught up in whatever they’re doing.”
“Me, too,” I tell her, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear when we stop outside her classroom door.
She turns to face me. “I know you don’t seem to really want to talk about your family, and that’s okay.” She hurriedly tacks on, “However, I hope you’re not pulling away from them because of me or because things are good right now… with all of us.” Her eyes dart back and forth between mine, and I can tell she truly means her next words when she says, “If you want to get to know your family, then you should. Regardless of who they are or what any of us think. They’reyourfamily, your blood.” She huffs out a breath as though she believes the words aren’t coming out right. “What I’m trying to say is that I’ll be at your side if you decide you want to get to know them.”
I look around the empty hallway before pulling her into her classroom and closing the door. Placing my hands on the side of her throat, I leverage my thumbs beneath her chin so she’s looking up at me. “I was lost, and hurt, and angry, and questioning where I belonged when Robbie first approached me about getting to know my family. I was watching my best friend fall in love with you while all I could cling to was my hatred, and I kept hearing the voices in my head telling me I didn’t deserve you. That I would never find happiness so why even bother trying. But I knew I couldn’t be a part of Hawk’s life if he was with you and I wasn’t. I was lost and searching for an escape, which was exactly what I thought Robbie was offering me. I figured if my place wasn’t with the only people who had ever felt like family to me, then the only other place where I could belong was with actual blood relatives.
“The second I took that oath, I began to realize my mistake. Even more so after I met my grandfather. He—my entire family—only cares about things that I don’t give a shit about. Money, prestige, social standing. This stupid fucking society and using it to maintain their own wealth and power.”
