Paper Princess (The Royals #1)(55)

I rush to the closet and throw on the first thing I touch, which turns out to be a miniskirt. Not the perfect creeper clothes, but I don’t have time to waste. I jump into the skirt and pull on a T-shirt, then push my feet into my sneakers and creep out of my bedroom as quietly as possible.

I tiptoe down the back stairs. There’s no one in the kitchen but I hear faint noises outside. A car door slams. Shit. I need to hurry. Luckily, the twins leave clothes, keys, wallets, and all kinds of junk down in the mudroom all the time.

I race across the kitchen to the connected mudroom and grab the first hoodie I find. There are keys and a wad of cash in the front pocket. Perfect. Ducking down beneath the window in the door, I peek out and see the taillights of Reed’s Range Rover blinking down the drive.

I wrench open the door and haul ass to the garage. When the button on the key fob lights up the twins’ SUV, I heave a sigh of relief and climb inside.

It’s tricky to secretly follow someone in a car on a dark night down a quiet street, but I manage to pull it off, because Reed doesn’t stop or whip his vehicle around to angrily confront me. He leads me into the heart of the city and then down several side roads until we arrive at a gate.

Reed parks his SUV. I cut the engine and shut off the lights. In the moonlight, I can barely make out the two brothers as they get out of the Rover and then clamber over the fence.

What the heck am I getting into? Are they dealing drugs? That would be nuts. The family is loaded. The hoodie I’m wearing has five hundred dollars in twenties and fifties balled up, and I’d bet the entire wad that if I went through each one of the pockets of the jackets hanging in the mudroom, I’d find loads of cash in every one of them.

So what could they be doing?

I run over to the fence to check if I can see anything, but all I can make out is a row of long rectangular-shaped structures—all roughly the same size. But no Reed or Easton.

Ignoring the inner voice that’s telling me it’s beyond stupid to climb a fence and rush into the dark, I do it anyway.

When I get closer to the buildings, I realize that they aren’t buildings at all, but shipping containers, which means I must be in a shipyard. My deck shoes are soft on the bottom and make no noise, so when I come upon Easton handing a stack of cash to some hoodie-clad stranger, neither of them hear me.

I duck backward, using the container as a shield while peeking around the corner like an inept spy in a terrible action movie. Beyond Easton and the stranger, there’s a makeshift circle set in the center of an empty space at the end of four shipping crates.

And inside that circle is Reed, stripped down to a pair of jeans.

He pulls one arm across his body and then switches to stretch the other arm. Then he bounces on the balls of his feet as if he’s trying to loosen himself up. When I spot the other shirtless guy, all the pieces fall into place. The secret late night trips out of the house. The unexplained bruises on his face. Easton must be betting on his brother. Hell, Easton might be fighting, too, if I remember the argument between the two of them last week.

“I thought someone was following us, but Reed wouldn’t listen.”

I jerk around to find Easton standing right behind me. Then I go on the defensive before he can give me shit about following them. “What are you going to do, tell on me?” I mock.

He rolls his eyes, then pulls me forward. “Come on, you sneak. You’re the cause of this. You might as well see it through.”

I let him drag me to the edge of the circle, but I do protest. “I’m the cause of this? How do you figure?”

Easton pushes people aside and muscles us up to the front. “Tying Reed to a chair buck ass naked?”

“He had underwear on,” I mumble.

Easton ignores me and keeps talking. “Leaving him hornier than a sailor after a nine-month stint at the bottom of the ocean? Please, sis, he’s got so much adrenaline in his body right now that it’s either fight or,” he looks down at me with speculation, “screw, and since you won’t screw him, it’s this. Hey, big bro,” he calls out. “Our baby sis came to watch.”

Reed spins around. “What the hell are you doing here?”

I resist the urge to hide behind Easton’s big frame. “Just here to cheer on the family. Go—” Royals, I start to say but then wonder if these guys are using aliases or something. I lift my fist, “Go, family!”

“East, if you put her up to this, I swear I’m going to beat your ass into next Sunday.”

Easton holds up his hands. “Dude, I told you someone was following us but you couldn’t hear anything over all your bitching about how you were going to teach someone,” he tilts his head in my direction, “a lesson.”

Reed scowls. He clearly wants to pick me up and throw me out into the dark. Before he can do anything, the other shirtless guy with thighs like tree trunks claps him on the shoulder.

“You done having your family reunion? I want to get this fight over with before the sun rises.”

The anger in Reed’s blue eyes dissolves into amusement. “Cunningham, you won’t last five seconds. Where’s your bro?”

Cunningham shrugs his massive shoulders. “He’s getting his dick sucked by some casual. Now don’t be scared, Royal. I won’t hurt you too bad. I know you have to show your pretty face at Astor Park tomorrow.”