Cracked Kingdom (The Royals #5)(61)

"I'm pretty upset you brought him here." She disappears up the stairs but not before I see tears start to fall. She’s off to call Reed. I suspect I'm going to get an earful from him tonight, and I probably deserve it. I screwed up bad.

I should've told Seb no. His threat to do something drastic was probably to run down the hall naked, not kill himself. I shouldn't have panicked. There were dozens of other choices I could've made, and while none are coming to me, I know that they had to exist.

Fuck, man. Adulting is hard.





Chapter 25





Hartley





After school on Wednesday, I find Mom in the kitchen, prepping dinner.

“Dad home?” I ask. It’s not five yet, and I’m hoping that he works regular office hours. I need to get into his office. The plan that I cooked up over lunch involved me thoroughly inspecting every piece of paper in his desk in hopes I can find some incriminating information.

“No, dear. Would you please chop these?” She rolls two pieces of fruit in my direction.

“Sure.” I wash my hands, rubbing my finger along the scar there. It’s a blessing in some ways to not remember how this happened. Then I can live without the burden of those bad memories, but it’s only a blessing if I can help my sister and prevent the past from repeating itself. “So Dylan is going to a horse show? Is that a one-day thing?”

“She leaves tomorrow after school and won’t be back until Sunday.”

Finally, something goes my way. I have a four-day window to ferret out evidence against my father. I dry my hands, grab a knife and join my mother at the counter. Standing next to her, I realize I'm two inches taller than she is. I hadn't noticed it before, but in the last three years, I've grown. I scan her face. She's grown, too—not taller, but older. Her lips are thinning. There are wrinkles at the corners of her eyes. The skin at her cheeks droops slightly. She looks tired and unhappy.

I don’t have any memories where she's laughed from her belly or been completely carefree. Is this adulthood? Or are the lines, etched so deep into her forehead that even Botox can't eradicate them, the result of Dad's behavior?

One question sits at the back of my head, in the core of my heart. It shoots up my throat and slides to the end of my tongue. Do you love me?

Desperate to know, I lift my wrist. "Do you know how I broke this?"

Her gaze falls to my scar and then flicks back to my face. Confusion fills her eyes. "Of course. You fell at school."

“Dad broke it.”

Mom slams her knife on the counter. “Is that what you’re remembering? That’s not true. That’s the lie your school told you so that they could get out of paying for their wrongdoing. Well, your father fixed that one. They paid all three years of your tuition there.” She picks up the blade and returns to chopping onions. “I can’t believe that after all we’ve done for you, that lie is the one you remember.”

My mind spins in confusion. Did Easton lie to me? No. He’s just repeating what I told him. So was I wrong? Had I gotten it completely wrong? And what does she mean by ‘all we’ve done for you’? The image of my empty apartment, my missing phone, my completely sterile bedroom combines into a larger, more alarming picture. Had she tried to prevent me from remembering the past because she feared what I knew?

“Where’s my phone?” I demand. “And my purse? Where are they? Where is all the stuff you took from my apartment?”

Mom’s hand jerks, but she doesn’t look up from the cutting board. “The police must’ve lost them.”

Her flat tone gives away the lie. “Like the police lose evidence for Dad’s cases when he gets paid off?”

“Get out.” Her voice is low and full of menace. “Get out and stay out until you screw your head on straight. I won’t tolerate you bad-mouthing your father like this. If you can’t stop lying, maybe you’ll have to go back to the hospital.”

My hand curls around the knife. “You better not be hurting Dylan.”

“I told you to go.”

I take a shaky breath, lay down my knife, and walk out. I don’t go upstairs. I don’t think I can spend another minute in this house. I grab Easton’s jacket and my backpack and leave. Mom doesn’t stop me. She doesn’t ask where I’m going. She doesn’t want to know.

I pull out my phone and pull up Parker’s address. I’m not going to bother calling her. She could hang up on me, but she won’t be able to make me leave her house until I’m done talking. There’s no bus that stops close to her house. It takes me thirty minutes to arrive.

She answers the doorbell with a frown. “What are you doing here, Hartley?”

“Dad is hurting Dylan,” I say without preamble. “You need to come and take her away.”

Parker’s expression turns angry. “Mom called and said you were spreading these lies again. You almost ruined our family last time. Maybe no one has told you, but you were sent away because you wouldn’t shut up about your stories. So for Pete’s sake, Hartley, stop lying and we can all be happy. If anyone is hurting Dylan, it’s you.”

Her accusations rock me on my heels. “You weren’t there the other night,” I reply hotly. “Dad had his hand around her face—”