19. Florian

Chapter 19

Florian

No one had said a word about my proclamation of ownership of my father’s estate. Hells, Frost had offered me his dueling sword, which had sent Courtney and Adger packing immediately. Maybe on one hand they thought I was weak and wouldn’t kill them, but on the other, they clearly didn’t want to lose a duel to me anyway. Or in Adger’s case, another duel.

No one was looking at me with suspicion like they usually did when I channeled my father’s entitled rudeness into giving people orders.

But then, in the past, I’d always done it at his side, looking for his approval.

My father’s approval was never going to be something I sought out again.

And now, I could turn this one thing he taught me—how to be an asshole—into a useful skill. I could be an asshole to Adger and Courtney and make them leave us alone. I could assert my ownership of the estate, so my cousins would no longer feel entitled to show up and stay whenever they liked, unless I invited them to do so.

Adger and Courtney would not ever receive such an invitation.

“I am sorry,” Cove said. “It was thoughtless of me to march into your lives like a bull in a china shop and start throwing my weight around.”

I turned to look at him, and he was...he was looking at me. He was apologizing to me . I wasn’t sure anyone had ever done that before. Funny, since I didn’t even feel as though he owed me any more than he’d already given me. I shook my head. “You didn’t know us when you got here. You had no idea what to expect from us. You came here to do a job, and you’ve been working toward it. Besides, what were you supposed to do when all my cousins showed up to threaten you? Run and find me to get permission to handle it?”

His smile in return was sweet, and he reached over and squeezed my hand. “I appreciate that. At least it’s a misstep we won’t have to worry about making again, now that we’ve come to an agreement.” His expression clouded over, though, as he turned to Ivy. “Are you quite well? Your cousin just tried to murder you.”

Her lips trembled and she swallowed hard, but after a moment, she nodded. “I do believe you’re right.”

“I don’t understand,” Frost said with a sigh. “Is there something I’m missing? Why would he do that?”

I couldn’t help smiling at him. There was something. There were many somethings he was missing. But it wasn’t because he was anything other than clever. It was because he was too good to understand my hells-damned father. “No, you’ve got all the information,” I told him. “My father, the murderer, tried to murder his cousin. It’s what he does now, apparently. He probably assumed Aunt Ivy was working with Cove to unseat him as head of the family and decided to end that. Why he decided to blame her and not me, I couldn’t say.”

Frost slumped forward, planting his chin on his fist and staring at me, like I’d told him his puppy died and his birthday was canceled. I had just told him I was surprised my father hadn’t tried to kill me, so perhaps for most people, it was awful. I supposed the reason Father had attacked Ivy and not me was like his phone call to me: he truly didn’t understand that I was working against him. It was so foreign a concept to my father, the idea that I might have my own mind and opinions, that he glitched right over it.

Cove reached out and put a hand on Frost’s shoulder. “It’s okay to not understand it, Frost. I don’t think anyone here truly understands it. They’ve just been around him for longer than you, so they expected it, even if it’s incomprehensible.”

“But it is,” Frost said, his voice even softer than usual, with a pleading note, like he was a child and needed Cove to chase the monsters under his bed away. “It’s entirely incomprehensible. Killing a family member. Right?”

“For anyone but him,” Fawn said, cutting right to the heart of the matter, as usual. She stood slightly, reaching all the way across the table to pat his face. “But he’s gone. And he’s not allowed to come back now, so it’s all better.”

Oh, to be the sunny optimist my sister was some days.

I leaned back in my chair and looked at Aunt Ivy. “Are you okay? I would understand if you wanted to leave, obviously.”

She scoffed. “Leave you and Fawn to deal with that self-serving asshole? I don’t think so. We’re family, and we’re going to act like it. Maybe I’ll call Cousin Aeryn and Cousin Poppy and see if they want to come for a visit. I think it’s been years since they’ve seen either of you.”

I wasn’t sure they had ever met Fawn, to tell the truth, but I wasn’t going to quibble. If family members that Aunt Ivy liked wanted to visit us, I would be more than happy to host them. “That sounds great, Aunt Ivy.”

And from there, somehow, despite Adger’s usual douchebaggery and an actual fucking murder attempt, breakfast was great. Cove did suggest we eat indoors for a while, until my father was handled, which a still slightly shaky Aunt Ivy agreed to, and since everyone else agreed, Fawn readily accepted it as well. She wasn’t thrilled about going back to the dining room, but none of us were. We were all just more willing to accept it than she was, because we also accepted that Father was an immovable object, not an annoyance we could dismiss without actually doing something about him.

Without Cove killing him.

An image swam forward in my mind of Aunt Ivy teetering toward the fire pit, where someone had left a metal garden implement sitting, blade up. The terror in her eyes. The fact that there hadn’t been a damned thing I, or she, could do about it. I could only affect my own luck. She could only affect others. I’d been as helpless as every time my father had been at my side, and I hated everything about it.

But what would you do with luck affecting others? A tiny, timid voice whispered in my mind, sending a shiver down my spine.

Had that been?...but no. It was my mind playing tricks on me.

Still, I had an answer for it. I imagined the picture back up, Aunt Ivy about to fall into the pit, and turned it around in my mind. Felt her getting her feet back under her, not falling to her death right there on the damned terrace.

After a second, the image flickered and was replaced by one of my father standing there in Ivy’s position. Standing next to the fire pit and danger.

Now?

It was a fair question. But no. There was a reason Navia and I fit so well together. She affected me, so I was the one who took the actions. I was the one responsible for all the things I did.

In my head, I turned my father around and snapped handcuffs on him. Not that such a thing would work in real life. No, he’d scramble my luck like eggs in a pan and make me fall on my face on the terrace while he got away. But it was just an image. A fantasy. A fantasy where I got to step up and be responsible for removing the cancer that was eating my home and my family alive, turning us into selfish monsters.

Or at least, enabling everyone to become the very worst they could be. Even if I would never like most of my cousins, without my father there to encourage them all to treat each other like competition, maybe they wouldn’t. Maybe they’d just be regular assholes, not backstabbing dangerous ones.

I shivered again, and suddenly there was the strange presence in my head. Or had it been there before, and I’d only just started paying attention, distracted as I was by my problems?

Fawn leaned against me, her head on my shoulder, and I... long-trained instinct said to shrug her off, keep her away, because Father wouldn’t approve of snuggling at the table.

But as we’d just established, Father would never again be welcome at any table I was in charge of, and right here and now, this was my table.

So I smiled down at her, leaning my own head down to bump it lightly against hers. “Don’t forget to drink your juice, Fawny.”

Her answering grin and the giant gulp she took of her orange juice was...well, it was the life I wanted us both to have from now on.

Even if something went horribly wrong and Father came back, this was the end of it for us. We were done living under his thumb for good. Somehow, even with the idea that we’d be left with nothing but my mother’s empty land to live on, it was a beautiful thought.

We were free.

Olivier and I discussed the property after dinner. Well, we discussed how Fawn and I could survive, in the worst-case scenario where Father somehow returned and got his position back.

He suggested selling the property and leaving Dawnchaser lands.

I was surprised by it, but then he said that if Father returned, he intended to do the same, and that settled things for me. So we arranged for a realtor to sell it, because in either the best- or worst-case scenario, we weren’t going to need it.

We’d just finished, and I left his suite when I almost ran into Cove and Coral in the hallway.

She looked at me for a moment, lips pursed, then sighed and gave me a sharp nod. “I’ll be in my room if you need anything.”

Then she turned and left him standing there with me.

He looked stunned, open-mouthed, watching after her.

For a moment, I bit my lip, watching him watching her. Then, I had to ask. “You two are...are close?”

His head whipped around and he stared at me as though shocked at the notion. “Coral?” The look on his face was like someone had asked me if Fawn and I were in a relationship. “She’s been with me since we were children. She’s almost more a sister to me than my actual sister.” His face fell at that. “I suppose it says something about me that both of them are so convinced I’m going to do something ridiculous.”

I turned to look where Coral had gone, then back to him. “No. She was worried about you, because my family is the worst. But she just walked away. I think that means she trusts you to handle your own life.”

He turned to look in the same direction, sighing deep, then nodding. “We should talk.”

“Is this where you tell me I’m a nice boy but what happened in the office shouldn’t happen again?”

He snorted, turning back to me and crowding me up against the wall. Slowly, he reached up and cupped my cheek. “If you don’t want it to happen again, I understand. But you’re not a boy. You’re an adult. If you’d rather not?—”

“Screw that. I want. I...I want you. I might not have a lot of experience with that like you probably do, but—it’s important you know that. I’m not looking for someone to replace my father.”

He smiled, and it lit his gray eyes—his whole face, in fact. He was so beautiful. “Thank fuck for that. I have no interest in being the next Huxley or anyone’s daddy. Except...there are some things I should tell you, if we’re going to be serious about this.” With that, he stepped back and held a hand out to me.

He led me back to the suite he’d been using without another word, his shoulders a little slumped as though he was carrying the weight of the world on them. “Kit isn’t Delta’s son,” he said, turning to me as we got inside and he shut the door behind us. “He’s mine. I was here in Dawnchaser lands when I was fifteen, and Afton Dawnchaser drugged and raped me. She got pregnant and tried to use it to force a marriage. She also drugged Coral that night to get her out of the way, and Coral almost died.”

I blinked, staring at him for a moment, stunned into silence. Cousin Afton. Somehow, that didn’t surprise me at all from her. She’d always been awful and conniving, and I’d never trusted her. This was a horror, though. I couldn’t imagine doing something like that to another person.

I must have made a disgusted face, because Cove went pensive and concerned. “I’m sorry if that’s too much for you to?—”

“No. It’s not. I’m sorry that happened to you, and that my family was responsible for it. I’m sure they didn’t so much as apologize, either. I’m glad you got Kit out of here. I was just thinking that I felt bad for him. I’ve always been lucky to have Fawn as a sibling. He’s got Courtney for a brother, the poor guy.”

At that, Cove curled his nose. “One of those fellows you tossed out this morning, yes? I thought he looked like Afton, and he...implied that he was aware of what had happened, earlier. Suggested I was overly sensitive about what constituted a crime.”

I nearly groaned. Of course one of my shitty cousins had done that. It wasn’t even a surprise. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to be insensitive about what happened to you. I mean, Afton is the worst, and I have no doubt that?—”

He stepped in, bridging the gap between us that had felt as though it was growing by the second, and pulled me into his arms. “You’re fine, Florian. I simply thought that before we consider anything serious together, you deserved to know the truth. My history with your family. Coral’s. Kit’s.”

“He doesn’t know,” I realized aloud. “Kit still believes that your sister is his mother. That’s why you think he has a right to be angry with you. Because of course Father knows the truth, and if he knows who Kit is, he’ll tell him if he thinks it will get him an advantage against you.”

“I don’t doubt it. And if he is angry with me, then I’ll accept that when we get there. I don’t think he’ll be so angry that he’ll help Huxley, but...I made my choices. I allowed his childhood to be what it was. I’ll live with the consequences of my actions or die by them.” He straightened his back and shoulders, drawing himself up—as though a man that tall ever needed to do that. “I’m going to tell him the next time I see him, regardless of Huxley. He deserves to know.”

I smiled up at him, shaking my head. “No wonder you’re his favorite. You tried to be a good father even when you couldn’t say you were his father. I’d say I wish you were my father, but I definitely don’t. Not my kink. Mostly, I wish you were kissing me right now.”

The smile once again bloomed on his face, like one of the rarest orchids in the garden, and my breath caught in my chest.

And then he kissed me.