“Yes, something did happen.” Dean glowers at me. “Your cover was blown, and you were kidnapped by one of Tatiana’s followers.”
Ah hell. So much for keeping my fuckup on the down-low.
I cross my arms. “You don’t know that.”
“I’m afraid we do, Vaughn. My contact in London came through,” Gerard replies with a grimace.
Shit. The information his contact had can’t be good, then, if he felt the need to alert the Red Guard. I wish he’d told me first.
“You know who Sophie is?”
“Yes. Her name is Sophie Tellier. She’s Jacques Tellier’s daughter.”
The floor seems to vanish beneath my feet. Of all the possibilities I could think of, this one is fucking bad. The only way it’d be worse would be if Sophie was Tatiana’s daughter.
I run my fingers through my hair, pushing my bangs back. “What are you planning to do?”
“We need her address,” Connor answers. He’s a scary dude, massive in height and muscles like all the other members of the Red Guard seem to be.
“What for?” I ask, playing stupid. I know exactly why.
Dean puts his hands on his hips. “Are you serious right now? She must know where her father’s hideout is. Furthermore, she drank from you. Who knows what information she was able to obtain from your memories.”
Make me feel even worse about my mess, why don’t you?
“Are you going to arrest her?”
“Yes, we just came here for the address.”
Why am I reluctant to provide that information to them? Sophie is the enemy. If I don’t collaborate, they’ll think I’m a traitor.
“Can I come with you?” I ask.
“No, this is a Red Guard-only operation.” Dean hands me his phone. “Type in her address,please.”
The “please” feels more like “do it or else.”
“I don’t have the exact address. I was too busy running for my life to pay attention to street names.” A total lie. The first thing I did after jumping from her apartment was look at what street it was on.
Connor takes a step forward, clearly not buying my bullshit. “We can always drink from you to get that information.”
I press my hand to my neck, shuffling back. “Eww. I don’t want your fangs anywhere near me.”
“Just write down the landmarks you can remember. You said her apartment was downtown, correct?” Dean asks.
“Yeah. I think I remember a few stores along the way.”
I write down all the businesses and restaurants I passed when I was running from Sophie’s apartment. Dean seems satisfied with the information I provided, and soon after, the duo leaves.
I wait until I can’t hear their car any longer before I head to the garage. I was already itching to pay Sophie a visit, and now I have a more compelling reason to do so. I need to see her before the Red Guard takes her away. The why is still a mystery to me.
SOPHIE
I couldn’t sleep at all during the day. My mind kept replayingeverything that transpired last night—my interaction with Madeleine for sure, but mostly, I kept thinking about Vaughn. In all my life, I’ve never met a male, be they human, vampire, or any other species, who made me so obsessed. It wasn’t only because I had a taste of his blood. Vaughn had intrigued me from the very first time we met.
The memories I was able to see through his blood are all over the place. I saw bits about his attack, then how Lucca agreed to turn him even though he was sure he’d fail. He didn’t fail, though, and that’s a game changer. It’s a known fact that vampires lost the ability to turn humans. There was a period when my father and other Bluebloods went on a massive recruitment binge, needing to increase the number of soldiers to fight the usurper king, and ended up killing thousands of humans when they couldn’t be turned.
Tish confirmed that reality hadn’t changed while I was in hibernation, so why now? How could Lucca have regained that power? No wonder they wanted to keep Vaughn’s existence a secret—a detail I also learned from his memories.
