Page 87 of Speak No Claim

However, it was her note that entertained me the most. It read…

* * *

Get better soon, and I want the bag and containers back.

Chapter

Twenty-Seven

Onyx: Don’t look for someone who will solve all your problems. Look for someone who will face them with you.

My father and I rode home in silence from the Brotherhood meeting. It’d been a few weeks since my punishment, and a lot had changed in that short amount of time. I was being worked to the bone, day in and day out. Between crossbow, fencing, and the Brotherhood, I barely had any time for a single thought.

The council was doing it on purpose, filling my time, another test to prove where my loyalty lay. I hated every second of it. The bit of free time I had, I spent with Hennessy. We’d meet at the greenhouse more often than not, the only place we could truly be alone.

She told me all about her home in Peru. How much she missed her jungle, all her animals, her bedroom, and her friends. There wasn’t much she didn’t fill me in on.

How they mostly lived off their land and its resources, and how they only cooked fresh food and often hunted. How they ate breakfast and dinner together every morning and night. How her house was a community home, with people constantly coming in and out.

She knew so many different languages from her family’s business. She told me all about the tourists and the places she traveled. She was so cultured, so fucking smart too.

Her face lit up every time she talked about her family. She definitely missed them the most. Especially her grandmother. They had a special relationship and connection. She taught her all about the Amazon legends she held so dear. She knew stories upon stories of occults and mythology.

She really was a little witch, living up to her last name. She believed the bracelet her grandmother made for her, which she never took off, warded off evil.

If that were true, she wouldn’t be in my arms.

She believed animals had the power to protect you, and at one point in history, we actually had the ability to talk to them. Saying animals had the capacity to see ghosts, and if you ever touched the eye discharge of a dog or a cat and rubbed it in your eye, you could see them too. There was a bunch of lore she believed in.

Nature was her biggest ally. She believed in spells, magic, and rituals. The knowledge she had about almost everything was fascinating. Although my father and her uncle were best friends, I didn’t know much about him. All I knew was that they grew up together and that he’d always been in love with my aunt. They’d been together for a while, and now they lived in one of our estates.

I didn’t involve myself in my father’s life. He wouldn’t have it any other way.

She was the funniest girl. Her wit, her passion, and the way she looked at life were captivating. I’d never met anyone like her before. The women I was used to were bred not to think for themselves. They came from generational wealth and didn’t know how to work a day in their life. They cared about status and titles.

They were made to be the type of woman who were trophy wives. Deja was so much more than that. She didn’t fit the mold, and they knew that.

I still watched Hennessy. I still stalked her and dreamed about her. I wasn’t just following orders from the council anymore. What started as just another job at making sure she didn’t investigate anything was now something else entirely.

The council still had me track her every step and report back to them, and I did. She started researching the Brotherhood. She wouldn’t find anything. No one ever did. She became extremely curious about the Devereaux name.

She wasn’t aware, at least not by me. My sister and her driver were another story. I didn’t trust either of them. Deja would tell her whatever she could to spare me, not realizing they would kill her for it.

I was responsible for two women. One of them was my blood, the other was my sworn enemy. Or at least she was supposed to be, which was why she was assigned to me in the first place. The council loved their fucking games. It was a way to keep us in line and do as they say.

Blackmail was what ran their world.

We kept whatever we were doing a secret, but it was getting harder by the minute. I didn’t tell her much about me, sharing things that weren’t important. I already gifted her the most important thing to me, the greenhouse. She was a hell of a gardener. In the past couple of weeks alone, she’d turned that place into sunshine and bloom.

There was life in there again for the first time since my mother. You could feel it deep in your bones as soon as you walked in. Plants were thriving because of her, and I wondered if she had the effect on me too.

I never felt more alive than I did when I was stalking her, or when I was with her.

How fucked up is that?

As soon as we walked through the front door, my father went straight to his office like he always did, and I headed up to my room. I spent the rest of the day watching her on my computer screen, thinking about my life and how Hennessy fit into it.

She was never far from my thoughts. She knew who my family was and what the future held for me. We didn’t discuss it, but we didn’t have to. That truth was blatantly staring us in the face. Except when I was with her, I didn’t want to be anywhere else. It was like living a triple life.