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Chapter8
Knight
I opened my door when I heard the first crash on the hardwood floor outside my room. It sounded like glass.
“Mother?” I rushed toward her. She was hunched over, gripping a wine bottle in one hand while trying to stack shards of glass with the other. “Here. Move. You’re going to cut yourself.”
I tried to extract her from the broken portrait at her feet.
“Who put that there?” she snarled at the family photo. It was at least twenty years old.
“I think it’s been on the wall a long time,” I explained.
She staggered backward while I tried to make the path to her room walkable. I noticed she wasn’t wearing any shoes or slippers.
“You don’t think I know where things belong in this house?”
I shook my head. She was drunk. Again.
“Can I take you to your room?” I reached for the bottle in her fist. Had she stopped using glasses?
She recoiled. “No.”
“I need to call someone to clean up this mess. You can still cut the bottoms of your feet. Just don’t move.” I pressed my hand forward to keep her still.
“They should have already been here,” she spat. “Lazy. Everyone here is lazy.” I heard the bottle thump on the ground as she sat on her heels. The silk robe she wore gathered in a layers at her feet.
It occurred to me these incidents had been going on before my father’s death. I never believed she was struggling as a grieving widow. I leaned over the balcony. One of the house staff was already marching up the stairs with a broom and dustpan as if she knew what to expect when she heard the glass break.
I frowned. The wheels had been coming off my family’s axis for a long time. Since the day Seraphina’s contract was signed. It only continued to spin farther out of control in my absence. Did my father know what he had done? Did he realize what he put in motion by stealing his children’s lives from them?
I was sent away. Seraphina wanted to leave Brandon. My father died. My mother was a drunk. The family fortune had been drained. How the fuck was I supposed to make a dynasty out of this train wreck?
“Where have you been?” my mother snapped at the girl.
“I had to find the broom,” she explained, sweeping the cracked frame into the center of the dustpan.
I lifted the portrait from the floor. It was a formal shot. All of our family pictures were. My mother and Seraphina were both in long gowns, despite that my sister was barely ten in the photograph. I tried to remember what I thought about the organization when I was fifteen. I knew it paid for expensive vacations and boarding school. I knew it was the reason my father was feared. It was the reason I had a security detail as a child. It was the reason I lost an uncle and a cousin.
“Here.” I handed the staffer the canvas. “You can throw this out too.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.” I didn’t need the reminder. “Can you make sure Mrs. Corban gets to bed?”
She nodded. “Of course.”
“Thank you.” I stepped toward my mother, but her eyes had started to close. I kissed her on the top of the head. “Sleep well. I’ll check on you tomorrow.” I wanted to ask my sister how much she knew about the drinking. Seraphina had enough going on.
She didn’t acknowledge I had been near her. Maybe she was dreaming, or maybe she had passed out like the drunk she had become.
I headed downstairs to the study. There was a storm that had settled over the city. The rain pelted the windows.
The alert on my phone chimed. Who the hell was texting this late?
When I saw Kennedy’s name on the screen I stopped moving. I had to read the message a second time.
Now? In the middle of the night? During a storm that felt like a tropical depression?
