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After one last glance at my reflection, I grabbed my sunglasses and car keys and made my way through my parents’ mansion towards the front door.
“Knox.”
My mother’s voice stopped me in my tracks.
“Mother,” I drawled, turning to face her. “What is it? I’m on my way out.”
She tutted impatiently. “You’ll have to put your plans on hold. Come with me.”
With a sigh and an eye roll, I followed her. There was no point in getting into an argument with her. When I said I had everything? That came with a set of conditions. Namely, my parents got to call the shots. Or at least, they liked to think they did. They gave me enough free rein that it wasn’t a problem, but when they gave an order, I was expected to follow through.
We reached the east wing of the house where the staff lived, and I raised a brow. What the fuck were we doing here? Before I could question it, my mother paused in front of an open doorway. “Knox, I’d like you to meet Josephine’s new nanny.” Without giving me any time to process her statement, she swept into the room and gave a dramatic wave of her hand. “This is Ms. Letitia Greenwood and her daughter, Elena Greenwood.”
Outwardly, I showed no signs of emotion. I knew this because my mask was fucking perfect. Inwardly, I looked over the two new arrivals…and found them lacking.
Letitia Greenwood looked to be in her late forties. She was slim, and I could tell that she’d been good-looking once, but time hadn’t been kind to her. Her bottle-blonde hair was coiled into a bun, with dark roots peppered with grey forming a band around the crown of her head. Her lips—I knew a bad filler job when I saw one, and that was a serious trout pout she had going on. The make-up she wore was too harsh for her features, and although the staff uniform she wore was neatly pressed, it didn’t make up for the rest of her.
Her daughter, Elena…there wasn’t even a nice way to describe her. She was lanky, with greasy, nondescript brown hair, dull light brown eyes, baggy grey tracksuit bottoms, and a shapeless grey top covered with a large, fraying, unzipped navy hoodie that hung off her small frame. The kind of girl that faded into the background. There was a shiftiness to her gaze that instantly put me on alert, and when I glanced back at Letitia Greenwood, I noticed the same expression.
I didn’t like it.
The feeling intensified when I saw the way my mother was greedily eyeing Elena…this was bad fucking news.
“Nice to meet you,” I said, all icy politeness, my lips curving into my practised fake smile. It was usually enough to fool my parents, and it didn’t fail this time either, with my mother giving me a genuine smile.
“Letitia will be overseeing Josephine’s care,” my mother told me. Josephine was my baby sister—a surprise arrival only two years ago when my father’s vasectomy had supposedly failed. I shuddered. I did not need a reminder of the fact that my parents had a sex life. I had an older sister—Cora, who was away at university—but JoJo was the baby of the family, and everyone adored her.
My mother was still speaking. “Elena will be attending Hatherley Hall with you, starting on Monday. You’ll be taking her to and from school since she doesn’t have a car of her own.” Her tone left me with no doubt that this was compulsory.
“How can I do that? I’m boarding on-site now, remember?”
She huffed. “Excuse me for a moment, Letitia, Elena.” Placing a hand on my arm, she steered me out of the room. When we were out of earshot, she turned back to me. “Elena isn’t like you, Knox. She’s been taken away from her home and everything she knows, and you only have to look at her to see that she’s going to have trouble fitting in with your fellow students. I’m going to do what I can, but your father and I are relying on you to smooth the way for her at school.”
I doubted my dad gave a fuck, but equally, I knew that he’d side with my mother if it came down to it. And that could mean the loss of things that I loved…like money. Or my car.
“This is the start of term, and I’m supposed to be boarding with Tris and Ro. You already agreed. What do you expect me to do? Drive here every day from the school, just to go back again? Can’t she get a taxi? Or you could drive her?”
“Knox. I am on the board of more than one charity, you know this. I don’t take my responsibilities lightly, and I don’t have the time to play chauffeur. You will stay here—”
“No!”
“Temporarily. Just for a month or so while Elena finds her footing and makes her own friends. During that time, you will take her to and from school every day. I’ve already spoken to the school, and everything’s arranged.”
“A week,” I countered.
“Four weeks, and that’s my final offer. You don’t want me to get your father involved. You know what the consequences will be.”
Fuck. “Fine.” I set my jaw and fumed behind my mask. I could probably get it down to three weeks, maybe even less, if I approached my dad one-on-one, but I’d have to frame it in a way that made it look like there’d be more of an advantage to me being on school grounds than here. Surely, he’d understand, though. He knew how much I’d been looking forward to this. Not only that but he’d also boarded at Hatherley Hall as a student, and he always spoke fondly of his time there.
“Thank you, Knox.” She smiled. “I don’t expect you to be here all the time—but I’d like you to sleep here on weeknights at least, take Elena to and from school, and look out for her while she’s there. That’s not too much to ask, is it?”
I shrugged in lieu of an answer, but it was enough for her. She headed back down the hallway and into the room where the Greenwoods were waiting.
Glancing over at Elena Greenwood again, I gritted my teeth. Like fuck was I going to be seen with this girl anywhere outside the house. People might get the wrong idea, thinking she was cool by association or, worse, think that we were involved or something. I shuddered again. To be honest, the most likely thing that would happen would be that my friends would recognise her as another of my mother’s charity projects, but they’d be constantly taking the piss out of me, and then I’d have to fuck them up. That wouldn’t go down well. Not only that, but explaining how I was being forced to delay my move to Hatherley Hall while my two best mates got to board there without their parents interfering with their fucking lives…yeah, they were definitely going to take the piss.
I tuned back into my mother, who, yeah, was still talking. Something about schedules and Elena being the same age as me and a whole load of shit I wasn’t interested in. I tuned out again until her mouth finally stopped moving, and then I spoke. “Are we done here? I’m meeting Tristan at eleven.”
My mother nodded, and finally, I was free to escape. Throughout the entire conversation, neither Letitia nor Elena had spoken one word. That was fine by me. The less interaction I had with the staff, the better.
