Chapter 4
LUCAS
The woman’s face paled, and a surge of satisfaction came to me—the first since I came to this too-crowded city and tried locating the address Benjamin provided. I expected to find him at some fancy hotel, lounging the day away in front of a swimming pool and drinking cocktails as he liked to do when he did his little running-away thing. It was a stunt that he’d pulled too many times to be considered alarming, though it still annoyed me every single time.
What I hadn’t expected was to find him in a rundown apartment that was in desperate need of repair and an exterminator I am sure. I forget people live like this.
The woman looked like she received the shock of her life when she walked in, now visibly taking a step back as my words registered. I expected her to apologize, to be extra nice to Benjamin and to me after she realized her mistake of treating us rather poorly.
Instead, she turned slightly widened, slightly accusing eyes in Benjamin’s direction.
“Prince?” she echoed.
I watched as Benjamin winced. “Yes, about that…I’m sorry for not telling you, Liz.”
“It’s okay,” the woman said.
“Don’t apologize,” I said at the same time.
We stared at each other, eyes clashing. I felt her shock disappear, to be replaced by wariness of me. I had a feeling she used that expression a lot.
She wasn’t what I expected, especially with the rundown home and the rather gangly kid in the kitchen. The woman named Liz was petite, but with enough meat about her that made her look curvy as hell under her thin gray coat. Her curly brown hair was pulled back from her face in a loose bun, tendrils framing pale skin, pink lips and the lightest brown eyes I’d seen. They were almost golden in their lightness and lent to her rather exotic look.
It was a look that I knew was exactly Benjamin’s type.
This really was an inconvenience of the highest accord, especially after knowing that my brother had almost gotten himself killed. Deciding to simply ignore her, I turned to Benjamin.
“We have to go. You’ve wasted three days as it is.” Five days a month was our leeway to be normal—a glitch in the system, as I liked to call it. The fact that he used three of those five days at the start of the month irked me so much that I could punch him square in the face.
But instead of nodding, Benjamin shook his head. A stubborn look crossed his face, one that hardened it.
“I’m not leaving unless Liz and Kyle come with me.”
A choked sound came out of Liz’s throat. I glared at her, then my brother. “What are you going on about?” I growled.
“She saved my life. I promised her a job in return.”
“I thought you were kidding,” she protested rather weakly.
“You don’t belong in a place like this,” I intoned to Benjamin.
“Are you insulting my home?”
Tired of her interruptions, I turned my full gaze on her again, this time giving her a warning look. She didn’t heed it, instead stepping forward and boldly looking me in the eye. It wasn’t outwardly rude, per se, but it was a statement.
And no one had made a statement like that to me before.
“I wasn’t insulting anything or anyone unless you took it personally,” I said, keeping my voice calm. “Ben…”
“I’m not going until she gets a job in the palace,” Ben replied.
Damn it.
A gleam came in the woman’s eyes, and she tilted her head. It was my first warning sign. “This job…is it decent?”
“You’ll be working as a maid,” I said scathingly. “Cleaning rooms and dusting furniture. Serving us.”
It was a very decent job, but you wouldn’t know it from my tone. That was deliberate, and I expected it to turn her off and make her decline the job herself—which, in turn, would make Benjamin forget about this ridiculous promise he had made and just come home with me. The queen is furious at his running away again, especially at a crucial time like this.
The woman ignored me, of course.
“Ben—I mean, Prince…are you sure?” she asked. “You don’t have to feel indebted to me.”
Benjamin sidestepped me to get to her, and the way he took her hands in his had me frowning. Her cheeks heated, a light pink, and I could tell she was torn between being flustered and being frantic as she tried tugging her hands away. But he didn’t let her.
“I’m sure, Liz,” he said softly. “No one has been as kind as you, and that was before you knew who I was. Will you come with me? I’ll make sure your job will be great, and Kyle will have access to our massive library for his studies. I know he loves reading.”
From the kitchen, a squeak came, and I watched out of the corner of my eye as the young boy’s eyes widened. That, in turn, had the woman’s eyes softening.
Dread filled my stomach.
“Then I accept,” she said. “Will you give us time to pack?”
And I knew, at that moment, that something was bound to go wrong with this ridiculous agreement.
* * *
Standing outside the apartment and waiting for two strangers to pack up…well, it was bloody annoying. I’d never waited on anyone my whole life—weird, I knew, considering I was the bastard son of a king who barely gave me the time of the day. But Laverna had always made up for his lack of care, and in doing so, it had gotten me so used to a life of privilege that I would probably never stop being grateful. I had a hard life before I was taken in: a couple of brief years on the streets.
Liz reminded me so much of that life and the greed for more that came with it.
Because the bad feeling wasn’t going to go away anytime soon, I eyed my brother standing beside me with his arms folded and the calmest expression on his face. He was wearing ragged jeans and a worn-out shirt, and he didn’t seem to mind at all.
“What are you up to, Ben?”
He turned to glance at me, then leaned against the brick wall. “Whatever do you mean?”
“You want someone you just met to be a servant in our palace? You know the queen’s not going to like this.”
He shrugged. “She can protest it all she wants. I’m going to protest back.”
“Why?”
“Have I not been clear? Liz saved my life. I was mugged, and—”
“You were mugged?” I returned sharply. “Did you bring some ID with you?”
“Passport and a credit card.”
Not good. I frowned at him, and he frowned back as realization sunk in. Benjamin uttered a curse.
“I didn’t think about it,” he admitted.
“Looks like you didn’t think at all,” I muttered, unable to help it.
He glared at me, but I didn’t care as my mind already started working. Realizing I couldn’t just leave it alone, I turned to him, all the sarcasm gone. “There’s a private jet waiting at the airport. Willis is on standby,” I said, referring to his bodyguard. “Go ahead and take that. I’ll catch up.”
“What are you doing?”
“Something,” I said. I still had plenty to say about that Liz woman and her kid brother, but there was plenty of time for that later.
For now, I left them alone and started on my next destination: tracking that mugger down before he put two and two together and caused more trouble than it was worth.
* * *
The tracking took longer than usual, particularly because I needed to tap my sources to get to Benjamin’s credit card first—one that the mugger apparently had been enjoying as freely as he could. The list of purchases was staggering, from a television to fancy watches whose prices had my blood boiling.
The purchases ceased last night, which had me figuring the mugger threw the card away so he wouldn’t get caught. But it didn’t matter, because I got my hands on the video monitors at a few of the stores he made purchases at. With a clear image of this guy it wasn’t that hard to find where he frequented.
It didn’t take me long to get to his place, which was an apartment not much different from the one I found Benjamin in. I slipped inside the unlocked door, where I found the scrawny, dirty man lying on the floor with several alcohol bottles at his side. The sight reminded me of my own lack of alcohol intake for today, which made me cranky and felt the headache lingering.
Without thought, I yanked him off the ground and woke him up in an instant. A startled protest came out of his mouth, and his eyes widened when he took note of me.
“You took something from a friend of mine. Where did you throw his wallet?”
He sputtered and tried to fight, but I held him in an iron grip and didn’t let go.
“Where?” I repeated, keeping my voice cold but calm.
The man cursed and tried to kick. I snarled and shook him. “Where?”
Out of the corner of my eye, I found what I was looking for. Benjamin’s signature leather wallet had a specialized logo with his initials at the front, and currently it was sitting on top of a pile of other wallets. I let go of the man and strode over, checking the contents and finding that nothing was thrown after all.
This man was more careless than I thought—plus points for me because it didn’t look like I needed to bribe some reporters to get Benjamin’s latest antics out of the news. His last one was sensationalized too much for everyone’s liking, causing some negative backlash that took Benjamin almost a year to recuperate from and get back in his people’s good graces.
Because I was so preoccupied, it took me a while to see the knife. I felt a swipe attempt at my side that missed. With a curse, I dropped to the ground and rolled to the side as the man tried to get a second swipe in.
He missed again. I stood up and tackled him to the ground, where we grappled until I knocked the weapon out of his hand and got him on his back. He snarled at me, eyes mean and spitting fire even in his drunken state. I would have threatened him some more, except something happened that I didn’t anticipate at all.
Awareness set in, sharp and precise. A throbbing started in my head, and the cajoling words were as clear as crystal.
Eat him. Destroy him.
I growled.
Then I threw one punch and staggered back, watching his unconscious form and feeling my body respond with a hunger that told me to stop resisting. But I resisted, taking one backward step after another until I was out of the apartment and he was out of my sight.
When I got back to the streets, my stomach heaved, and I felt like I was going to faint from the pain of it. Belatedly, I realized my nails were scratching my arms and wounds were starting to form. I fisted them and gritted my teeth, trying to call on every ounce of control I had left—enough to call the local police and give them an anonymous tip of this mugger’s whereabouts.
Then I was running out of there before I could do something I would regret.