Total pages in book: 164
Estimated words: 157308 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 787(@200wpm)___ 629(@250wpm)___ 524(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 157308 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 787(@200wpm)___ 629(@250wpm)___ 524(@300wpm)
Acid eroded my chest as I passed through the smirking, laughing faces. Victor and the Rogues stopped them messing with me outside of class. Leave it to the best and brightest of the American education system to find a way around that.
I WAITED ON THE BENCH, dialing and redialing my mom. The calls rang out, beeping in my ear, and then cut out to a cheery message asking me to leave my name and number, so she could call me back.
Maybe that’s the real reason I kept calling though she never answered her phone these days. I liked remembering the time she was happy.
“Luna.”
I looked up as Lucien descended the hill, a lion-headed cane gripped in his hand. He met me in my cool, tree-shaded secluded spot.
“I heard what happened.”
My lips pressed tight together. “Course you did,” I forced out. “This was texted to me, and I assume the entire school, thirty minutes after it happened.”
Flipping the phone around, I showed him the cameraman’s lucky shot. Someone got me just as I hit the floor and my skirt flew up, flashing my blue boy shorts covered in little ducks. The photo even came with a caption: Rubber Duck Butt.
“We can do this tomorrow if you—”
“No,” I broke in. “Trust me, Lucien, this is exactly what I need to be doing right now.”
He sat next to me, taking the phone. “Who sent this to you?”
“Iris.”
“Iris Dalton. Daughter of James and Gemma Dalton. Granddaughter of Richard Dalton.” Leaning back, Lucien crossed his ankle over his knee and draped an arm over my back. He thought nothing of tugging me close and laying my head on his shoulder, and I thought nothing of snuggling in close. “I knew her grandfather when he was a young, brash twenty-three-year-old looking to make his fortune any way he could. Including building it on the backs of unpaid, undocumented labor who he shuffled from warehouse to warehouse. The one where he made them work, and the one where they were locked in at night.”
“Oh my gosh, are you saying he trafficked people into slave labor?”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying, Lady Luna.”
“But, how do you know this? Does everyone know?”
Lucien absentmindedly stroked his pendant. “I found out when he brought a woman in labor into my great-grandson’s clinic. The kid was his, and I guess he felt something in his dead heart for her or the baby, because he brought her in after hours of pushing and the kid not coming.
“It was obvious she wasn’t well. Dirty, underfed, jumping at sudden moves. I did some digging and found out about his sick operation.”
“What did you do?” I asked. Not for a second did I believe these events happened to him, but if Lucien was claiming the memories of his grandfather as his own, I still wanted to know how this story ends. “I got the police involved—discretely. What he was doing was illegal, but so were the clinics I was running. The cops couldn’t know how we got involved.”
Lucien sighed. “Not that my efforts mattered. The cops took my tip, and then they took his bribe—looking the other way.”
“Are you serious? They didn’t do anything?”
“Oh, they did plenty to cover his tracks and make reports disappear in exchange for a nice cut. But actually do their fucking jobs? No.” Lucien stroked my temple, fingers skating along my ear and caressing the nape of my neck.
My eyes fluttered shut against my will. His touch was doing more for my pounding headache than the two pain pills and an ice pack.
“It was a different time, Luna. A couple of white men exploiting unprotected people of color were just continuing the tradition of their forefathers. No one cared about them,” he said, “so I broke into Richard Dalton’s house one night and beat him until he bled and I was fed. I told him to free the people working for him and send them off with enough money to start over. If I ever got wind he shorted a single paycheck, I’d be back for his children and his children’s children. I didn’t have to come back. He got the message.”
“Wow,” I breathed. Even replacing vampire Lucien with his human grandfather, that was an amazing thing that man did for those people—fighting for them when no one else would. And Victor said it was the Rogues with the shady legacies in Regalia. “That’s incredible, Lucien, but what’s it have to do with Iris?”
“No one cared then, lovely, but now...” He whistled. “Imagine the headlines: Dalton’s Luxury Legacy Built on the Back of Slave Labor. It’s a PR nightmare and it won’t get better when the illegitimate son that he cast out, comes to light. Their money is tainted. Their reputations and standing in the community—tainted.
“Iris doesn’t care about kindness, decency, or other people in general. But she’s a Royal, and they all care about their reputation in Regalia. The story breaks and so do the ties to her family. Everyone will distance themselves from them, and her status drops to barely above Dreg.” He tipped my chin, gaze piercing me. “Say the word and the whole world knows by morning.”