Marta looked at me with satisfaction as though she had done a fantastic job of telling me off, but as soon as she realized what she had divulged, she turned a fearful face toward my father.

“Your big mouth is exactly why I had Julian’s parents hide me this whole time,” he snarled at her. “Leave.”

Marta scurried out of the room, taking the coffee pot with her.

Julian’s parents? They were the ones who helped my father remain hidden all these years? How could that be true? Granted, I never knew much about them, and they always seemed so busy with “work” that they were barely ever around. But, they were high-ranking board members at Goldshire, and they were friends of my mother. Right?

At least I thought that they were.

“Did my mother know?” I asked as I tried to show as little emotion as possible.

“About Julian’s parents?” Dad asked. “No, I don’t think Pauline knew. It was one of the few things that even she didn’t suspect enough to stick her nose into.”

I wondered if Julian knew. He couldn’t have. It would have killed him. I didn’t want to be the one to tell him, but I also thought that he needed to know. I was very familiar with what it felt like to find out that your parents weren’t at all who you thought they were. And as much as it sucks, it’s better to know the truth than to live in a lie. My mother used to always laugh at that old saying, “the truth shall set you free.” She said it was a bunch of garbage and that the more accurate saying should have been “the truth shall set you on fire.” Now I knew how right she was.

“Tomorrow is your publicity event,” my father said as he lit the tip of a fresh cigarette.

Who even smoked cigarettes anymore? It was disgusting.

“I thought that was supposed to be happening today,” I said, not that I wanted to do it at all. I was dreading having to stand in front of a bunch of good-meaning people of the press and lie my ass off in order to protect a man that I wanted dead.

“Oh, I rescheduled it. I have some things I need to do today.” He waved at me dismissively just as he had done with Marta, and I guessed that was my cue to leave. To which I promptly made my leave toward the door.

“Oh,” he added as I was walking out into the hallway. “Dress pretty tomorrow. You wouldn’t want to disappoint.”

And as I peered at him over my shoulder, only one thought crossed my mind.

I want to punch the yellowed teeth in his grin right through the back of his fucking head.

The campus seemed so peaceful and “normal”, and that gave me the creeps. Everyone was going about their day as if there wasn’t a monster at the helm of this sinking ship. I searched everywhere for Adam. I went back to the apartment, hoping he might be back, but he wasn’t. Then I went to all of his classes and asked around, but no one had seen him. I retraced the steps of every path we had walked together, and even stood at the edge of the campus and just stared out over the grounds for a while to see if I could see him slinking around as he sometimes did. Nothing. He was nowhere. I started to worry that something terrible had happened to him, but then remembered the look of guilt on his face last night. It was more like he had done something bad instead of the guards. All I could do was wait and hope that he was okay…hope that all three of the guys were okay. It was funny because there had been so many days that I was annoyed by how much they had all hovered over me and tried to protect me at every moment. Now that I was alone, I wanted them back more than anything; I’d even take the hovering.

When I got tired of standing around on campus, I went to the big tree near the cobblestone street at the edge between Lineage and Goldshire. It seemed like this was the longest winter I could remember, and as cold as it was outside, that tree made me feel warm. I grabbed one of the low branches and pulled myself up. As I climbed up, I searched for the exact branch that Julian and I had been on during the time that he had laid on top of me to keep me from falling off. I felt like a child searching for their security blanket and was filled with relief when I could still tell which branch it was. I wedged my body into the nook between where the base of the branch was attached to the tree and leaned up against the trunk. I sat there and thought about how lonely this felt without them.

A vibrating buzz coming from behind my ear nearly made me fall off the branch. I held onto the tree as I turned around and looked up into the nearby branches above me. To my absolute surprise, I saw my cell phone sitting tucked inside a carved out notch in the bark. I reached up and grabbed it, and the screen lit up with a dozen or so missed texts, all of which were from Michael.

I immediately texted him back. “Oh my god, are you there?”

I typed so fast that I had to be careful I didn’t drop the phone out of the tree.

“Lisette! I’m here!” Even though they were just letters, I heard Michael’s voice behind the words.

“How did my phone get here?” I asked.

“I found it at the greenhouse. Julian knew that eventually, you’d go back to the tree, so we figured that was the best place to leave it for you.”

“Are you guys okay?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Michael typed as I waited for the three pulsing dots to reveal what else he was going to type. “How are you holding up?”

“Not great if we’re being honest. Adam is gone.”

“Gone where?”

“I don’t know.”

“Okay, I’ll see what I can find out. Hang in there. You’re coming here tomorrow for the press event, so I’ll see you soon.”

“Okay.” I didn’t want to stop texting with him. “Wait, can I call you? I need to hear your voice.”

For a second, I thought he had already gone. I heaved a sigh of relief when I saw him typing again. “No, I’m sorry. There are too many ears listening. Text is better, just delete the messages.”

I nodded as I typed. “Okay.”

“Lisette, it’s going to be okay. I promise.”

His last message made me start to cry, and I tried to see the screen on my cell phone through my clouded eyes.

“Don’t promise things that you can’t keep,” I said.

He quickly texted back, and even though they were only letters, I still believed them. “I’m not.”

After that, the messages stopped. I scrolled back up to the top so that I could read all of the messages that I had missed. They were all most of the same thing; Michael asking me if I was there and if I was okay and telling me to answer back as soon as I could. There was one message in there from Julian, too; I could tell it was him because he always used a lower case “l” when he wrote my name. Even when it auto-corrected to a capital, Julian always changed it back. I never asked him why it mattered; I always just chalked it up as being one of the cute quirks about him.

I shoved the phone in my back pocket and climbed down out of the tree. At least I had a way of reaching out to Michael now if I needed to. I could tell he was being careful about using the phones, though. I stood at the edge of the cobblestone and looked across at the Goldshire campus. It seemed like it would be so easy just to run across the street and run to him, but it wasn’t. All of the other people walking around on campus had no idea that there were invisible lines drawn, which kept us all prisoner, especially me.

On the walk back to the apartment, I went slowly and took the long way. I walked down the path where Michael and I had gotten into that brawl that left us both with a black eye the next day. I had been so busy trying to fight him and not die in the process that I hadn’t even noticed a small structure that was tucked back off from the path a bit. It looked like it might have been an old cottage at one point, maybe a place where a groundskeeper stayed or kept their things.

I walked over to it and pushed open the door to see the stone room. And naturally, I figured there was no bigger threat than the one already looming over my head.

So, I ventured into its confines to see what the hell was going on behind its heavy wooden door.

26

“I expect you to behave today,” my father said as we walked into the Goldshire offices.

“What am I, five?” I snarked as I pulled my arm away from him.

As soon as I saw Michael come into view, I got ready to run to him and throw my arms around his neck. But my father pulled me back and rooted me firmly beside him.

“Might as well be, you act like your five,” he said.

I felt like an imposter. Marta had come to the apartment in the morning, and since there were no locks on the doors, she had walked right in and woken me up by dropping a cup full of cold water on my face. I hated that woman, almost as much as I hated my father. She brought me an outfit to wear to the press event today, and I would have rather gone naked than put it on, literally.

I stood there next to my father, completely decked-out in Lineage Academy garb, and stared at Michael. He glared at my father first, and then at his mother. Then he asked the three of us to sit down at his table. Now that Michael was the Headmaster of Goldshire, he was the boss, at least he could pretend to be. Everyone here knew that it was really my father, who was the boss, but the press was not to know that small and important fact. We were meeting behind closed doors first so that everyone got their story straight, and there was no margin for error. The door opened, and Julian came in to sit down next to Michael. He had a harder time keeping in character than Michael did. Julian wanted to run up and hug me too; I could see it in his face. But he didn’t. None of us did what we wanted to do; only my father got that privilege.