When she smiled, she felt it brighten every cell in her body. “I would like that, yeah.”
His smile was dim, but it was genuine. “I’ll come find you. Say eight o’clock?”
Bijou nodded, then watched as he opened his door and slipped inside.
It was a start, she reminded herself as she followed his lead, going into her own room.
Definitely a start.
Making her way to the closet, she quickly disrobed, pulling on her pajamas. She then headed for the sink and went through her daily routine of washing her face, brushing her teeth. Face lotion came next. Hand lotion to follow. When she got into her bed, she snagged the last bottle of lotion from her bedside table, slathered her feet before slipping beneath the sheets. Bijou willed the lights off and lay in the dark. She considered starting a fire in the hearth, decided against it as she pulled the blankets up to her neck.
She thought back to the conversation she’d had with Oliver a few weeks ago, when she’d asked about his parents.
“My mother ran off with a younger man,” Oliver explained. “My father buried himself in work. It was rare we saw either of them after they split. I take that back. We rarely saw them before that, either.”
“Do you see them now?” She waved her hand. “I mean, before you came here.”
“No. My father calls from time to time, though.”
“Do you talk to him?”
“Every once in a while. He’s more interested in giving me shit, telling me how I’ve fucked up my life.”
“Does he know you’re here?”
Oliver shook his head. “Thinks me and Penelope are still in Vegas. It’s not like he’d come visit, so I don’t have to worry about him showing up there.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. It’s not like I miss him.”
“I miss my mother,” she admitted, surprised the words had come out.
Oliver shifted on the sofa, turning so he was facing her more fully. “I heard what happened to her.”
Bijou focused on her hands, clasping and unclasping in her lap. “They killed her.”
The pain burned in her chest when she thought about how her mother had died alone in their house, the shadow beasts having sensed her, following her from the grocery store. Bijou had been out with friends that night, hanging out, having fun. All the while, her mother had been suffering at the hands of those demons.
“How did you find Kaj?” he prompted.
“My mother kept a journal. I found it in the wreckage of the house. She’d tucked it under her mattress, and I guess it had fallen out when they ransacked the place.”
Now, as she lay in the darkened bedroom of the mansion, Bijou thought back to that journal. She hadn’t intended to violate her mother’s privacy, but by then, a month had passed since her death and she’d been missing her so much. She had been staying in a motel, trying to figure out where she would go next, what she was going to do. She’d had nothing at the time. Nothing more than a human driver’s license that worked to allow her to function within the human world.
That night, she had been crying, clutching the journal because it was the only thing she had left of her mother. When the tears had finally dried on her cheeks, Bijou had opened the book, flipped through the pages. On the very last page, she saw her name. It had been a note for her. As though her mother had expected one day she would find the journal. She could still see those words on the page, her mother’s fastidious handwriting. The note had told her how much she loved her, how proud she was of her. It had broken Bijou’s heart all over again, knowing she hadn’t been there to save her mother.
But it was what had come after that that she would remember for always:I’ve never told him about you, and for that, I am forever sorry. But your father’s a good man, a proud man. If he knew about you, he would’ve wanted to be a part of your life. I hope one day you’ll find him. While your conception was an accident, I’ve never seen it as such. From the moment I learned of you, I wanted you with all that I was. My biggest regret is not allowing him to know. Should something ever happen to me, Bijou, know that you can turn to him. He will take care of you. He’s that kind of male.
Bijou remembered being angry at the time. Her mother had spoken so highly of the male who had fathered her, yet she hadn’t told Kaj about her. To this day, she didn’t understand, and she had never bothered to ask Kaj.
One day, maybe.
It had been the next night when Bijou had taken her backpack that had everything she owned, and her mother’s car, and gone in search of Kaj. Little had she known that her entire world would change once more when she found him. At the time, she hadn’t put two and two together. Not once had she connected the dots.
Imagine her surprise when she’d finally realized that her father was the direct descendant of the royal family. By the time she’d found him, her father had become the Alpha vampire.
Shortly before nightfall, Perfidious crawled out ofhis warm bed and made his way down to Asmia’s cell.
