“Hey, Mom. What’s up?” he said. He quickly left the kitchen and cut down the hall toward the library so that Marc couldn’t overhear his conversation. If he stuck to his routine, he’d linger in the breakfast area with his coffee, skimming the news headlines before wandering off for a shower.
“It’s good to hear your voice, nephew.”
Royce froze midstep in the hall at the rough and ragged male voice that came from the phone.
“Who is this?”
“Now that hurts. I can’t believe you don’t recognize your Uncle Corbin.”
Royce reached out and pressed his hand against the wall to steady himself as the shock made him dizzy. His fucking uncle. The head of the Karras crime family back in New York. He closed his eyes against the deluge of anger and old memories that threatened to swamp him. After the death of his father and younger brother, Royce’s mother had quickly pulled him out of New York, taking them to Virginia so that he could never again be touched by his father’s family. And in over two decades, this was the first he’d heard directly from them.
“What do you want?”
“Is that any way to talk to your uncle? If your damn mother hadn’t stolen you away from us, you would have learned some manners.”
“What have you done with her? Let me talk to her.” Shoving away from the wall, he stalked down the hallway and into the library as he heard the first sounds of Marc moving around. The timing was so damn bad, but he needed to know that his mother was okay.
“Your mother is just fine. I dropped into Cincinnati to have a little visit with you, and I thought I’d check on my sister-in-law, Cathy.”
“Leave my mother alone. You want me, you deal with me.” Royce ducked into the library, his footsteps muffled on the thick carpet. He paced the room, walking along the wall of books carefully arranged on dark wood shelves.
“Oh, you’re exactly who I want. You will meet me for lunch at Café Mediterranean. You know it?”
“I know it, but I’m on a job. I can’t leave. I need—”
“Then I’ve got another option for you. I’ll leave your cousin Nick here with your mother and I’ll come to see you. Or maybe I’ll visit that new boyfriend of yours I saw on the Internet, Mr. Costas.”
Royce swore softly and tightly clenched his fingers around his phone. He couldn’t leave Marc home alone, and he definitely couldn’t take him along. He also couldn’t easily substitute another bodyguard to pretend to be Marc’s boyfriend. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck! But he definitely wasn’t leaving his mother alone in the hands of his uncle and cousin.
“One o’clock at Café Mediterranean,” Royce snarled. He had a fix, but Marc wasn’t going to like it. Unfortunately, Royce just didn’t give a shit what Marc wanted. His mother came first.
Corbin chuckled low in his ear. “That’s a good boy.”
Royce ended the call and shoved the phone into his pocket before he gave in to the temptation to smash it against the wall. “Marc! We’ve got to get moving now!” he bellowed, his deep voice bouncing off the high walls as he marched toward the kitchen. This was not how he’d wanted to spend the day.Marc pushed away from his laptop and paced to the wall of windows looking out on the in-ground pool and swath of woods surrounding Geoffrey’s house. Geoffrey wasn’t even there—he was over at his sort-of sister-in-law’s house for a family lunch with his boyfriend, Sven.
From the moment Royce had maneuvered him back into the bedroom to get showered and dressed in less than ten minutes, the man had been on the phone searching for another bodyguard to cover Marc and a place to hide him that wouldn’t raise too many eyebrows.
Said babysitter was lounging on the couch behind him, playing on his phone.
Dominic Walsh seemed like an okay guy with an easy, charming smile and fiery red hair that likely hinted at a temper to match.
But Marc didn’t want to think about Dom. He wanted to know what was going on with Royce. While usually reticent, Marc could get him to talk. But he’d gotten barely two words out of Royce before he was shoved into the car and driven to Geoffrey’s, where he was dumped on the doorstep like unwanted trash.
“Family emergency.”
That was all Royce snarled at him. He wouldn’t entertain any of Marc’s suggestions to help or allow him to come along. He didn’t say anything.
Stiffening his spine, Marc followed Dom into the house and immediately set up his laptop with the idea of trying to work through some emails. Saturday was supposed to be his one day of rest and relaxation. The one day that he didn’t think about work, in an effort to recharge his batteries, but he couldn’t run errands or do his usual things with Dom trailing behind him. It raised too many questions.