“Why?” I ask.
“We already got a DNA test,” he admits.
“What?” I draw back, my heart racing.
He gives the tiniest shrug of one shoulder. “I wanted to make sure.”
“Make sure what?” I ask, narrowing my eyes at him.
“We already knew you were. I just wanted to be sure. So, that night you slept over…” He shifts uncomfortably, but he doesn’t drop my gaze.
I feel my face warm, thinking about him wiping my blood off his dick and asking me about it. I know it’s stupid, but I feel weirdly violated by the thought that he was scheming on me that day. But I also understand why he did it. He had started to catch feelings, and he was looking for a way out. If I wasn’t a Darling, he wouldn’t have to destroy me.
Preston leans forward, resting his forearm on the seat in front of him and looking past me to Royal. “How did you already know?”
“Dad found her,” Royal says before returning his attention to me. “Someone who works for him knew about your mom and their uncle. They were living together until right after you were born. They found some… Correspondences online between your mother and John Darling that proved you were a Darling.”
I swallow. I know there’s more to that story, that my mother was sleeping with two other guys during that time, but I keep that to myself. She was an underage, scared, and desperate poor girl who suddenly found herself homeless and took advantage of the only kindness shown to her. She deserves her privacy, her dignity. If she was lying, the DNA test will answer soon enough, and I’ll confront her in private.
“How long had you known?” I ask Royal, because I want to know what led him to me in the first place.
“Since the beginning.”
“The beginning of what?” I ask, my pulse thudding heavily, though I’m not sure why just yet.
“Since we found you at the tracks,” he says. “With that teacher.”
I sit back, thinking about it for a minute. They knew from the very start, before we even met. “You were looking for me,” I realize aloud.
“Yeah,” he says. “Baron was able to hack some account you had, and then track it on your phone.”
“Well, that’s fucking creepy.”
He shrugs and gives Preston a withering look. “We’d settled the score with all the Darlings at Willow Heights, except for this asshole, and we couldn’t get to him. So we were going to go after Lindsey next, but then we got word of you. And you made it too fucking easy, sucking a teacher off in public.”
“That’s why you decided to ruin my life?” I ask. “Because it was easy?”
“No,” he says. “We didn’t care about you. We thought we’d just release the video at your school and fuck with you a little, since you weren’t even a real Darling. But then you showed up at Willow Heights and started fucking with us back…”
My stomach hollows out, and I can hardly breathe. I turn to Preston, my veins icy hot with rage. “Because of you,” I say. “Was that your plan all along? To send me in there, knowing they’d target me, so they’d leave your sister alone?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
I just stare at him. “I don’t even know what to say right now,” I say, ripping open the envelope in quick, angry strokes. “Is that why you were so nice to me? Why you bought me all that shit, paid my bills, gave me scholarships? Was that some kind of penance on your part, when you realized I was an actual person and you started to feel bad that you’d sent them after me?”
“Again, no fucking idea what you’re talking about,” he says, sounding annoyed now.
I pull out the paper and unfold it, my eyes scanning it quickly.
“Not a match,” I say, looking up. My eyes meet Preston’s, and he smiles. The bottom half of his face is undamaged, still arrogant and beautiful, but when he smiles, it makes everything inside me ache.
He grabs my face between his hands and pulls me in, kissing me hard on the mouth.
“What the fuck?” Royal yanks me back. “If you want me to resist murdering your friends, then they need to keep their hands off you.”
“Aww, are you jealous?” I ask, temporarily filled with elation at having this weight lifted. I didn’t know how scared I was until my fears aren’t realized. I lean in to kiss Royal, but he pushes me back and turns his face away.
“You better wash that mouth with bleach before it comes near me again.”