Page 41 of Exiled Heir

“Oh, no, that was Louis. He does lunch and dinner. I do all the baked goods and the breakfast.” For a moment, her face glowed, the smile crinkling her eyes. Then she saw me looking at her and ducked her chin again.

“Have you worked here long?” I asked.

“Almost twenty years,” she said. “I arrived just after Prince Bartlett was born.”

“Well, they’re certainly lucky to have you.” I smiled again, letting my features soften. Something I had learned working for Declan was that my smile was just as much a weapon as my glare. This wasn’t a movie where the thug only had two gears: angry and violent.

I knew better. If you scared the mouse for long enough, its heart exploded. If you bribed it with cheese, then it trusted you enough to walk right into the trap.

We finished quickly, Siobhan chopping up fruit and making small talk with Jay. I listened to their conversation carefully. There was some talk of visiting diplomats, a brief conversation about one of the servants getting pregnant by another.

I filed most of it away, trying to memorize the names. After we finished, Jay led us outside. Behind the house, there was a massive lawn that disappeared into tall redwood and pine trees.

I breathed in deeply, the scent fresh and green. I had grown up in a small town just off the 101. It had been too far inland to get reasonable ocean breeze and just far enough away from the forest that trees were something we saw in the distance.

Mostly the thing I remembered about Flores was the dusty feel of it, how hot it baked in the summer, the way the loose, dry dirt scratched across my skin in a windstorm.

After that, Los Santos had been something entirely new. It was a huge city compared to where I had grown up. But once I figured out how many things were the same, tall buildings that blocked out the sky began to feel normal.

“Amazing, isn’t it?” Jay said. “We get to go hunting sometimes. Not as a pack. Obviously. But just to run during the full moon.”

“Not as a pack?” I felt both of my eyebrows creep up, although I wasn’t sure why I was surprised.

The werewolves that worked for Declan weren’t a pack either, but we definitely had a hierarchy. I had been at the top, and everybody underneath me scrabbled for dominance. In fact, I had never met a group of werewolves that worked or lived together without forming something like a pack, even if it never reached that level of formality. Hell, the doughnut chain down the street from my apartment had a pack hierarchy, and I was pretty sure most of them were college students with their own packs back at home.

“No.” Jay shook his head quickly. “No, it’s not like that here. This way.”

He gestured, and I followed him to one of two golf carts. He started it with the press of a button and pulled around the house to the driveway. Cade’s car was gone, parked somewhere else. I would have to find out where because I assumed that was the same place the bombed car had been stored pre-car-bombing.

Jay pulled onto the main road, and I looked around us. “This is a town.”

“This is House Bartlett,” he corrected.

On either side of us was what looked like a normal small-town street. There was a general store, a laundry, and the mechanic’s. There were a couple of other unmarked storefronts. Then what looked like a salon with blacked-out windows, the wordRhys’sscrawled across an enormous shingle over the door.

“You can get almost everything you need here,” Jay said. “We have an on-site doctor, and the house lawyer has an office here as well.”

He gestured at the two offices that I had noticed were unmarked. The golf cart drove further down the road as it began twisting, and I saw driveways to houses.

“This is where the rest of House Bartlett lives.” As we passed, he gestured to each property, naming the family and their position in the house. The more important families had larger houses, some with second and third homes behind the first.

“Where do the Jennings live?” I asked.

Jay’s eyes went wide, and he stuttered. “I don’t think we should—”

“I just want to have a chat, given that they’ve lost a daughter.” I raised both my eyebrows. “Promise I’ll be nice.”

Jay swallowed and pulled the car up to a gorgeous house. Two stories tall, with aBetter Homes and Gardensflower bed out front, it was the sort of house the magazine would put on the cover. I got out of the cart and walked up to the front door.

As soon as I rang the bell, someone answered. He looked down his nose at me, and all I could smell washuman.

“Deliveries out back,” he said stiffly.

“Do I look like I’m carrying a package?” I asked. “I’m Prince Bartlett’s new consort, and I had some questions about Trish Jennings’ death.”

“Master Jennings won’t talk to anyone except the prince,” the man said. He started to shut the door in my face, and I slapped a hand to it.

“That’s fine, but there has to be someone in the house whowilltalk to me,” I said.