Page 105 of Forbidden Billionaires: Vol. 11

“His step-father is one of my dad’s best friends. So I call him Uncle Matt. But he’s not really my uncle. And he’s not even Jacob’s real father. Jacob and I are not blood related. Not even a little bit. Zero relation.”

Mr. Halifax exhaled slowly. “Oh. Well...good. Phew.”

Sophie tried to stop laughing and snorted a little. And then she looked horrified that she snorted and settled down.

Mr. Halifax chuckled. “You scared me there.”

“Yeah. Definitely not related,” I said again, just to drive the point home.

“Sorry,” he said and shook his head. “Now where were we?” He leaned closer to see the page of the calculus problem I was on. “Do you need help finding that derivative?”

I glanced out of the corner of my eye at Sophie. She was the one that had asked for help. Not me.

“Here.” Mr. Halifax grabbed my pencil out of my hand. “Let me show you. And then you can try the next problem on you own.”

***

Uncle Rob said something as I helped him set the dinner table.

But I wasn’t paying attention. I was still a bit shell shocked about how Mr. Halifax had behaved during detention.

He’d sat with me half the time helping me with problems I already understood.

And I couldn’t tell if he had acted shocked about the Jacob thing entirely because of the cousin assumption. Or if he was partially jealous.

I straightened one of the forks.

“Scarlett, did you hear what I asked?” Uncle Rob said.

“What?”

He laughed. “Did you like the finishing touches on your secret lair?”

Everyone needed to stop calling it mine . “I haven’t seen it yet.”

“What? You gotta go check it out. I did most of the work, but Tanner really brought the whole thing together. I’ll give him credit where credit is due.”

“Sophie and I are heading there after dinner.”

“Fantastic. Text me and let me know what you think.” He laughed. “James is going to be so pissed if he ever finds it.”

Yeah, that’s what I was afraid of. My father’s wrath.

“Did anything fun happen at school today?” Uncle Rob asked.

I quickly shook my head. “No. Nothing out of the ordinary,” I said.

Sophie walked in with some glasses of water.

“Yeah, not much, Dad. Axel showed up high.” She rolled her eyes.

“It turns out Jacob is not Scarlett’s kiss thief.

But they’re dating anyway. Him and Scarlett were all over each other in the hallways today.

It was adorable. And even though Scarlett is clearly in love with Jacob, our calculus teacher flirted with her hard in detention. It was completely inappropriate.”

“Why did you girls have detention?” Uncle Rob asked.

I never understood why he didn’t react to everything Sophie said. There were a lot of troublesome things she’d just said. And I was pretty sure the flirtatious teacher thing deserved some attention.

“Shockingly it wasn’t because of the cameras we installed in the men’s locker room,” Sophie said. “Which we still need to check today, Scar. We got detention for talking during class.”

Uncle Rob laughed. “I never know when you’re kidding, Soph. But remember what I said about those cameras...”

“Yeah, yeah, don’t get caught. We won’t, Dad.”

“What about cameras?” Aunt Daphne asked as she walked into the dining room with a big serving bowl.

“Nothing,” Sophie and Uncle Rob said at the same time.

RJ laughed as he carried in two more big serving bowls.

He was probably the one that would actually get in trouble for installing cameras to spy on the locker room.

But I was so grateful to him for keeping them up a little longer.

Because now that I knew for sure Jacob wasn’t my kiss thief, I still needed to figure out who was.

And Sophie was right, we still needed to check today’s footage for clues.

“What are we having?” I asked.

“Lasagna,” Aunt Daphne said.

I looked around. There was no lasagna anywhere insight.

“It’s deconstructed,” RJ said. “The only way to eat lasagna, am I right?”

“Totally right,” Sophie agreed and handed me one of the serving bowls.

It was filled with naked lasagna noodles. There was tomato sauce in another bowl. And meat in a third bowl.

When Sophie asked my mom about deconstructed lasagna the other day, I was hoping she’d been kidding. This is so weird. But eating at their house was always an experience. Especially when they ordered in. I rarely ever ate meals here because of it.

Speaking of ordering in. I pulled out my phone. I knew Axel wasn’t really sick. But whenever he had a real sick day, I always sent him soup to make him feel better. I ordered soup to be delivered to his apartment and then slid my phone back into my blazer pocket.

“Who are you texting?” Sophie asked. She waggled her eyebrows at me. “Your kiss thief?”

“Your blackmailer?” RJ guessed at the exact same time.

“What?” Aunt Daphne asked. “Kiss thieves? Blackmailers? What are you two talking about?”

“Nothing,” I said.

Aunt Daphne turned to me. “Sweetie, if someone is blackmailing you...”

“They’re not. RJ was just joking. I was ordering soup for Axel because he’s sick. See.” I lifted up my phone. I was still on the restaurant’s website.

“Oh, that’s nice of you.”

“You never send me soup when I’m sick,” RJ said.

“Because she’s not in love with you,” Sophie said.

“Well, she’s dating Jacob now. So it seems more like a friendship soup kind of situation. Put me down on the list for chicken noodle next time I have the sniffles.”

I laughed. “Okay, RJ.”

“Thanks, baby doll.”

“Stop calling me that.”

“But the operation isn’t over.”

I sighed. “Yes it is. We fixed the hole...” my voice trailed off. Everyone had been talking so openly, that I’d almost forgot all reason. No one else could know about the secret lair.

“What hole?” Aunt Daphne asked.

“I plead the fifth,” RJ said.

Aunt Daphne just shook her head.

There was no way we were actually going to get away with having a secret lair. But I did need to get to it soon. It was time to come clean to Sophie.