Page 39 of From Angel to Rogue (Four Foxes #6)

KATY

The loud ring of the doorbell had Lan, Luka, and me dart our eyes toward the door.

“That must be her,” Lan mumbled and threaded to the door like it was the last thing he wanted to do.

“Katiew, is the newcomer our friend?” Luka asked innocently.

“Maybe buddy.”

Lan informed earlier that Serena was visiting us today. And I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. I knew she was important to Lan, but her relationship with me was as strained as it could get.

Maybe it could be different now.

Lan ushered a calm-looking Serena in. She looked the same as the last time I saw her about a year ago. Dressed in a tight black shirt and a denim skirt and high-knee boots, she was stylish and cool on the outside, but that was a different matter on the inside.

“Hey, Serena.” I mustered a smile. “So good to see you again.”

She stilled when her eyes fell to my belly. Like she was shocked that I was pregnant.

“You’re pregnant?” It was the first thing she said.

“Yeah,” Lan answered her, coming to my side. “Katy and I are going to have twins.”

Her light brown eyes felt like daggers as they eyed my stomach. I lay a protective hand over my belly and sharpened my gaze.

But she quickly let her disdain drop and masked it with a forced smile. She gave me a nod of acknowledgment and eyed Luka, who was peeking out from behind my legs.

“Hi, I’m Serena.” She waved, faking a wide smile at Luka.

My little boy peered up at me, and when I nodded, his eyes darted to hers. “I’m Luka,” he said shyly.

Soon, we all settled in the living room.

She acted like I didn’t even exist while she carried on chatting with Luka and Lan.

Lan noticed and tried his best to be the buffer, but it wasn’t working. And Luka was ignorant to catch the slithering tension in the room.

Serena always hated me, telling herself the narrative that Lan chose me over her. And when we were young, I tried to be her friend, not that it worked. So I brushed off her unwarranted jabs as childish jealousy, but now, even in our twenties, her behavior screamed absurd.

Not being able to take it anymore, I excused myself. “I’m going to rest for a while. You guys chat,” I said, nodding to Lan and sliding Luka a small smile before I retreated to the bedroom.

When I closed the door behind me, it felt like I could breathe again.

I was busy knitting a row of seed stitch when frustrated voices started to leak into the room.

Frowning, I paused and listened closer.

“No, that’s Katiew’s and mine. You can’t take that.” I heard Luka’s loud voice shriek.

And I immediately dropped my knitting needles and rushed out in a panic.

My eyes flew to Luka and Serena in the kitchen. Lan was nowhere in sight.

“No, give it back,” Luka screamed, his face pinched in an angry frown.

“Stop shouting, you stupid kid,” Serena yelled and yanked Luka’s tiny fingers that were circled around her wrist and flung him away.

The motion almost made his tiny body lose balance and fall backward if not for me catching him in time. Luka immediately started to cry and hid himself behind my knees.

My blood was boiling so high that I was ready to murder her.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” I screamed at her.

She glared at me. “I was just trying to have a fucking drink.” She waved to the half-open milkshake cup on the counter. “And it was your brat who started to claw at me. I don’t know from which corner you dug—”

I didn’t even let her finish the sentence as the sharp resounding sound of my slap slithered through the room.

She gaped, cupping her red cheek like she couldn’t believe what I’d just done.

“You don’t ever talk about my son that way,” I roared, not even feeling the burn in my palm. “He is my fucking son. Now, get the fuck out of my house.”

LAN

Loud voices snapped my attention from my phone call.

“Fuck. Let me call you back,” I told my brother, who was just about to tell me there was new information from that night at Fairmount. I’d just stepped inside Luka’s room to take the call and hadn’t even been gone for five fucking minutes.

When I stepped out of the hallway, my eyes widened when Katy’s hand raised through the air and slapped Serena’s left cheek.

“You don’t ever talk about my son that way,” Katy shouted, her face red. “He is my fucking son. Now, get the fuck out of my house.”

My eyes lowered to Luka, who was clinging to Katy and crying streams of tears.

I didn’t have to ask what was wrong as I stepped between them.

“Lan,” Serena breathed like she was glad to see me. “Katy… Katy just fucking slapped me. I didn’t do a thing.”

“Don’t you fucking lie, you bitch,” Katy bit out like she was about to destroy Serena once and for all.

“No,” I said firmly to Katy. “Take Luka to his room. I invited Serena and I will settle this.”

“What settling is there to do, Lan?” Katy’s wide eyes flew to me. “She called our son stup… stupid and pushed him around.”

My jaw ticked. “Katy,” I said more softly this time. “Take Luka. He’s crying.”

That made her snap out of her fury and she reluctantly nodded.

I waited till they both disappeared into the room before I turned to Serena.

Serena’s tearful eyes met mine. “Lan, you can’t possibly think I would do that now, do you? Katy is clearly lying—”

I didn’t even wait for her to finish that sentence as I held a hand and pinned her with my cold glare.

“You will never. I mean, ever come between me and my family, do you understand that? Luka and Katy are my whole fucking world. And I thought of you as my own sister and loved you just the same. But after this, I want nothing to do with you, you hear me? Nothing. I will keep in touch with Lara and Owen for the respect of them raising me and treating me as their own. But you, Serena, you are dead to me.”

Serena’s eyes widened like saucers. “But Lan, you can’t do that. You can’t do that to me,” she pleaded.

“It’s done. We are done,” I said coolly, not showing her an ounce of emotion. “Now like my woman said, get the fuck out of my house.”

Serena stilled but didn’t open her mouth to say another word.

Maybe because she knew.

The truth in my glacial tone.

And without looking back, she walked out of the apartment.

Out of my fucking life.

I should’ve done this a long fucking time ago.

KATY

I was seething.

Seething mad.

If that bitch ever showed her face again to me, I swear I was going to ruin her fake face permanently.

How fucking dare she calls my son stupid?

She was the stupid, jealous insecure vermin.

Not my boy.

Not my son.

“Katiew?” Luka asked sadly. His cries had quieted, and I wiped away the remnants of his tears.

“Yes, baby?”

“Am I in trouble?”

“No, baby.” I mustered a smile for him. “You’re not. You’re my good, sweet boy. I’m sorry Katy let her speak to you like that. But it’s over now, okay?”

“Okay.” He smiled.

My response seemed to work, and within seconds, he had already forgotten the incident and was busy playing with the dinos littered on his bedroom floor.

The sound of the door opening made me look up, and a solemn Lan walked in. His gaze softened when he saw Luka playing before they slid to me.

“She’s gone.”

I rose to my feet. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”

He frowned but nodded, following me out to the living room and I didn’t even waste a second before I fired, “All this happened because of you. You should’ve been right here watching our son. Where the hell did you go?”

“Katy, calm down. I just stepped out for five minutes to talk to my brother. But it’s finished. I fucking told her to get the fuck out of our lives,” Lan explained, but I was burning with rage. “She’s nothing to me anymore.”

“No.” I stabbed a finger at his chest. “Don’t you dare fucking tell me to calm down. This is your fault.”

“Katy, fine. I’m sorry, this is my fault, and I invited her to our house. But she won’t ever be coming into our lives again. I promise you that,” Lan said, his gaze holding me.

I sighed, and some of my tension dropped.

“But it’s still not okay. She made Luka cry, and I hate it.

I hate that you weren’t there for him. How can I trust you?

We have two more on the way, Lan. What if I leave them with you, and you go do something else, and something worse happens to them?

” The accusations I threw at him came in more of my own fears rather than anything else.

A furious glint crossed Lan’s eyes. “Oh, that’s fucking high coming from you. You can’t trust me? The person who stayed with you through all the fucking bullshit that you pulled.”

“It’s not that. You know what I mean,” I said. “And what happened today was your fault, and it cannot ever happen again.”

“It won’t,” he gritted out.

“You need to man up and be more responsible. I’m carrying your fucking babies, Lan.”

“I don’t even know if they are mine,” Lan snapped, his jaw clenching.

My feet took a step back like I’d been physically shot by a shotgun. I felt a gaping hole form inside my chest and the blood rushed to my feet.

Lan’s eyes widened like he just realized what he said. And all the anger dissipated from him in a second.

He didn’t really just say that, did he? But he did. I didn’t know he felt that way. I didn’t know he thought about our babies that way. He said he already considered them as his but he was lying, wasn’t he?

“Get out,” I whispered before I could stop myself. I really didn’t want to see his face at this moment.

“Katy, please let me explain. I didn’t mean it like that.” His brown eyes softened and he tried to take a step forward but I frantically shook my head, stopping him. The pain was just too much.

“I heard you loud and clear,” I said in a tone I didn’t recognize. “Now go. Leave please.”

He heaved a heavy sigh and gave me one last look before he nodded and left without saying another word.

The moment took me right back to the day we broke up in that glasshouse.

When he decided to leave me and I watched his back disappear like a broken doll. Only this time, I asked him to leave. But the pain was still the same.

LAN

Twin City.

My home, the city I hadn’t visited in months.

The storm raged, thrashing me with the pelting rain, matching the heavy pain and guilt lacing my heart as my bike sped through the roads.

I shouldn’t have said those words to her.

I had no fucking clue what I was thinking.

I was just in blind fucking rage and so fucking hurt when she told me she couldn’t trust me that I just snapped for a moment, not thinking straight.

And when she asked me to leave, I left like the coward I was, escaping on the back of my bike.

I just kept riding and riding and somehow found my way back home to the Twins.

Maybe I just wanted to get the fuck out of NYC.

I wanted to feel the wind biting my skin as I felt the high of the ride but it did nothing to clear my head or ease the ache in my chest.

My tires crunched on the gravel as my bike slowed down the winding driveway of my family’s estate. I parked out front and headed straight to my favorite spot, the glass room at the back of the house in the East wing.

It overlooked acres of our backyard and was decked in the utmost luxuries of expensive furniture, sparkling chandeliers, and elegant statues, all swathed in a low golden light.

My eyes instantly landed on the familiar figure sitting in a lone armchair by the fireplace.

“Brother,” Lucien said calmly. Like he wasn’t surprised by my presence. I knew he would’ve already been informed by the dozen security guards quietly guarding our home.

“You’re the last person I expected to see tonight,” he said flatly.

I nodded, sighing as I dropped into the seat opposite him. “Good to see you, brother.”

Lucien was taller than me, clad in a triple black suit and an air of quiet confidence, we were similar yet different in many ways. “You too. I assume trouble with the missus?”

“Yeah,” I groaned, raking a hand through my hair. “I might have fucked up.”

“Men almost always do.”

“Don’t I know it?”

“So about that night you asked me,” Lucien started. “We know everything—”

I held up a hand. “I don’t want to know.” And I really didn’t. They were mine no matter what.

He raised a brow. “You don’t?”

“No,” I said quietly, eyeing the floor. “It doesn’t matter.”

Just then, a pair of footsteps approached us, and we both snapped our eyes to the familiar presence that graced us. “A bird told me our favorite black sheep was back in the city.” Jon grinned, and I couldn’t help but smile at my best fucking friend.

Jon Stormhold, the youngest of the Stormhold brothers. The head family who ruled the Twins and, in extension, the entire East. To the outside world, they were just another rich family who owned a couple of clubs along the East Coast, but only the ones in power knew who actually owned the heads.

He pulled me into a half-hug and I patted his back. It was so fucking good to see him.

“Hug me any tighter and I would assume you have a crush,” Jon deadpanned and I rolled my eyes. Jon was a lot younger than me, but that was never a problem in our friendship.

“Have you finally quit prancing around with your keyboard and returned home for a real man’s job?” Jon cocked a brow as he sprawled himself on the couch.

The real man’s job in the Twins was certainly not what the rest of the world considered actual real jobs.

“He’s in trouble with Katy,” Lucien spoke for me while he casually sipped his bourbon on rocks.

“Ah, Katy darling.” Jon smirked. “How is my girl? I also have a nephew now and more on the way? Soon, you’re going to have to swap your Ducati for a van with the speed you’re going.”

“I don’t know about that,” I muttered.

They both shook their heads at my sullen tone.

The more I sat there talking with them, the more I didn’t want to be there, or I didn’t want to be there alone. I wanted my Katy and Luka back with me. And I couldn’t stop thinking about them.

I wanted to go back to our little home and my little family.

I wanted to go now.

I had no fucking clue why I even came here.

“I’m leaving.” I jumped to my feet without another thought.

Lucien and Jon paused, but their knowing gazes understood that I wanted to go back to my girl.

“I’ll see you guys soon,” I said, already halfway out the door.

“Good luck,” my brother said dryly while Jon grinned.

“Kiss Katy girl for me. Also, tell Luka his favorite uncle will visit him soon and say hi to that fucker Julian. He thinks he’s a pretentious fucker who owns that measly city while we do the real work here.

” His cousin, Julian Stormhold, manned the fort in New York for the family.

I didn’t even bother nodding as I walked away.

I had a home to get to and some groveling to do.