Royal love

Chapter 39

I sit in the chair in front of Mattie.

"I didn't join this friend group before you were in it," I say.

"We knew you'd be sent here," she says through tears. "Your parents had been planning it for a long time, from the time your brother killed himself to when you got shot."

"What?" Jody intervenes. "How would you know that?" He asks.

"I swear, I don't know anything that wasn't told to me by my boss." She glances over at Hayden and sees his untrusting glare. "I swear!" She whines.

Hayden rolls his eyes.

Mattie is looking around the room, and taping her non hurt finger against the arm of the chair.

"Guys," I say to the others. "We should go get Abby before she thinks anything's off with her missing partner," the words slip off my tongue with venom.

Rowan and Noah nod, waiting for me to find out where Abby will be from Mattie.

"Where is she?" I ask Mattie. Mattie closes her eyes and shakes her head.

"I can't answer tha—"

Before she can finish her sentence her chair is on the floor. Her other ear is bleeding now. I watch as Hayden puts his mouth near her ear and whispers something.

Mattie nods multiple times really fast as she's pulled up from the floor.

I want to know what he said to her but he obviously doesn't want anyone to know and I don't want her to think we're not on the same page.

"She's in the library, the janitors closet in the library. We were going to meet up and call our boss," she says through tears. Her words are cut off by sobs but we get what we need.

I turn to look at Noah and Rowan and they nod as they leave.

"Who's your boss?" Daniella asks. I completely forgot about that. Everything else has been too much already.

"I don't know," Mattie responds.

Hayden gets his pocket knife out and digs it under her fingernail again.

"I don't know!" She shrieks. "My boss always has a voice changer on when we call! We don't see their face, they just tell us what we have to do and we do it! I swear!" She winces at the pain as Hayden continues to dig the Knife in. When he pulls it out, a stream of blood flows from her finger.

"How old are you?" I ask. "Why are you working for this person?"

"I'm 20! I've always looked younger, that's why I was sent on this job, Abbys 19." Her voice is full of panic and she looks worried Hayden might knock her over and peel her nails off.

"So why do you work for such a horrible person at such a young age?" I ask, again.

"We have to! Unlike you I don't have a choice. I was living on the streets, this life, it's saved me from the life I could have had, homeless. I chose this life and so did Abby."

My heart tears at her words. She's right, unlike me there are people out there that don't have a lot, people who have to resort to anything in order to survive.

"Nobody cares about your sob story," Says Jody. "Is there anything your boss told you that you haven't shared with us?" He asks with his eyebrows raised.

Mattie shakes her head.

Hayden doesn't believe her.

This time, Hayden grabs a bottle of disinfectant. He walks it over to Mattie and shows it to her.