Legend & Lace

4. Insomnia Is Not My Friend This Time

Chapter 4

Insomnia Is Not My Friend This Time

Sleep was out of the question. Even though Drake was out after a few moments, I was wide awake. I stayed beside him for almost an hour, feeling his chest rise and fall with his even breaths. But after his arm fell away, I slowly moved away from him to the other side of the bed.

I didn't dare turn on a light, but reached over to the side table to grab my phone. After adjusting the brightness, I opened the internet browser, turned on the privacy setting, and did something I hadn't done in a few months for fear of what I'd find.

I searched my name.

And the only things that came up were from a year ago.

Just like the last time I'd searched for myself, nothing came up about my 'death'. Legally, I wasn't even dead. Not even missing. The only people who knew of what happened to me were in the Brotherhood, the Knights, or the Order.

Drake and I were the only ones who knew the truth about what happened.

I was finding stuff on what happened the night of the gala in Florence, the night Eddie was born. That was pretty much one of the last times I was photographed in public.

But from that, dozens of links brought me to John and Emmy, complete with pictures. They'd apparently been to several benefits over the past year. Of course they were smiling for the cameras, but their eyes told a different story, especially to someone who knew them as well as I did.

Eddie had been mentioned a few times, even had a few pictures from when he was still just a few weeks old. There weren't any recent ones, though. Emmy and John always had him shielded from the cameras.

Everyone else I knew in the Brotherhood and the Knights popped up in several stories about them, including Juliet and Ryan. Then there was my family's benefit gala we held every year...and the one Momma almost always went crazy over. When pictures came up from it, Daddy looked like he'd aged ten years, even if he had a fake smile on his face, and Momma...she looked the same as always - beautiful - but had a vacant expression. Even Anna and her husband were there, though Anna seemed to only be there in body and not in mind, like Momma.

After another hour or two of finding anything and everything I could about my family, I stopped. Why torture myself more with their pictures?

Yeah, I'd rather just let my mind run away with me again just like it did any time I was thinking about everyone.

I didn't know what happened after Vince stabbed then threw me and Drake into the underground river below Seward House. I could just imagine them finding Vince and the Order in the Brotherhood's library and the tunnels. There were plenty of Brotherhood that also worked and stayed at Paddon Manor, but was there a fight? How did John and Emmy learn what happened to me and Drake? Did Vince boast about it to them himself? Did they believe him, or did he have to show them the bloodied knife as proof?

I wished I could have seen whatever happened between him and John. No doubt John went gone into a fit of rage after realizing Drake and I were really gone, dead, thrown into an underground river where we didn't know where it ended or even broke above ground. Emmy would have, too.

How long did it take for them to get rid of the Order?

What did they think when they finally went down into the tunnels and saw all the blood? Was that the moment they realized what Vince had told them was true?