Royalty Exposed

Chapter 46

Zach squeezed me tightly as we hugged each other, pulling away a couple minutes later. I said hello to Lauren after that, figuring that Zach and I could talk when we would take a break for lunch. If not, then we would always catch up another day or whenever Carter and I had Zach and Lauren over for dinner again. After Lauren and I greeted each other, I told them that they could go into the conference room while we waited for everyone else to arrive.

I noticed that as Zach and Lauren went into the conference room, Kate had already disappeared into the same room. It wasn't long before someone else arrived though. And this time it was my little brother, Logan, who looked like he had grown up a little more than the last time we had seen each other.

"Hey, how's school going?" I asked him as we hugged each other.

"Good. I'm really liking my classes," he replied smiling at me after we had pulled away from each other. I smiled back at him and then said, "That's good because I remember in high school you didn't like school all that much."

"Yeah, I wasn't that focused on school as much as I am now. Plus, there's cooler classes to take in college than there were in high school," he responded after nodding his head.

"That is true. Have any of those classes helped you figure out what you wanna to for the rest of your life?" I asked him. Logan shook his head. "No not yet. Dad says I'll eventually figure that out as I take more classes."

"Yeah you definitely well. I may have already known what I wanted to do before I went into college, but I still kept my options opened just in case the writing career didn't pan out. The more classes I took, the more I realized just how much I wanted to be a writer," I said.

"Yep, that's what I figured. The more classes I take, the easier it will be to figure out what I want to do for the rest of my life. So, am I the first to arrive?" Logan asked. I shook my head and then pointed towards the conference room letting him know who else had arrived.

Logan headed over to the door so he could join the others while I stayed right where I was to greet the last three people who would be joining us. I was pretty sure that Jade was going to arrive by herself just like our little brother had. She didn't have classes today, but that didn't mean she hadn't gone off somewhere before she had to come here. Jade and Logan might have given up their Saturday to help me search the palace, but they could have had other things to do before coming here. They were both early risers now that they were in college. I knew that they still liked sleeping in, but when they had things to do, they got them done.

Jade and my parents arrived separately, but only a few minutes apart, about fifteen minutes after Logan had arrived. I greeted them and then showed my younger sister and our parents into the conference room. From there, I told everyone what they needed to know while searching the palace. The most important being that they needed to know was to stay away from the library as much as possible. Everyone but Lauren had been here before and knew their way around the palace, but I knew that Lauren would be sticking with Zach so she wouldn't be getting lost.

Once I had made sure that no one had any questions, I divided everyone up and then sent them on their way. Despite the fact that there were probably only certain places that Julia had gone in the palace, I wanted to make sure every inch of the palace was searched just in case Julia had been smart enough to hide evidence some place where no one thought she would go.

"I'm so glad there's some employees helping out as well. I didn't think we would be able to search this place by ourselves. That would take weeks if that were the case," Mom said as me and her headed to where we would be searching. I had let everyone pair off with whoever they wanted, telling them that we could switch it up after we ate lunch.