Sunflower | Completed

13 ⚬ respect

(Sunflower)

Alexander King decided I wasn't ready to be married just yet, after all.

When I threw the ring at his feet, he simply bent down to pick it up, dusting it off as if I had somehow hurt his precious ring.

He told me, "We will give you a week to be prepared for the official engagement announcement. In three months, say farewell to your life as Sunflower Keynes, for you will be the queen to a King. In the meantime, you will stay at the King mansion to recover from your 'wounds' and you will learn to respect your place. You will learn the rules of etiquette through the help of a governess appointed by me."

There was no space to argue, because Alexander King pushed his stepsons towards the door. He was quite bulky and muscular, so there was no way Nero and Blaise could fight him off. He could probably pick both of the brothers up in his hands.

Alexander King turned with a swish of his coat and left the room, even as I called after him and his stepsons.

I rounded on my parents and I said through a scathing glare, "Why didn't you say anything? How could you just let this happen? Why don't you care about Grayson and where he is? Mom! Dad!"

My parents said they couldn't do anything and their hands were tied.

I was flabbergasted.

I could think of a million things they could do to help me. Surely, the King family was influential but not that influential? Had they somehow blackmailed my parents without telling me? I could guess without having to look at Nero and Blaise that their uncle was abusive. How else would they agree to something as obviously ridiculous as an arranged marriage when they had no reason to want it, or at least according to what I knew of them.

As I was trying to think of a response to my parents, they received an important business call.

I could hardly get a word in and suddenly my parents were panicking about some business deal that was going south because the other end wasn't keeping their ends of the deal properly.

They came back to me and they were in a rush to leave the mansion.

"Honey, I'm so sorry to leave you like this. We would have Grayson back if we could to walk with you through this. Call us or your aunts and uncles if anything happens. We will be there," my mother promised.

Somehow I was left alone in the grand King mansion which didn't seem as nice to me anymore.

Everything was changing, and I didn't know how to stop the changes from occurring. I couldn't run, because I was still injured. I couldn't call someone to rescue me since the only person who could was in need of rescuing.

I finally drifted off to sleep after tossing and turning, thinking of my brother and the two twins who had whirled into my life like a storm.

It was pouring in torrential amounts now, and it felt like there was nothing I could do to avoid the rain.

❧

Four days passed after the whole ring thing.

My parents still weren't back from their business trip and I was starting to get anxious.

I had started healing from my wounds and could hobble around the mansion.

Alexander King had a guard follow me around wherever I went.

His name was Angelo, as I found out when I asked him on the third day. Since I spent almost all of my time with Angelo while Nero and Blaise were busy avoiding me, I got to know him better.

Angelo was a tall, middle aged man. He always wore his uniform with crisp ironing and he looked scary and tough but the way he spoke was almost dainty in a way.

He was friendly, and willing to talk to me unlike many of the other strange guests and guards at the King mansion.

He told me about many of the ins and outs of the mansion as well as the King family. I found out the Persephone woman was not related to the King family but she was a close family friend of theirs.

Angelo told me of the background he knew of the King family. He was very loyal to Alexander King because he would talk in favor of Alexander King whenever I asked about him.

This irked me to no end and I would try to incite reasons to dislike Alexander. Angelo wasn't easy to convince, and me being who I was, someone he was to guard and not to befriend, he didn't listen when I shared my opinions.

That was one of the things I didn't like about Angelo, but at least I had someone to talk to, otherwise I would have been desperate and maybe even chased after other feelings sitting in my gut like my attraction to Blaise or anger against Alexander King or fear for my brother Grayson.

Every day, I tried to find time to research on the King family, and research on where my brother could be. However, I couldn't spend much time on researching since Angelo was by my side pretty much twenty four seven except for when I had to use the bathroom and sleep.

So I started losing sleep on top of everything else. I was probably going to become delirious soon at this rate.

On the sixth day, before the engagement was to be publicly announced, I resorted to fasting.

If I didn't eat and I hadn't slept I probably looked terrible as it was, but I had to prove something, I had to do something about what was happening.

Then on the evening of the sixth day, my phone rang and I picked it up eagerly, thinking it was my parents who hadn't contacted me the whole week.

"Hello?" I said, almost breathless from the excitement that it could be my mom or dad.

A distorted voice spoke over the phone and as soon as I heard the words the phone slipped from my hands, falling to the floor.

"Sunflower Keynes. I am the one who took your brother, Grayson Keynes."

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A/N: Oh dang, there is a lot happening in these few chapters! Hope you don't hate me for all these cliffhangers hahaha love you guys for reading and keeping up with my book!

Question of the day: favorite thing to do on a rainy day?