How to Raise an Assassin

CHAPTER 14: ANCHORING ONTO HIS PAIN

I didn't want to remember anything else from that dinner. I was glad I couldn't see, because I was pretty sure Ash embarrassed himself like forty other times throughout the dinner. Why was he so awkward all of a sudden? Yes, meeting my parents was tough for a kid trying to join the Locusts, but still, he completely collapsed under the pressure.

Imagine how I felt trying to ask for him to stay the night. Thank the Heavens that my father offered the invitation before I formulated a plan to ask him.

"Stay the night?" my mother repeated with a hint of objection in her shrill voice. "Will his parents, I mean, his dad be okay with it?"

"My dad has been out of town the past couple of days at some Mayor's Convention in D.C. with the President. He comes back tomorrow."

"And how about your..."

My father cut my mother off. "It's okay Cara. I imagine his father won't want to be disturbed. And let's not press any further into the poor boy's past now. It's not our place."

My mother was silent for a bit, but I'm pretty sure a gasket was about to rupture in her head while she figured out what's at the bottom of this. My father, however, wisely figured out this was all a part of the initiation process.

"The guest rooms are currently unavailable I'm afraid," my mother added as she stood up from her chair. "Unless you sleep on the couch..."

"Za-Za has a spare roll-out bed beneath her own," my father added. "He can stay there."

"In the same room honey?" my mother gritted her teeth but sighed as she left the room. "I'll get the maid to clean up the mess."

And that's how fantastically awkward dinner went. My mom clearly didn't trust Ashton after vetting him. My father saw him as a new bargaining chip, and my sister was just there throwing in chides from time to time to make herself feel better.

It's times like these that I wished Noa was here. He would've made Ash feel a bit more welcomed. He had his ways of counteracting the stupidity of the rest of my family. Because, unlike the rest of his siblings, Noa was an assassin who was also beloved by many. There wasn't a day he didn't invite a friend over to the house. I missed him.

Anyway, Ash and I managed to escape the dining room and headed up to my room. Now, my room was pretty big, and I had the smallest room in the house. It could probably be a college dorm room that could house four people comfortably. My door was decorated with many signs to scare away visitors: "Mind Your Business," "Keep Out," "Leave Me Alone," etc. None of them worked. My parents always barged in without knocking. Lay would just open the door to mess with me by throwing a rotten tomato at me because she was my annoying older sister. When my older brother Ka was here, he'd kick down the door with a paint gun and start firing at me. Something about always being ready because you'll never know when an assassin might be out to get you. Let's just say, I was glad he wasn't here.

Once in my room, I felt my way around it. I'm a night walker so it wasn't hard. Turning on the light to go to the bathroom in my own house? Only noobs did that. I closed my eyes in the dark and felt my way everywhere.

Ashton whistled at the size of the room. "Wow, you even have your own balcony and private bathroom. You sure this isn't the master bedroom?"

"You should see my parents' room," I said reaching beneath my Queen-sized bed with a white veil hanging from golden embroidered branches wrapped around the frame of the bed. "You could park a bus inside it." I pulled out the bed beneath mine. A twin bed rolled out on wheels covered in a dark blue bedsheet with Black Widow in her auburn hair dressed in smoky gray tights holding a pistol.