Dirty Wicked Prince (Court Legacy 1)

I went ahead and asked Wolf if he wanted to join us. He or the other guys often did and Wolf never turned down my mom’s pot roast. My mom and I weren’t meat eaters, but she made it for Dad.

Wolf and I could smell the roasted meat all the way down the block, the pair of us walking home from the park since it was so close. We got pretty close to my house before we noticed the cop car outside it.

And my god dad’s Mercedes.

“That’s my dad’s car.” Wolf noticed at the same time as me, the pair of us picking up the pace. We got to my house, and I opened the door, placing the basketball down beside it.

“Mom?” I called.

“Dad?” Wolf asked, not far behind.

We heard no answer.

A buzzing hit my ears I didn’t like, a tension. In our search for our parents, I felt a tightness in my chest. It was an anticipation of something, a ringing in my head.

We found our parents in the kitchen.

Like all our parents, my mom and dad and Wolf’s. My god dad Ramses and Wolf’s mom, Brielle, were both there. Brielle had been headmaster of our school before we’d enrolled and Principal Mayberry had taken over.

The cop was with them.

The officer was talking to my father, my dad’s hands in his pockets. Brielle was holding my mom with Ramses right beside them.

The familiarity of it all twisted sickness into my stomach.

The last time I’d seen my parents like this…

“Mom?”

Our parents and the cop saw us when I called for Mom. They must have not heard us come in.

Mom immediately went to me. She immediately placed me in her arms, and Brielle did the same with Wolf.

“Oh, God,” my mom gasped in my ear, shaking the fuck to hell. “Baby. My love…”

“Mom.” I gripped her shirt, staring at my dad over her shoulder.

He was more than tense.

In fact, he appeared to be having a hard time keeping eye contact with me.

“What’s going on?” I asked, those words familiar too. The difference was it’d been Charlie to say them.

Where’s Charlie?

He should have been home by now. He promised he’d be here by dinner, and he always kept a promise.

“Where’s Charlie?” My immediate next question. I pulled away from my mother. “Mom, where’s Charlie? He said he’d be here for dinner. He came home early—”

“Son.” My dad cut me off, coming forward. He lifted a hand. “Son, there was an accident.”

“An accident?”

At this point, my mom started to cry. Like full-on sobbing in the kitchen. She immediately left the room, and my dad started to go after her.

“Royal, I got it,” Ramses stepped in, my mom’s best friend. My mom and Ares’s dad had been best friends since high school. He touched Brielle’s shoulder. “Honey, Ares?”

Immediately, Brielle took Wolf off to the side, and I had no idea where they were going.