Series: Cobalt Empire Series by Krista Ritchie
Total pages in book: 234
Estimated words: 226965 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1135(@200wpm)___ 908(@250wpm)___ 757(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 226965 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1135(@200wpm)___ 908(@250wpm)___ 757(@300wpm)
Gavin expels a heavy, resigned sigh, unfolding his arms just to rub his goatee. “And I thought you were the nice one.”
“Huh?” I frown.
“You know, out of the ‘Cobalt Empire’.” He uses finger quotes. “I heard the youngest boy was supposed to be the nicest, but you’re out here trying to bargain like you’re Connor Cobalt making a business deal.”
My blood goes cold for a second. He doesn’t get it. I’m really not like my dad. I’m not. I’m just trying to be a good friend. That’s all.
“Do we have a deal then?” I ask, casually ignoring his comment.
“Yeah, deal.” He extends a hand to shake on it. After which, my bodyguard approaches the bar, and I check my phone for texts, only reading the important one.
Eliot Cobalt
Our little sister is going to guilt-trip you into moving back home. Don’t let her. Stay strong, brother.
“We’ll need to discuss security on nights Ben is working,” Novak says to the bar manager, and I slip away to let him do his thing.
Harriet’s head is face down on the booth, my baseball cap on the graffitied table, and she slowly bangs her forehead onto the worn wood.
“Whoa, Fisher.” I slide in on the other side, a heartbeat away from catching her head before she pounds it into the wood again. “Is this a new drumming method?” I tease with a smile.
She groans as she looks up at me. A red welt already forms on her forehead, and my smile vanishes when I see it. “It’s a patented method,” she says sadly. “Don’t go trying to recreate it. I’ll sue.”
“Yeah, lucky for you, I don’t have any musical talent like my brother.” She, on the other hand, is pretty fucking spectacular at drums. Or so I’ve heard. I’ve never actually seen her play. I nod to the cell on the table. “Who was that?”
“Manhattan Valley’s admission’s office. Apparently my transfer credit for Logic & Critical Thinking doesn’t code as a humanities class, so it won’t count toward the twelve credit hours of humanities and arts we need to graduate.”
We need. Yeah, I need those twelve hours too since the humanities and arts is a core requirement, regardless of a major.
“And that’s a big enough issue to go all Meg White on your forehead?”
She narrows her eyes at me. “You know who Meg White is?”
“Drummer for The White Stripes.” I give her a look while I swig my water, then swallow. “What kind of music do you think I listen to?”
“I don’t know.” She shrugs. “Instrumental with emphasis on the violins.”
I laugh hard.
She chews on her lip as a smile forms. “Someone in your family has to be into Chopin and Tchaikovsky.”
I tilt my head, thinking. “That’d probably be Beckett since he has to listen to it all day, but he’ll go off on how he hates the music to Cinderella. You don’t want to get him started on that rant.”
Harriet leans back in the booth. “You act like I’m going to meet your brothers.” She shies a little from my gaze, digging in her bookbag and unearthing a…Jolly Rancher. I watch her slowly unwind the plastic ends. Bright glittery beaded bracelets jingle on her wrists. The kind you’d string together yourself or buy with a quarter in an old vending machine. Blocked letters. Smiley faces. Hearts.
I’ve seen her wear similar chokers with beads spelling out words like bitch and whatever.
“You might,” I say. “You’ve already met one.”
Her face pinches into a grimace at the mention of Tom.
Shit. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to bring him up—” I cut myself off as my phone vibrates from a video call. “Hold on a sec,” I tell Harriet. On instinct, I answer my phone, and my little sister emerges. I flinch in surprise at the black veil and puffy black sleeves of her Victorian dress.
Audrey typically wears pink.
“Did someone die?” I ask her.
“Philly is in mourning, as am I.” She plops on the chaise at the foot of her four-poster bed. “I already told Eliot and Tom that I’m to wear all black until they relinquish you to me.” She flings her veil off her fair face. Tendrils of her carrot-orange hair caress her soft cheeks.
She’s number seven.
Audrey Virginia—the youngest of us all, and arguably the most dramatic. (Eliot won’t relinquish that title without a fight.) She became my closest sibling as our brothers left our childhood home one by one, but I’ve vowed to always protect her since we were little kids.
Leaving is festering a wound inside me that won’t exactly heal.
“I’m out in public, by the way,” I warn Audrey. “I’m with my friend Harriet.”
Harriet, thankfully, hasn’t put the cherry-red Jolly Rancher in her mouth because I think she would’ve choked on it. Her big doe-eyes bug in surprise.
“Hi, Harriet,” Audrey says morosely. “Tell Ben to come home.”