THE HEIR'S REVENGE

Chapter 38

When I got home Lily was not in her room.

I noticed this because I always checked her room first when I came back in the evenings. It has grown to be a habit I couldn't stop myself from exhibiting. Before I walked up the stairs, I looked through her door to confirm that she was there and that she was fine.

Her door was open and the room was empty.

I did not panic. The house was secure. Henry was somewhere and Agent Cole was here too. I simply turned and went looking for her.

I found them in the kitchen. She and agent Yemi. She was sitting on the counter and I'd told her countless times never to do it but she always did.

Kids.

She was eating something from a bowl placed on her knee.

Agent Yemi stood a few feet away from.her, leaning against the kitchen counter. She was also eating the same thing from her plate.

They weren't talking, only eating in silence which was comfortable between them.

I wondered how the both became so comfortable with each other when they only met each other like a few days ago.

I stood in the kitchen doorway and watched.

None of them noticed me.

Lily looked at her plate and then at Yemi and they both laughed at something. Then Agent Yemi looked at her plate and said something back which made Lily laugh so hard.

Something settled in my chest.

It's been a few days Agent Yemi came into the house and it felt like she's been here for years. It just seemed like she was the one Lily has been waiting for all her life. In these days,

Agent Yemi had simply settled into the quiet and steady simple life of Lily making her happy and curious and girly.

Agent Yemi was kind. She did not make a performance of her presence. She was simply always there and always calm and always paying attention and Lily had adjusted to her the way children adjust to things that are consistent and safe which is to say completely and without much fuss.

But Agent Coke was different from Agent Yemi even though he was good at his own job as well. He was more quiet and formal in his manner of approach. He spoke to Lily respectfully.

Lily could only talk and laugh like that with Agent Yemi and not agent Cole.

I guess I made the right choice.

She had already worked everything out with Lily and I was here worrying about a lot of things.

I stepped into the kitchen after trying so hard to hide my laughter.

Lily looked up immediately.

"You're home," she said.

"I am."

"You're late."

"I know. I had a meeting."

She looked at me with the specific expression she used when she was assessing whether my explanation was adequate. Then she held out her plate toward me.

"Do you want some?" she asked. "Cook made them. They are very good. Yemi had three already."

"I had two," Agent Yemi said without moving from her position against the wall.

"I counted three," Lily said.

"I counted two."

Lily looked at her with great dignity. "I am better at numbers than you."

Agent Yemi considered this. "That is probably true," she said.

I took a piece from Lily's plate. It was some kind of small pastry with something sweet inside. Lily watched me eat it with the focused attention of someone waiting for a review.

"Good," I said.

She nodded like this confirmed something she already knew.

Later that evening I was in Lily's bedroom while I got her ready for bed.

This was also a habit I had. It was usually in the evening, that I would sit with Lily in the bedroom and we would do various things before she slept. She would change into her pink pajamas, brush her teeth and find her rabbit.

She always loved talking to me about her school and how her classmates made her angry. She loved talking about her teacher and her best friend, Mia.

Tonight she climbed into bed and pulled the covers up and held the rabbit and looked at the ceiling for a moment.

"Yemi told me something today," she said.

"What did she tell you?"

"She told me that her job is to make sure I am safe." Lily paused. "I already knew that. I am not stupid."

"I know you are not stupid."

"But I didn't tell her that I knew because I didn't want to make her feel bad about explaining it." She turned her head to look at me. "That was kind of me wasn't it?"

"Very kind," I said.

She looked back at the ceiling. "I like her," she said simply. "She is funny when she thinks nobody is watching. She makes faces when she doesn't agree with something but she doesn't want to say it out loud."

"What kind of faces?"

Lily demonstrated. It was a very specific face. Controlled on the surface but with one eyebrow doing something slightly different from the other.

I recognised it immediately. I had seen Agent Yemi make exactly that face during the security briefing when one of Agent Reeves's team members suggested a protocol she clearly thought was unnecessary.

"You are very observant," I said.

"I know," Lily said. She pulled the rabbit closer. "Brother."

"Yes."

"Are you going to tell me why she is really here?"

I looked at her.

She was still looking at the ceiling. Her voice had been completely ordinary when she asked the question. Like she didn't want to sound rude but needed answers. Just the question sitting there between us like she had put it down on the bed and was waiting to see what I would do with it.

Agent Reeves had told me that children would always ask questions. She said that I needed to be honest. He said I shouldn't be frightened. I already had a version of what to say.

____________

But sitting in the chair looking at Lily's small face I found that the prepared version felt wrong. I had been too careful with it. She was five and she was not stupid and she deserved the real version in words she could hold.

"You know that some people have been trying to cause problems for our family," I said.

"The bad people," she said immediately.

"Yes."

"The ones who tried to grab me at school."

"Yes."

She was quiet for a moment. "Are they still trying?"

"I am working on making sure they stop," I said. "And while I am working on that Yemi and Cole are here to make sure that you are safe every single day. So that nothing like what happened at school can happen again."

Lily processed this. She was quiet long enough that I wondered if she had more questions or if she was done.

Then she said: "Okay."

Just that. Okay.

"Okay?" I asked.

"Yes." She turned to look at me again. "I already knew something like that was the reason. I just wanted you to tell me instead of thinking I was too small to understand." She paused. "I am not too small to understand things."

"I know," I said. "I am sorry for not telling you sooner."

She considered this. "It is all right," she said. "You were busy." She yawned. "Cole is very tall."

"He is."

"He smells like soap."

"That is generally a good quality."

"Yemi smells like flowers." She yawned again. "I told her that and she said thank you and I could tell she actually meant it and wasn't just being polite." Her eyes were getting heavy. "Some people say thank you and they don't mean it. I can tell the difference."

"You can," I agreed.

"Mia is coming back to school on Monday," she said. Her voice was softer now. Almost at the edge of sleep. "Agent Reeves said it was fine for her to come and that her parents said yes."

I had met Mia's parents four days earlier. A quiet conversation over coffee in a cafe near the school. They were ordinary careful people who loved their daughter and had been worried since the incident at the gate that they didn't fully understand.

I told them what they needed to know. Not everything. But enough. They had been relieved to understand the shape of it and to know that the school protocols had been significantly upgraded. Mia's father had shaken my hand at the end and said he appreciated the honesty.

"I know," I said. "I am glad."

"We are going to do the butterfly project together," Lily said. "We have been planning it for weeks. We have very specific ideas about which butterfly is the best."

"Which butterfly is the best?" I yawned. I was tired myself but I wouldn't let her know.

"The blue morpho," she said immediately. "Obviously."

"Obviously," I agreed.

She was almost asleep. Her breathing had changed. The rabbit was tucked under her chin.

I sat in the chair for another minute after her eyes closed. The nightlight shaped like a star was doing its quiet work in the corner. The panic button inside it was invisible from where I sat, which was the point. It was there and Lily knew it was there and that was what mattered.

I thought about the tea house and Victoria's face across the table.

I thought about the seventeen page document from Agent Reeves.

I thought about all the moving pieces of everything that was still in progress and all the work that was still to be done before this was finished.

Then I looked at Lily sleeping with her rabbit and the star shaped light making soft patterns on the wall and I thought about how this was also true at the same time. This room and this child and this quiet and the fact that she was safe tonight.

Both things were true at once.

I stood up carefully so the chair would not creak and I walked to the door and turned off the main light so only the nightlight remained.

At the door I paused.

Agent Cole was in the corridor. He was standing a few feet from Lily's door in the way he always stood during the evening shift. Upright. Alert. Present without being intrusive.

He nodded when he saw me.

I nodded back.

Then I went to the study and opened my laptop and went back to work because there was always still work to do and the walls around Victoria Pierce were still getting closer together and I intended to make sure they kept moving.

But first I sent Henry a message.

It said: "Lily knows about Yemi and Cole. I told her the truth in simple terms. She took it well."

Henry replied in two minutes.

"I expected nothing less from her," he wrote. "She is a Blackwell after all."

I read that twice.

Then I smiled and got back to work.

It seemed like life was about to get better for my family. Lily was happy even now that she had people following her.

She seemed to understand and didn't mind at all.

She simply said that we now had more people in our family and that made me smile. She's been talking about Agent Yemi a lot and I agreed. The woman was beautiful and healthy and didn't care about anything else except her job.

She respected and greeted me whenever I walked past but that was it. She didn't look at me twice or..

What?

Why did I need her to look at me twice? I stopped thinking and closed my eyes for a while.

I had a lot to worry about apart from Lily's new beautiful agent.

Victoria.

After our meeting, I just knew that I had to get stronger in fighting her. Victoria knew what she did and for Nineteen years she's been trying to hide it.

She was not about to let her guard down now that I wanted revenge.

I needed to make new plans with Henry. I needed to fight it.