Page 86 of Wicked Promises (Fallen Royals 3)

“Me? I’m the unreasonable one?” A male voice, but not Caleb’s dad. “This is insane, Lydia. You can’t expect me to go along with this.”

“I can, and I will,” she snapped. “Lord knows we pay you enough.”

“There isn’t enough money in the world to help us if we get caught,” he answered. “Something I’m sure you’re well aware of.”

I shake my head. “Your mom and Tobias were… why were they upstairs?”

He sneers at me. “Why do you think?”

Oh god.

The Ashers are wicked, wicked people.

How we ever got caught in their web is almost inconceivable. Dad should’ve known Ben wasn’t the same person he went to school with—that money had corrupted him.

Or maybe he was always corrupt, and Dad accepted it.

Still, in the end? It got Ben killed.

Dad in jail.

Mom addicted to drugs.

And Lydia… well, she’s an outcast.

“Did your dad cut your mom out of the will?” I ask.

Caleb stops short. “How do you know that?”

I hum. So the rumor Lenora heard was true. It made sense, what with everything we’re learning. “Lydia and Tobias were in bed together—figuratively and literally. She left you with your uncle and went where, to work in a shitty diner for the rest of her life?”

Theo whistles. “She’s finally asking the right questions.”

“Assuming Tobias and Lydia are still relatively close—does that mean she knows Matt?”

Liam and Theo are standing now, too, creeping closer. Our voices are getting softer. This type of thing, it’s too big to talk about loudly.

I look over my shoulder, toward the front door. I closed it, but… maybe I should’ve locked it, too.

“She knew Matt,” Caleb says. “He was my friend, she had seen him around.”

“But does she know him currently?” I prod.

He stares at the ceiling, blowing out a breath. “Fuck.”

“Oh, that’s not an answer,” Eli calls from the couch.

The miserable sap is drowning his sorrows in vodka, it seems. At this rate, I don’t know if he’ll be able to stand.

“Eli—”

Caleb wraps his arm around my shoulders, pulling me into his side. “I know you mean well, love, but just leave him.”

“You were saying?” Theo asks.

“Right. Matt took me to the diner, and my mother recognized him. Greeted him by name.”

“The plot thickens,” Eli sings. “Fuck girls. Not you, Margo. Hey! We should go to a party.”