B&E EVER AFTER (Fairy Tale Quartet #3)

Prologue Hayden “Watch it, Broderick! You’re spilling them everywhere.” At my mother’s sharp voice, I lifted my attention from the Game Boy I’d been playing to find her swiping a super-sized bag of Skittles from my little brother. “God, you are such a mess.” Brick hung his head glumly, mumbling, “Sorry,” as she jerked him around until he was facing away from her so she could unzip the backpack he was wearing and cram the Skittles inside, out of his reach. Then she huffed impatiently and started away from us, snapping, “Well, come on. At this rate, the shopping center will close by the time we get there.” Brick dutifully shuffled after her, and I filed in behind him, returning my attention to my game. It was easy to keep track of him out of my peripheral vision; he wore a bright orange shirt and had Bart Simpson on his book bag. So I was able to beat a new record and advance a level without paying attention to where we were going, even though the foreign country we were in had some pretty cool sites. Mother had decided to come to Monte Carlo to recuperate after breaking up with her last boyfriend. Turns out, he was already married, which hadn’t settled well with her. The last thing she’d planned to do was bring Brick and me along on her recovery getaway. But Greta, our housekeeper, had also needed to take time off at the last minute because her husband had gotten into a car accident and was in the hospital, so she hadn’t been able to stay with Brick and me, which pretty much forced Mother into dragging us with her. The city wasn’t exactly kid-friendly. I’d read the pamphlets they had sitting out at the place where we were staying. They were all about car racing, gambling, boxing, and Mother’s reason for coming: Le Metropole Shopping Center. “Do they have a candy store at the mall?” Brick asked, shading his eyes from the setting sun so he could peer down into the lower courtyard that housed the entrance of the Metropole. “No, they—” She turned to us, only to stop talking abruptly and blink as if she’d never laid eyes on her two sons before. “What about a food court?” Brick persisted, rubbing his stomach. I swear, all he ever thought about was food. “You know what,” Mother murmured, her lips twitching with that fake smile she always flashed when she was about to lie. “I just remembered. You need to order tickets in advance to get into the Metropole, and I didn’t plan on bringing you boys along, so you’re going to have to wait out here.” I’m not sure which part of that was the lie, but there was definitely one in there somewhere. I narrowed my eyes at her stonily, not amused by this turn of events. Even if I did have a game to keep me occupied, Brick didn’t. He’d forgotten his Game Boy at home. He was going to be bored out of his mind sitting here waiting, and I’d be the one stuck listening to him whine. I opened my mouth to argue my case, maybe even beg if necessary, but Mother was already waving her fingers at us over her shoulder. “I won’t be gone long. There’s a bench right over there. I’ll meet you at it when I’m done.” And she hurried away, stepping onto an escalator that lowered her toward the entrance. “Can you get me another bag of Skittles while you’re in there?” Brick called after her. She made no sign of hearing him at all. I rolled my eyes. “I doubt they have any Skittles in this country.” I wasn’t even sure which country it was. Malta or Morocco or something. Maybe Monaco. I was almost positive it started with an M and that we’d had to fly across the Atlantic Ocean to get here. Whatever it was, it didn’t look like a Skittles kind of country. Huffing out a depressed breath, Brick slumped his shoulders and mumbled, “I knew I should’ve brought my entire candy stash from home. I’ll probably finish this bag before she gets back.” He slung his backpack off his shoulders as he moved toward the bench where we were supposed to wait. I watched our mother disappear inside, wondering how long not-long-at-all was going to take. The battery light on my Game Boy was already red. “Dammit,” Brick muttered as he dug inside his bag. “Don’t cuss,” I said without any heat as I plopped onto the bench next to him and got comfortable. He ignored me, wailing a panicked, “Nooo,” as he frantically searched his bag. “What?” I asked as he pulled up a crumpled Skittles bag that looked a lot thinner than it’d been when Mother had shoved it in there. “All my Skittles fell out of their bag, and f**k, there’s a hole in the bottom of my backpack.” His snack was gone. The horror on his face was so priceless I had to laugh. “Whoops,” I said. “Sucks to be you.” With a satisfied sigh, I leaned back against the bench’s backrest and logged back into my game. A second later, Brick nudged my leg. “Hey. Did you bring anything to eat?” “Nope.” I had a Snickers stashed in my pocket for later. “Damn,” he breathed under his breath. “Language,” I sang as I powered up with a mushroom. I could feel my brother roll his eyes next to me. A minute passed. Brick sighed. He shifted restlessly. He plopped his hands into his lap. “How long do you think she’s going to be?” “A while,” was my guess. “Damn,” he said again. My thoughts exactly. Five minutes later, Brick had prowled around the bench and returned to me twice, both times when someone had tried to talk to him in a language neither of us understood. “Hey, want to share your Game Boy?” he asked. “Take turns on it?” I sent him a get-real glance. “No.” “Come on. Please.” Brick had said please. Shocking, but not shocking enough to convince me. “They have, like, car races or something here, right? You think we could go watch a race while we wait?” “No.” First of all, I didn’t know this city. I wasn’t about to go wandering around it with no one but my little brother, and besides, they weren’t having any races today. I’d already checked. When I told my brother so, he plopped back down beside me and mumbled a depressed, “Oh.” Ten minutes later, he’d driven me crazy enough that I handed over my Game Boy just to shut him up. Too soon after that, its battery died. We both glanced toward the opening of the shopping center, watching people leave and enter. “Maybe she forgot about us,” Brick finally said. I huffed impatiently and rolled my eyes. “How could she forget about us? We’re her sons.” Brick shrugged. More time passed. Both Brick and I had gotten up from the bench by this point and stretched our legs, though neither of us had strayed far from our meeting spot. Brick slumped down next to me after one short stroll. His stomach growled. He looked absolutely miserable. Rolling my eyes, I pulled my Snickers bar from my pocket. After unwrapping it and breaking it in two, I handed him the bigger portion. “Here.” He glanced over dolefully, only for his eyes to brighten at the sight of chocolate. “You did have food,” he accused happily, snagging it from me. We polished off the Snickers in seconds. But it didn’t appease much. Now both our stomachs were grumbling. “Got any more?” Brick asked hopefully. When I shook my head, he sighed and glanced toward the shopping center. “She sure is buying a lot. That guy must’ve really broken her heart.” I doubted it; our mother would actually have to have a heart before it could break. But I glanced toward the Metropole as well, agreeing that she was definitely taking her sweet time inside. This wasn’t the first time she’d made us wait for her outside a store, so that wasn’t new. But this evening felt as if she were taking longer than usual. “You think she’s okay?” Brick asked. “What if she got hurt? Or she’s, like, dead?” I shot him a dry glance for such a ridiculous question, even though it caused a little leap of fear to gallop through my stomach. “Grow up,” I said. “There’d be ambulances and police or something all over out here if someone inside got hurt.” “Maybe she was kidnapped,” Brick guessed. “And no one saw the bad guy take her.” I wrinkled my face in denial, even as the fear grew stronger. “Who’d want her?” I said. She wasn’t exactly nice. “Well, what if someone takes us?” Brick countered. Shivering, he huddled closer to me. I shoved him away with a scowl. “What’re you doing? Get back.” He hugged his chest and began to rub his arms vigorously. “I’m cold.” I was too, come to think of it. I glanced up, growing aware of the time. The sun had set, and with it, it had taken any warmth that had been in the air. Brick was right; the temperature was dropping. Fast. “She’ll probably be out soon,” I murmured, even though my eyebrows bunched with concern. I hoped she came out soon. I didn’t want to stick around out here too much longer in the dark. Brick’s comment about someone stealing us kept running through my head. I’d just seen a bit on the news last week about a rise in human trafficking, specifically more boys being kidnapped as s*x slaves. Brick was younger and prettier; they’d probably go for him first. But over my dead body would anyone take my little brother anywhere. “Hey, I think the mall closed,” Brick said abruptly. I made a face and tsking sound, because that was just crazy. “The mall didn’t…” But when I glanced down into the entrance’s courtyard, no one was going in or coming out. And did it look darker in there? It definitely looked darker. Oh crap, had the mall closed? I sprang to my feet, more uneasy than I wanted Brick to see. But he could tell I was freaking out. He surged up beside me. “It’s closed, isn’t it?” I glanced around us, wanting to ask someone when the shopping center closed. Except none of the signs were in English. And no one around us was speaking English. Whatever they were saying to each other sounded—I don’t know—French? This was all wrong. I just wanted to go home. I was starting to get scared. And where the f**k was our mother? “I’m going to go see if the doors are locked,” Brick announced. But I grabbed his arm, staying him. “No. I don’t want you going that far away by yourself.” He rolled his eyes. “Then come with me.” “But what if she comes back, and we’re not here?” He flung his hands in the air, fingers stretched wide with aggravation. “Well, what the hell are we supposed to do? Just sit here all night and freeze to death?” I chewed on my lip, indecisive. Wherever she was, Mother definitely should’ve come back for us by now. “Maybe she forgot where she was supposed to meet us and she’s waiting back at the hotel.” Brick nodded. “Okay. Cool. Let’s walk back to the hotel then.” My stomach plummeted with worry. I hadn’t paid attention on our walk here. And it had taken us a good ten to fifteen minutes to arrive. Our hotel could be anywhere. I glanced at my brother, wincing because I already knew what his answer was going to be even as I asked, “Do you know how to get back?” “What do you mean?” he cried, his eyes growing big with instant worry. “Don’t you?” “I wasn’t paying attention,” I admitted defensively, trying to remain calm. I didn’t want to scare him as much as I was scaring myself. Besides, I was the big brother. I had to be the fearless one. “Hey, do you know where our hotel is?” Brick asked a passing woman. He glanced at me. “What’s the name of it?” I didn’t know if we should tell just anyone the name of the place where we were staying, but I wasn’t sure what else to do. So I said, “Eden Rock.” Or maybe that was just the name of the single suite, not the entire resort where we were staying. It had a lot of windows and really fancy, old furniture. That’s all I remembered. Brick repeated the name, and the woman frowned as if confused before she babbled out a bunch of French. We both shied away from her, not sure if she was offering to give us a million dollars or explaining how she wanted to chop us up into little pieces and feed us to her dog. “Yeah, thanks anyway,” Brick told her with a wave and uneasy smile. I took his arm, pulling him away and keeping him tightly against my side as I turned so we could walk in a different direction. “Where are we going?” he asked, rushing his steps to keep up with me. “I don’t know,” I confessed. “Away.” Breathing out a settled breath, he glanced back at the still babbling woman who was now making big, sweeping hand gestures before he faced forward again. “Good idea.” I rolled my eyes. “Are you sure you don’t remember how we got here?” “We could see the ocean,” he offered with a wince. We could see the ocean now, so I wasn’t exactly reassured. Fear chilled my bones as the reality of what was happening took root in my brain. We were lost. We were lost in a foreign country, and we didn’t even know how to start looking for our mother or even ask for help. “Holy f**k,” I said under my breath. Brick snickered. “Language, Hayden.” “Shut it,” I muttered, even though I had to smile and shake my head as I spoke, already calming down. It didn’t matter what was happening; Brick was here. I had my brother beside me, and he was unhurt. I could deal with everything else. “No. You—hey, look.” For some reason, I hadn’t let go of his arm yet, unreasonably afraid I’d lose him too. So when he plowed to a stop and pointed at something on the ground, it jerked me to a halt right next to him. “One of my Skittles. Sweet.” When he bent and reached for it as if he were actually going to pick the piece of candy up from the ground and eat it, I yanked him back. “What’re you doing! Don’t eat that, you i***t. It’s been on the ground all day. You want to go back home with some kind of foreign disease?” Brick sighed longingly at the abandoned Skittle. “But I’m hungry.” “Oh my God, you’re hopeless.” I slapped my hand to my forehead, only for a thought to strike. Suddenly, I was crying, “Oh my God, you’re a genius,” as I leapt forward and snagged the bright green piece of candy off the ground as if it were a lucky penny, which it might’ve just become. Brick’s eyes went huge as soon as I palmed it. “Hey, I saw it first,” he cried, trying to take it from me. I groaned and held it away. “I’m not trying to eat it, you moron. Just look at it.” I held it up between two fingers. “If this really fell out of your bag, that means we’re going in the right direction to get back to our villa.” Brick gasped and took the Skittle from me, holding it up triumphantly. “You’re right. Yes! We just need to follow the trail.” I glanced around us, looking for more Skittles, but it had gotten so dark we couldn’t see very far. “We’re going to need a light.” “I have a flashlight in my bag,” Brick offered, already slinging the pack off his shoulders. Yes! Thank you, God, for my junk-hoarding little brother. “Give it here,” I said, holding out my hand. Once he passed it over, I turned on the light, and we scanned the ground together, spreading away from the site of the first Skittle in a circular pattern, until Brick cried, “There! There’s another.” “Don’t eat it,” I instructed even as I hurried to him, and we started over again looking for the next Skittle. And that’s how we found our way back to the hotel, one beacon of Skittle-colored hope at a time. It took us nearly an hour, my skin was ice cold, and it had to be way past bedtime, but we made it. “There,” I said as soon as I saw something recognizable to me. “Isn’t that the villa where we’re staying?” “Yes!” Brick raced forward to reach the door first. “We made it!” I hung back though. Maybe I was worried Mother wouldn’t be around and the horror of our night would just be beginning. Or maybe something in me already knew what I’d see when I paused to look in through the large glass window. Because there sat the woman who’d given birth to us, lounging on a claw-footed sofa with her feet kicked up and crossed at the ankles as she sipped from a glass of wine, laughing at something she was watching on the television. It looked like a soap opera. She lifted a round chocolate bonbon to her mouth and took a bite as if she didn’t have a care in the world. Because she didn’t. She didn’t have a single, f*****g care on the entire planet, certainly not a smidgeon of concern for her two missing sons, anyway. I stared in disbelief. We had waited on her for hours, growing hungry and cold and scared, worried if she was okay, worried if we were going to be okay, and wondering if we’d ever see her again or if we’d make it home alive. And she’d been here, watching television in warmth and comfort, laughing while she dined on chocolate and wine? No f*****g way. She’d never been a warm, caring person, but this seemed like a new low. It was heartless and cruel. And unforgivable. In the next instant, Brick pounded on the door, and the woman inside jumped, cursing when she spilled a splash of wine on her lap. “Mom!” Brick cried, knocking more vigorously. “Are you there? Mom! It’s us.” He jiggled the handle, but it was locked. “We found our way back.” When she glanced toward the door, she met my gaze through the glass. A second later, she perfected the appearance of a fretful mother and pressed a hand to her heart before springing from the couch and hurrying forward to let us in. “Oh my God! Where have you two been?” she accused as soon as she flung the door open. Grabbing Brick’s arm, she yanked him rudely inside and shook her newly manicured finger at him. “I looked everywhere for you. I even called the authorities, and they have men out searching for you right now. Are you two trying to give me a heart attack?” “But we were right where you left us,” Brick swore, “waiting for you to come back and meet us. It was so scary. No one talked English. We ran out of food. And it got dark and cold. I think one lady wanted to eat us.” He went in for a hug, but she sniffed and held up a hand. “Honestly, Broderick, this blouse is silk. You’ll wrinkle it. You already ruined my slacks.” When she pointed out the wine spill, Brick mumbled, “Sorry,” and moved closer to me. I took his frozen fingers and squeezed supportively. “I just didn’t know if I was ever going to see you again.” With a harassed sigh, she rolled her eyes. “God, you’re so dramatic. Of course you’d see me again. Do you think I’d just leave Monte Carlo without my children? Don’t be stupid.” But she had that look, that look she always got when she lied. Her lips were pursing in the funny way again. I stared at her as a deep, cold clarity settled into my bones. I wasn’t sure if she’d planned on leaving us there forever to fend for ourselves or if she’d just wanted one evening away from us, but whatever the case, she had definitely left us at the Metropole on purpose. She’d betrayed us. She’d abandoned two underage boys, with no money or food or anything, in a foreign place to take care of ourselves without a thought for our safety. Our own mother. Anything could’ve happened to us. Brick could’ve gotten hurt. In that moment, something shifted inside me. A feeling. A new life resolve. I didn’t know what to call it. But she hardened a place in me that felt as if it could never trust or soften again. I’d be stupid to let anyone in, to rely on them. To care. If my own mother could so easily discard me, then why should I bother counting on anyone else for anything? From that point on, I never thought of the person in front of me as Mom again. To me, she’d only ever be Lana, the wicked. And terms like truth, honesty, and goodness? They were only for fairy tales.