REDEEMING THE ROSE: GILDED KNIGHTS SERIES BOOK 1 Read online

I don’t particularly want to have to break into my own home on my first day here… in the middle of the night. My new neighbors may frown on that, and then they might call the cops.

  “Though, the cops might be hot,” I murmur as the lock finally gives, and the heavy wooden door creaks open.

  Not creepy at all.

  “What do you think, Milo? Risk the cops in hopes one of them is hot and available, or just go to bed and assume the boys in blue are donut lovers?”

  ‘Don’t make me come out there, wench. Get me out of this damn prison cell!’

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  Setting my bag, documents, and coffee cup on the floor just inside the entryway—which, by a quick glance, appears to also be the living room—I reach back out for Milo’s cage and bring it in with only one accidental bump against the doorframe.

  Milo hisses his fury, but… give me a break. I never asked to be a cat mom. I didn’t go shopping for this guy. He came to me, traipsed on through my apartment door, attempted to attack and eat my birdie visitors, and when I tried to kick him out again, he refused to leave.

  At this point, he’s a squatter, and correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m pretty certain this state has laws about that.

  Setting his cage on the moonlit floor, I dash back to my car to grab my backpack, a pillow, and the sleeping bag, then I head inside and close up again—screen door, heavy wooden door. I lock the deadbolt, drop my keys on the floor beside my bag, then I open Milo’s cage and snigger when, like a flash of lightning, he scrambles out and bolts away with an angry ‘Fuck you, Karen,’ and a promise to eat my eyeballs while I sleep.

  Since the front shutters are broken and falling, and the blinds inside appear to have been attacked by one of Milo’s close relatives, the windows are fully exposed to the streetlamp outside, which, in addition to the bright moonlight, is enough that I don’t even need to switch the inside lights on.

  “Note to self,” I say out loud, since hours of being alone with a cat has rendered me somewhat strange, “buy blackout curtains for the bedroom.”

  Despite the ample visibility, I reach out and flick the lightswitch to test if it works. I flick once, twice, three times before my brain catches up and I let my hand fall away.

  No electricity. Duh.

  The power box is outside; I’m certain of that, but I add it to my list of jobs for tomorrow morning, instead of heading back out tonight. I have no need for electric right now, so I’ll save it for when the sun comes up and the neighbors won’t be tempted to cleave my head off for waking them up.

  Taking out my phone, I cast a glance around the living room and shudder at the floral, three-piece couch straight out of the seventies. The pattern boasts a million roses, the coloring a dirty gold somewhat similar to Milo’s eyes. There’s an old fireplace on the far wall, with a handmade brick mantel, but a couple of the bricks lay smashed and broken on the floor. Atop the mantel is an old clock that perhaps used to chime once upon a time.

  Not one single piece of furniture here has been updated since before I was born, so it’s almost like I’ve stepped back in time.

  Welcome to nineteen seventy-three.

  But… there are also a few stray food wrappers strewn on the floor, a couple others crushed between the cushions on the couch. Ratty fabric lays draped over the arm of the couch, and a plastic bag holding fuck-knows-what hangs from one of those old cane hat racks.

  With a “hmm” in my throat, and a lifted brow, I turn away from the living room and move toward the kitchen.

  A vintage, children-get-locked-in-these-and-die fridge stands against the wall at the end of a lime green counter; a display shelf boasts fancy plates and bowls that may be worth a little something to a collector, and an old white stove is the focal point of the room, though I doubt that was intentional. It has coils on top, a grill beneath, and beneath that, a smashed oven door—but there are no glass shards on the floor.

  Something broke the door, and someone cleaned up the mess.

  Interesting.

  Two stools sit behind the breakfast bar, and beside those, a third, matching stool, except the seat is broken and has been replaced with a milk crate.

  Bet that hurts a girl’s ass after sitting for more than a minute.

  I walk toward a door that I suspect leads to the backyard, peek through the little curtain that long ago faded from what I think was a lime green to match the counter, and confirm; backyard, complete with overgrown grass and rusted play equipment.

  Children used to live here. And those children, I think, were my mom and aunt.

  Clutching my phone as a type of faux protection, I grab the doorhandle, expecting to find it locked and secure, but when the door swings open without a groan, I squeak and shove it closed again with a slam. I hit the lock, then reach up to another at the top and slide the small steel rod into place with a nervous flutter in my stomach.

  Standing alone in the dark, at midnight, in a strange home, is enough to make any girl skittish.

  Once the door is secure, I take my hands away and gulp for fresh air. “I totally should have done this during the day.”

  Midnight, new town, new life, strange home; not the best combination.

  “Sack up, Nadia.” I swallow more air and attempt to slow my heart. “You aced the Spooky Mansion at last year’s Halloween carnival.”

  But, to be fair, I went with a guy named Liam. He was tall, broad, sexy, and not at all scared of things that go bump in the night.

  “It’s just a house, weirdo. Get over it.”

  Glancing once more toward the now secure back door, I shake my head and walk away. Into the hall, past a room that, after a quick peek, I discover is the laundry, then further down the hall until I find what may be the main bedroom.

  An odd placing, I think to myself. Usually they’re at the front of a house, no? Or upstairs.

  Sure enough, there’s a queen-sized bed in here, each side adorned with a bedside table holding a lamp, and on one side, novels that lay forgotten. The bed is made, but not with modern covers; the blankets are clearly old, the pillows, yellow and limp from years of neglect. There’s a chest at the foot of the bed, but Hell will freeze over before I dare open that in the middle of the night and risk disturbing three generations of a rat family who don’t want to be woken.

  Leaving the bedroom, I head toward a decidedly creepy staircase. The light from outside doesn’t stretch quite this far, so it’s darker, and the cobwebs are kind of thick. I switch my phone’s light on, shine it up the stairs, and study the carpet where feet have walked a million times over. The fabric is worn away so much in some spots, I can see the timber.

  A fancy chandelier hangs over the middle of the room, dusty and so overrun by cobwebs that I consider hiring a professional to come in and clean it. That has nothing to do with the height or dust, and everything to do with not wanting a family of spiders to come after me with a thirst for revenge.

  I can’t handle that kind of mess in my life right now.

  Continuing up the stairs and purposely not meeting the eyes of the spider family, I crest the top step and look left along a hall that boasts several doors.

  This home was built by a wealthy family; lots of space and, potentially, staff, and quite possibly a whole heap of children. My family owns it now, but this place most certainly housed more than the Reynolds sisters at some point.

  I work my way along the hall, peek beyond doors, and try to puzzle it all out. It’s a nineteen-seventies time capsule, but with the odd contemporary flair when I find a discarded candy wrapper in one bedroom, and in another, the world’s rattiest and most worn-down New York Yankees baseball cap.

  My pulse beats faster as the silence grows oppressive and mean. I shine my flashlight—aka, my cellphone—across a bedroom that I guess was once a nursery, past a crib with bars likely coated with poisonous paint, and over a pile of dirty blankets. The blankets are yellowed and gross, abandoned, untouched for who knows how long.

  Backing out of
the room, I head into the next and work on swallowing past the knot of nerves in my throat.

  This isn’t how this was supposed to go; I wasn’t planning on visiting a creepy, creaky house tonight while I played a game of ‘where’s the serial killer hiding?’ but somehow, that’s sort of what I’ve been given.

  Shaking my head, I stop at the entrance to the final bedroom at the end of the hall. The door is ajar, cracked open a couple inches, but as I nudge it forward, my heart skips and the darkness damn near renders me useless.

  I shine my light across the room, over a large bed pushed up against the wall, blankets and pillows laying haphazardly, as though the last occupant was called out in the middle of the night and never given a chance to tidy up.

  A soft scraping noise to my right makes me eyes water, and then a roaring ‘Meow, bitch!’ makes me scream as my asshole black-and-gold cat dashes past so fast, he skids on the floor and bangs his hip on the hallway wall in his escape.

  “Milo!” I slam a shaking hand to my heart. “I hate you! You’re an asshole cat, and no one loves you!” Switching off my cell light with a huff and yanking the bedroom door closed, I head back along the hall and down stairs to get ready for bed.

  The sooner I sleep, the sooner the sun will come up and render this house much less scary. Then, tomorrow, I can start making it my home, and not some place that I suspect once housed squatters with yellowed blankets and a healthy respect for the Yankees.

  2

  Mitch

  My Baby Sister

  For the first time in… I don’t even know how long—weeks, perhaps?—it’s my day off. No work, no racing toward my shift, no wading through someone else’s blood, and no bullshit bureaucracy because I make decisions on the job that are sometimes considered ‘risky’.

  I’m to run toward a scene where someone has been hurt, toss them into my ambulance, and keep them alive long enough to get them to the hospital. They say I have to do the least amount possible; just enough to keep them alive, but not much more than that.

  “That’s what the doctors are for.”

  So when I had a guy on my stretcher last week, dying a fast death, and I did something about it while in transit, the moment we pulled up at the hospital and tossed him over to the ED, I was yanked up to my boss’ office and questioned on why I do what I do.

  “Don’t you understand the risks, Mitchell? You make us all look bad if that bozo dies en route because of something you did.”

  I guess it’s more socially acceptable to let a person die in the operating room than to let it happen while driving.

  My job, according to Harrison Best—my superior, though fuck knows who he blew to get that job—is to stop any bleeding, start any still hearts, and breathe for a person, if that’s what they need while we’re moving.

  “Bare minimum. Keep them alive. Hand them over.”

  The whole system pisses me off more often than not, and that bureaucracy is the reason so few stay in this lane when there are a million other career options laid out for them.

  But fortunately, none of that bothers me today, because it’s my day off. The sun is shining bright and warm, there’s a gentle breeze in the air that ruffles my inch-long hair, and I’m heading down to see one of the most important women in my life.

  My little sister, Abigail Rosa, is just a couple years younger than me, but she’s always been the baby, the delicate one, the sweet and innocent, red-haired little girl who I, along with my four brothers, have been tasked with protecting.

  It was never a hardship to follow Abby around and make sure she was okay. It was never a chore, a burden, a hard job. My brothers and I love her like we love no other, so from the moment she joined our family, she was easy to love and protect.

  Easier yet when she was sickly, and still, so brave.

  Abby is the reason I moved toward medicine once I graduated high school. She’s the reason I want to help people, and she’s damn well the reason I don’t settle on bare minimum when at work. Because if the people who helped my sister over the years did only the barest minimum, then she’d be dead, and my world would look a hell of a lot different than how it does now.

  This means I accept the lectures and bullshit from the man whose name is Best, but whose work ethic sure as fuck ain’t, and I keep doing what I do anyway. I save lives, I send people home to live another day, and I take the slaps on the wrist when I push the envelope and piss off the office folks.

  With a coffee in each hand, and a sly smirk on my lips, I slow out front of Abby’s flower shop and feel that swell of pride that comes with knowing she did this all on her own.

  While me and my brothers have kept busy all these years protecting and coddling Abby, she’s spent her life trying to prove her strength and ability. She’s twenty-five already; not a child, and not incapable. So against our advice and warnings, Ab went out and started her own business. She works for pennies, scrapes together enough to pay the rent on the shop, and then some more to pay the rent on her new apartment, but that’s basically where it ends. She works hard to earn spending money, and refuses to accept help from her brothers.

  Except when it comes to lifting heavy shit. She’ll accept help on that front any day.

  Pushing the shop door open with my hip, I glance up at the sweet jingle of bells above my head, then across the showroom to the empty front desk where Abby usually stands while she works.

  The door closes on its own when I move out of the way, and once it’s fully shut, the scent of flowers fills my head and makes me want to sneeze. I’m not allergic; it’s simply an assault on the senses, a shock to my system, when I was outside in the fresh air a second ago, only to be slammed with the stench of a million roses the moment I step in.

  This place is so Abby, so soft and feminine and pretty.

  But where is she?

  “Abby?”

  I wander between two rows of flowers, some in pots for display, others in trays and still attached to their roots for planting. The concrete floor is wet—a hazard, I always tell her, but my sister doesn’t care about that stuff.

  “Abby? Where are you?”

  A head pops up from the third row over, a young dude with midnight black hair, and those circles in his ears kids use to stretch out their lobes.

  “Hello?” The boy, because that’s all he is, not yet a man, stands taller where he is so he’s no longer shielded by flowers, but now head and shoulders taller than the shelf, and raises a brow as he studies me. “Can I help you?”

  Grinning, I make my way toward the front desk. “Can I help you?” I counter with a definite twang of pride. “You here to buy something?”

  “Er… nope.” He sets a bright orange watering can on the shelf beside a display of daisies that can be taken home and planted, and rubbing his hands on his jeans, he squares his shoulders and looks me in the eye. “I work here. My boss is a little—”

  “You work here?” I set my coffees down on Ab’s desk and turn back to study the boy. “As in, you’re employed in this shop… for money, in exchange for time?”

  “No.” He smiles. “Time, in exchange for class credits and those nice smiles my boss gives out when she’s happy. Which is basically—”

  “All the time,” I finish for him. “Got it. Today your first day? How old are you?”

  “Uh… well… Who are you?” He takes a step forward and prepares to guard his castle—such is the effect Abby has on people. You meet her once, and you’re prepared to die for the cause. “I wasn’t aware I was supposed to answer to a random guy who walks in and demands information.”

  “Ballsy.” Firming my lips, I nod and lean back against the desk. “I can respect that. I’m Mitchell. Abby is my sister, and I’m here to make sure shit is running smoothly.” Then I flash a wide grin. “You’ll see me and her four other brothers quite regularly, so don’t fuck up.”

  “Four other brothers?” He gulps. “They all as big as you are?” He runs his gaze along my six feet, three inches of heig
ht, then stops on my shoulders, broad enough to have secured me a position on my high school’s football team.

  “Nope.”

  He visibly relaxes.

  “I’m actually the smallest of my siblings.”

  And just like that, his extremities pucker.

  “You do right by Abby, and you won’t get trouble from us.” Then I cast another look around the shop. “Where is she?”

  “In the office,” the kid says. “She’s interviewing the new chick and wanted privacy.”

  “Another new person?” Chuckling, I push off the desk, only to lope around to the other side and drop down on the stool Abby keeps here. “My sister have a slave labor thing going here she didn’t tell me about?”

  “Er… I don’t think the other person is working for smiles and credit. They’re talking insurance and vacation time and all that shi—stuff.” Rosy pink splotches form on this kid’s cheeks when he almost cusses in front of his sort-of boss’ brother. “Uh, sorry. I didn’t mean—”

  I play with my coffee and shake my head to keep my smile at bay. “Abby already gave you the spiel on how cussing is horrible and only for uneducated assholes?”

  His eyes widen. “Uh…”

  “It’s okay. You can say shit, I won’t snitch. We keep the cussing to a minimum around Abs, because it hurts her feelings, but as grown-ass men, we reserve the right to say ‘fuck’ sometimes too. What’s your name?”

  “Um… Roy, sir.”

  “Roy?” I snigger. “Old man’s name for a young dude. But okay. And how old are you, Roy?”

  “Seventeen. I’m gonna graduate soon.”

  “And what are your plans after graduation? You going to college? Art school? You look like the artsy type.”

  “And by ‘artsy type’,” he flattens his lips, “do you mean you’re uncomfortable saying ‘homosexual’?”

  “Well,” I laugh. “Didn’t wanna make assumptions and come out looking like an ass. You like dudes?”

  He shrugs. “Sometimes. Kissing girls feels icky. Kissing dudes doesn’t.”