Free Rogue Descendant (Nikki Glass) by Jenna Black Page B

extricate myself from these messes with Konstantin and Emma. But every time I left the condo, I found myself taking something else back to the mansion with me, moving in little by little, growing ever deeper roots.
    In my condo, my morning ritual was to make a pot of coffee and a couple slices of toast, then sit on the couch in my bathrobe with my laptop on my lap and read, or at least skim, my favorite news sites. Having brought over my toaster and coffeemaker,I was now able to re-create the ritual in my suite, though I’d gotten away from it when I’d been trying so hard to avoid Anderson.
    I was enjoying the leisure of my “new normal” when my cell phone rang. My gut clenched in anxiety because I feared it was the Glasses calling to tell me they had decided to come home. But when I picked up the phone, the caller ID said Cyrus Galanos. I knew Cyrus and Konstantin by first name only—very kingly of them—but I suppose it would have been legally inconvenient to go by only one name.
    I stared at the phone for a good long time, wondering what he could possibly want and if it would be better to let him go straight to voice mail. But until I got around to getting a disposable phone, he could probably find me and waylay me somewhere if I played hard to get. With a sigh, I answered the phone.
    “Hello?” I said, sounding tentative. Showing weakness of any kind probably wasn’t the wisest idea, but I doubted he was calling for anything good.
    “Hello, Nikki,” Cyrus said, his voice warm and friendly as always. “I hope I didn’t wake you.”
    “No, I was up.”
    “I thought maybe you were sleeping in after your late night.”
    Oh. That was what this was about. My drive-bys last night must not have been as subtle as I’d hoped. Taking the Mini had been a mistake. I should have rented a nondescript sedan that no one would notice.
    “What, no clever comebacks?” Cyrus mocked,sounding considerably less friendly. “No elegant denials?”
    I shook my head. “What do you want, Cyrus?”
    “I think I made that quite clear the other day: leave my father alone.”
    “I’d have been happy to do that, if he’d left me alone.”
    “Huh?”
    I did a mental double take, because he sounded genuinely puzzled. I supposed Daddy Dearest hadn’t run his little vendetta idea by Cyrus before acting on it.
    “He burned down my parents’ house, Cyrus,” I said, letting my own anger rise to the surface and color my voice. “Then he sent me an email telling me how creative he was going to be in making my life miserable without formally breaking the treaty. If you think I’m just going to sit here and take it—”
    “He didn’t do it.”
    There was no hint of doubt or uncertainty in Cyrus’s voice, but I had to wonder how well Cyrus really knew his father. He seemed like such a decent guy himself, it was hard to believe he could condone the kinds of things Konstantin did. Maybe his mind just didn’t work the same way and he couldn’t fully grasp his father’s evil.
    “He claimed responsibility for it,” I argued, despite my own doubts.
    “Really. Via email . Anyone can write an email. Ask yourself who has the most to gain from threatening you. It sure as hell isn’t Konstantin.”
    “Oh, come on—Anderson wouldn’t do that,” Isaid, because there was no doubt in my mind who Cyrus meant. I sounded 100 percent certain, but that was only because I was pretty good at acting. I had mostly convinced myself that Anderson wasn’t behind it, but there remained a touch of doubt.
    “You’ve known Anderson, what, a couple of months? I’m telling you he’s not the saint he pretends to be. He’s a world-class manipulator, and like all old Liberi, he’s deeply selfish at heart. It’s impossible not to be when you’ve lived for centuries.”
    I snorted. “And how old are you ?”
    Cyrus laughed. “I’m selfish, too, and I’m not afraid to admit it. Just ask Blake. But my point is that Anderson might seem like he’s