Chapter 14

Outskirt Love

Jenna changed her clothes. She was not going to kidnap an already kidnapped doctor in her jam jams. When she opened her door, Ryatt was standing outside it with a pillow and blanket in his arms.

“We’re going to have to postpone the sleepover,” she said, blowing past him and rushing to knock on Vash’s door. “Wanna do crimes?” she called through his door.

“Coming!” Vash called.

Ryatt followed her and pouted, “I wanna do crimes too.”

“Yes, you’re coming too.” She narrowed her eyes at him suspiciously. “You’re wearing clothes, right?”

“Yeah. Misha set me up.”

“Cool. Out of curiosity, what was in your luggage if there weren’t any clothes in there?”

“Weaponry,” he replied without skipping a beat.

“Like guns?”

“No guns. Bombs are way more effective. Taping a bomb under someone’s chair is way more efficient than trying to shoot them after you’ve discovered they’re a threat.”

Jenna was mildly horrified, even though she saw his perspective. “What do you do if they sit in the wrong chair?”

“You put bombs under all the chairs, even your own,” Ryatt explained without blinking.

She tilted her head back and looked him over. “You don’t actually look that dangerous, yet you do stuff like that? How are you still alive?”

“It’s not that complex. Another trick is to put pop rocks under your tongue right before you kiss someone,” he said with an eyebrow wiggle.

“What is that going to accomplish?” she wondered snarkily.

“It’s too hard for them to spit out in one gush and too interesting for them to want to. Excellent distraction.”

“Those are not on the same level of badassery,” Jenna observed.

“No, but I’m not letting you think that I’ve only got murder and mayhem behind my eyes. There’s fun there too.”

She was giving him a look when Vash came out of his bedroom. He was dressed like a cat burglar in a black turtleneck, toque, and liquid-tight black pants.

“Crimes, right?” he said brightly.

Jenna looked at him with a smile on her face. He’d come a long way from the guy she’d interviewed. “Yeah. You look perfect.”

***

The three of them hid behind a line of bushes in the Stone Palace’s courtyard. There wasn’t much light shining in Excelyn’s living room, but no one had bothered to close the curtains. No one from the Dahlia or the Sun Palace could see into the living room anyway. There was nothing over there, except the courtyard, and the open ocean.

Inside, they could see Philip tied to a chair. He was bound and gagged, while Excelyn walked around him, lecturing him loudly. Jenna couldn’t exactly hear what Excelyn was saying, but she saw her whack him up the backside of the head.

Jenna talked to Conrad, “Have you told Ixy and Ivy our plans?”

“Listen, they can see everything you’re doing through the security camera feed, so I couldn’t exactly keep it from them. They know. But they’re also demons of chaos. They’d love to help you.”

“Have they shared any information about what’s going on in there?” Jenna hissed into her earpiece.

“No. They want you to meddle and cause a mess.”

“If they’re not sharing info, then how the crap are they helping us?” Jenna groused.

“They’re helping in spirit, I guess,” Conrad said drolly.

“Who are you talking to?” Ryatt asked. “It doesn’t sound like you’re talking to Ixy. I thought she was your personal assistant.”

“Later. I’ll introduce you to Conrad later, Ryatt,” Jenna said absently before she winced as Excelyn hit Philip again. “I’ve never seen her like this. Did you know she slapped people around?”

“I knew she cut people up,” Vash interjected.

“Well, she’s a surgeon. She’s supposed to. This is different. I feel like this is too horrible for us to allow it to continue. How much of a mess do you think this might cause? What if she lets him go and he badmouthes us? What if she feels like she has to kill him to keep him quiet? Are we seriously going to have an incident that involves the friggin’ police? AGAIN? Aaaah! I can’t live like this!”

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They heard an evil cackle from inside.

It was Crimp. She was rocking with laughter in an armchair.

“Am I seeing this correctly?” Jenna crowed. “Is Crimp holding her stomach and crying because she’s laughing too hard? We’ve got to get closer.”

The three of them kept close to the ground as they shuffled to a new position under a living room window. Even though they didn’t dare peek over the sill into the window, they could hear what was being said more clearly.

“Have you had enough, you sick son of a bitch?” Excelyn hollered. “Don’t you see how stupid all of this is? She’s laughing.”

There was a pause and the only sound was of Crimp smothering her hilarity.

“Fine! Whatever!” Excelyn fumed. “I’m taking a break. I’m getting a snack and a drink and since I can’t stand to look at your sick face while I eat, I’ll be back in a minute.”

The lights went out.

Jenna, Vash, and Ryatt put their faces over the edge and peered into the room. Excelyn had flicked out the lights. She was calling Crimp to follow her and they were leaving Philip alone in the room with the lights out. It was the perfect opportunity.

“Let’s snatch him,” Jenna said.

As quietly as possible, the three of them entered Excelyn’s living room. Ryatt cut the zip ties that tied Philip to the chair. That freed his feet, but his hands were still tied together. Without a word, Vash hefted Philip over his shoulder and made for the door like the dude weighed nothing. Jenna rushed after him, while Ryatt took up the rear.

They crossed the bridge, racing like bandits in the night. Once they crossed the line to their palace, Ryatt stopped and unlatched the floating palace. It separated the bridge so that Excelyn and Crimp would not be able to follow them without getting wet.

Once back inside, Vash placed Philip on a chair in the formal dining room and Ryatt cut the remainder of his zip ties, then very carefully, he removed the tape on his mouth.

Philip didn’t make a sound, even after his gag was removed. He looked at them with big, curious eyes, like he had nothing in common with the pictures Jenna had seen of him.

She did a double take. “Are you Dr. Philip Russell?

He nodded.

“I’m Jenna Fairchild and I want to apologize for whatever happened this evening. Excelyn was supposed to interview you as a potential diplomat, not strap you to a chair. I–”

“Should have minded your own business,” he said smoothly, regaining a little of the composure Jenna had seen him exhibit when he was interviewed on TV.

Surprised, she offered, “Shall we take you back?”

“Nah,” he said, stretching out his arms and rubbing his wrists. “She was already finished.”

Jenna sat down at the table. “What I saw looked like criminal activity. Care to explain what was going on? I would hate to be at the center of a scandal.”

Philip huffed. He obviously didn’t want to answer, but he also knew holding back wouldn’t stop them from learning everything. “Excelyn and I were married,” he began. “When she wanted to divorce me, I made it a condition that she had to have dinner with me once a year. What it really meant was that I wanted her to yell at me and tell me everything about me that she couldn’t stand. She agreed because otherwise, the divorce settlement gave her everything she wanted and more.”

“I’m not sure I understand,” Jenna said slowly.

“Imagine a little boy who was always told he was perfect. Imagine a boy who was never scolded. Imagine a person who no one could say no to. Would that feel natural if it was happening to you?” His gaze challenged Jenna.

She crossed her arms. She had been scolded plenty. “I suppose not.”

Phillip continued his story. “Inside myself, I knew I wasn’t perfect. I knew I was just like everyone else. I was on a journey that was made of both winning and losing, but no one would acknowledge that. That was what my life was like before I met Excy.”

Hearing Excelyn’s name said that way warped Jenna’s mind. It sounded like Exy, which sounded like Ixy and like Excelyn had a whole side of her that was a rogue woman that caused trouble everywhere she went. All that had to be true. Did Jenna just not see all that because all she was seeing were Excelyn’s wrinkles?

Phillip continued. “She was nothing like anyone I had ever met. I trained under her when I was training to be a doctor. She used to teach at the medical institute before she opened her own practice. When she was my teacher, she told me I was wrong all the time. She wasn’t afraid of seeing my downcast eyes if she told me to redo something. She didn’t mind humiliating me by telling me I was wrong in front of everyone. All my life, no one else would do that for me. They’d baby me, tell me I was okay, and fix my mistakes behind my back. It felt disgusting. I was disgusted.”

“That seems… understandable,” Jenna said slowly.

“But I liked how Excelyn treated me. Skipping the details, I fell in love with her. We got married and I loved her more than I had ever loved anyone or anything. Our union made my family bananas. For once, I did something they didn’t like and I heard about it. I finally felt like I had joined the land of the living. Except…” His expression fell. “We never stopped hearing about it. Eventually, Excy got tired of the constant grumbling. Do you know what happens when your mother-in-law is twenty years younger than you? It means you aren’t waiting for her to die. She’s waiting for you to die. It’s backwards and Excelyn got fed up. That wasn’t the only thing that was wrong. There were other things that were my fault too. I think everything would have been fine if I hadn’t exhausted her.”

“What did you do?”

“I wanted her to criticize me—always. It’s not healthy in a marriage when one partner doesn’t want the love of the other. They only want their scorn. So, she said she’d leave me, but give me her scorn once a year.”

Philip didn’t say anything more but became reflective like there was something more he wanted to say… not to Jenna exactly, but something he wanted to tell everyone about how his marriage went wrong.

After the moment had stretched long enough, Jenna asked, “Did she speak to you about becoming our fourth diplomat?”

“Yeah. I’ve agreed to do it. Excelyn and I came to an agreement.”

“What’s the agreement?”

“I agreed to have tonight be the last night she yells at me. Our divorce contract is nullified.”

“Why would it be nullified?”

“Because as Octavian diplomats, Excelyn and I can get remarried, and if someone wants me to marry someone else, I can do that. I can please my family, take care of a cause I care about, and take the love of my life back. But make no mistake, Jenna Fairchild, this was not a bloodless war. Hearing Excelyn badmouth me was one of the greatest pleasures I’ve ever known. How will I get on without it?”

“No problem. We can all take turns roasting you,” Jenna offered with a shockingly unhealthy smile.

Philip pushed a spare strand of hair away from his perfect forehead. “It’s nice of you to offer, but you won’t remember to do it. My perfection always undoes people’s promises.”

Jenna chuckled. “I think I’ll remember. You look so plastic, it’s hard to forget.”

“Yeah,” Ryatt cut in. “You look weak… like your delicate punches wouldn’t hurt at all.”

“I’m a surgeon. I don’t need to punch,” Philip said, getting more bent out of shape than his words suggested.

Vash leaned forward. “Well, I’ll never forget how light you were when I carried you. I’ve had girlfriends that weigh more than you.”

Jenna leaned far forward, putting her face in Philip’s. “Don’t worry. We won’t forget and we’ll be right next door.”