Canvas & Keys

21. House Arrest In Paradise

Chapter 21

House Arrest In Paradise

What Flannery said about Vince having my friends' families watched got me thinking on the way back to Pallandino. What would we do if Savannah, Ash, and Gage went back home? Send along a guard made up of Brotherhood and Knights? I knew I couldn't keep them in Pallandino forever, but I could at least until all of this was over. But when would that be?

A few more weeks at least. I could even talk with their families and tell them a sweet little lie about how I'd asked them to stay through the holidays with me. Maybe after then we could all go home. Well, for me...at least for a little while.

Who was to say Vince would leave them alone then, though?

For now, they were staying in Pallandino. With all the Knights surrounding them, they were probably in the most protected place they could be. It wasn't like they were going to get bored soon anyway. There was plenty to do and dozens of people to make friends with.

Drake noticed my silence. He didn't disturb me, though. Maybe it was because the look on my face. He knew every one of them now. He knew I was coming up with a plan instead of worrying about something.

I still didn't say anything as Drake pulled the car up to house. He did grab my hand as we made our way up to the front door just as it opened, but my silence continued even as everyone who greeted us started asking questions about what happened.

"You tell them," I finally said, looking over at Drake. I nodded my head over to Savannah, Ash, and Gage, who had appeared also. "I'm going to talk to them about what I'm thinking."

"You haven't even told me what you're thinking."

I gave his hand a squeeze. "I will later, okay?"

I didn't wait for his conformation before I headed for Savannah, Ash, and Gage, gesturing for them to follow me into one of the sitting rooms down the hall.

"What happened in Rio?" Ash said immediately as I closed the door. She was helping Savannah into one of the armchairs as she spoke. "Was Beau there? Is he okay?"

"Yeah," I nodded. "Yeah, he was there. And he's okay. Still a little scuffed up, but otherwise okay."

"Thank goodness," Savannah breathed, clearly relieved.

Gage had started pacing back and forth, arms folded over his chest, whenever we entered the room, but he stopped when I said Beau was fine. "Though I would have loved to see him myself just so I could kick his ass. Why didn't he come back with you? I thought that was the plan?"

"That's what I thought the plan was...but he and Flannery have another."

As I began to tell them all of what happened in Rio, they became more angry by the second...and finally exploded when I told them Beau and Flannery had made up their minds on joining back up with the Order, even though they didn't know when it would happen.

"What the hell is his thinking?" Gage raged.

"He's out of his mind!" Savannah cried out.

Ash sneered and let out a hiss. "Does he not remember what they did to all of us? Did to you?"

"He does, actually," I nodded. "He's thinking this is the only way for them to keep an eye on things. Trust me, I tried to talk him out of it. He wouldn't budge. You know just how stubborn he can be. He's going to have Flannery with him, though I'm not sure how they're going to explain everything that happened in Scotland. I'm actually not sure how they're going to get back in with Vince anyway. He's suspicious of Flannery enough as it is."

"I still think he's a damn idiot for doing this," Gage said, sitting down heavily in the chair on my other side. "What would his momma think?"

"She won't know anything of it," I warned. "None of your families can. You promised..."

"You don't have to worry about that," Savannah reassured. "You can trust us with your secrets. But our secret, as in where we really are...well, we're going to have to come up with more of a reason to stay if we're here for much longer. Our parents are already asking when we're coming back. I'm running out of things to say when I talk to Momma, especially when I told her we were all putting off school for a little while. She won't get the whole thing about a gap year..."

"That's the thing," I began with a grimace. "You're going to be here for a while. There was something else Beau and Flannery mentioned. They'd actually gone back to Georgia to see what was going on...and Vince has some of his men trailing all of your families. They're not to harm them in any way, but they're keeping an eye out for you if you went back."

Ash was the first to get where I was going. "So that means we're not going back."

"At least not for a few more weeks, maybe months. Worse case, it'll be until after the holidays. You guys are more protected here in Pallandino than you could be anywhere else, so I'd rather you stayed. I know Emmy and John will more than likely head back to England sometime soon with the baby being due soon, and Drake, Cruz, and I will be heading off to who knows where whenever we find the second key, but you guys are staying here. I know this isn't something you want, but I can't have what happened the last time you tried going home happen again. You wouldn't make it back alive...and I am not risking any one of you. I can't lose you."

"You're not going to," Savannah said, reaching over to grab my hand. "We trust you, so if you say stay, we stay. Who wouldn't want to be trapped in a little town in Tuscany? Especially when the locals are all part of a secret society?"

I snorted out a laugh. "Glad you're seeing a bright side in all of this."

"You know I always can!" she grinned brightly.

We talked more about Rio – how Drake and Cruz's house had been ransacked, more of what Beau and Flannery said they'd been doing over the past few weeks, and even my suspicions about the two of them. Savannah and Ash were all for it, but Gage...well, he just thought it was weird.

"What? It is weird," he said when the three of us laughed at him. "He's loved you, Hattie, for all our lives."

"And he can't like someone else now that we're not together anymore? I'm with Drake, so why can't Beau find someone to make him happy, even if he's refusing to see it right now?"

He still couldn't shake how weird it seemed.

"So what's your plan now?" Ash asked, changing the subject. Gage was still muttering nonsense about his cousin. "With trying to find the second key, I mean. Since it obviously wasn't stashed in the painting in St. Petersburg..."

"The next painting is in Florence at the Galleria degli Uffizi. There's a benefit gala there in less than two weeks, so that's when we're going. John and Emmy are going, too. Em says it's going to be one of the last they're able to go to before the baby gets here. John, of course, thinks she should be resting, but she says otherwise. We're not going to have special access to it like we did the first since it's actually not on display at the moment, so we're going to have to find a way to get back to the curating room it's being kept in...and figure out exactly which one it is, too. We'll play it by ear, I guess."

"Yeah, and hope you don't get caught breaking in," Gage snorted.

I grinned. "It'd be fun, though."