Love Can Be Killer

chapter nine

 "Let's talk over coffee, " Alexander said and started walking down the sidewalk. Sky joined him, walking beside him in step as the lights catching in their hair. Luckily in the middle of manhattan you couldn't throw a bagel without hitting a coffee shop, so after a five-minute walk they turned into one that was somehow already selling pumpkin spice lattes. They quickly placed their orders of one black coffee and something called a vanilla summer rainbow latte.  

   "I can't believe you got that," Sky said, watching Alexander poke a straw into the rainbow mess that was his coffee as they sat down at a table in the back where it would be unlikely to be overheard.

  "And I can't believe you don't like cream or sugar," Alexander retorted taking a drink of his coffee, making a face a moment later.

   "That bad?" Sky asked, taking a sip of her own coffee. 

   "It's like I just licked the ass of a unicorn," he said pushing it away and Sky couldn't help but smile at his words.

   A moment later though his eyes darkened and he looked up at her, "I'm sorry for what my father said to you. Your not just some little side piece I'm keeping around because you look pretty, I was and still am worried about your safety, I've seen what Parker and The South will do to people who cross them. It's why I want to fight back but as you saw tonight my father still believes that we can simply talk things out as if The South hasn't killed children before."

    Sky felt her blood run cold at his words, the warmth of the night gone in seconds. "They killed children?" 

  Alexander looked down at his hands that sat on the table, "I was seven when the attacks happened. I was just about to go to bed when my father started getting call after call. I remember answering one of the first ones, it was Mr.Lightstone, he sounded so panicked, I could hear Sofia and Gabriel crying in the background and Mrs.Lightstone trying to calm them down as they asked for help to be sent over."

   "Sofia and Gabriel?" Sky asked in almost a whisper, a chill running down her back, the dim lights of the cafe seem eerie.

   "Sofia was the oldest daughter of The East, at the time of the attack she was only five years old, Gabriel was the second child at three. I knew both pretty well, my mother had wanted me and Sofia together from the day she was born." He smiled a moment from a memory she couldn't see before his eyes flashed back to somthig deeper, almost pain. "When I found my father and gave him the phone it was already to late. Of course I didn't know the details then but as I got older I learned what really happened that night. The South had split into two groups, one team was sent to The East and the other The west. The heads of The West were killed first in a car accident after their tires were shot out. Then they went and killed their teenage son who was at collage, leaving no one left to rule The West. So The South claimed it as their own. At the same time that was happening the second team was breaking into the house of The East. They killed their security guards first then they found the staff and killed them too before moving on to Mr. And Mrs. Lightstone. They left their bodies for my father's men to find the next day in the middle of the hall, TS carved into the floor next to them."

     "What about the children?" Sky asked, her voice low. She honestly didn't want to know, didn't want to think about it, but she had too. 

   "Sofia and Gabriel's bodies were never found, it was believed at the time that The South may have sold them to another country. A cruel joke because The East had just broke up a large human trafficking ring the month before. 

    "How did Nicholas survive? Isn't he a successor?"

   "He is, his mother was the sister of Mrs. Lightstone who was the head of The East. She and her boyfriend were killed that night as well in their own beds, but they made it look like a heart attack. But Nicholas had been having a sleepover with me at the time funny enough, so we took him in from that day on and after the deal was signed they couldn't touch him."