Back with the new chapter, beautiful people! I apologize for the mistakes. Also, I've posted the story where I'm doing oneshots to songs to each letter of the alphabet. It's called Pressing Play, so check it out :)
Clary hated fighting with either of the boys.
They hardly ever fought.
Sometimes there were disagreements—they were all pretty stubborn, especially Sebastian—and so when someone wasn't getting their way, or didn't like the way something was turning out, then there could be some angry words exchanged and frosty silences. Clary was the queen of the death stare—but it was always over stupid things. And when it wasn't over stupid things, it was over things that they could explain and sort through.
Whatever was going on here, though, it was different.
They were intentionally trying to hide this from her.
And on one hand, she got why they were trying to hide it—because it was her dad and it looked as though they were treating him like some kind of prey. There had been so many photos and so much information that they had to be getting help from someone else—probably Max.
And that just made her angrier.
The first night that she had seen her father, when she had been out with Isabelle and Maia, she had every intention of bringing it up with the boys. But then, well, things had gotten heated once she got back to their home, and then by the next morning, they already knew, and were under the impression that she was trying to keep it from them. Admittedly, when he had text her a couple of days later, she hadn't told Jace or Sebastian about it because she hadn't text him back. She had assumed that he was going to be out of Laguna pretty soon; he had never been the type to stick around for very long, but something was clearly different this time.
He was still in town, and he had text her once a day, every day, saying that he wanted to talk to her.
She had been ignoring the texts and deleting them, but today, she wanted to know what the fuck was going on. Clary fished her phone out of her pocket and found the text he had sent her this morning, it was still marked as unread because this was the first time she was looking at her phone. She opened it up and dialed the number. It only rang twice before she heard the rough voice of Valentine coming down the line.
"Clary? It's so good to hear from you."
"Can you pick me up?" She asked him. "I want to talk."
"Of course, of course," he said, his voice soothing in a way that made her feel nervous. "Where are you?" Clary gave him the name of the street a few blocks away, because she was already stalking angrily down the street and away from her home. "I'll have my driver there in about fifteen minutes, okay?"
"Okay," Clary ended the call and shoved her phone back in her pocket, taking in a deep breath through her nose. It was still quite early in the morning, not quite nine, and so the streets were all pretty empty. A part of her was a little bit worried that Sebastian might come looking for her in his car, and catch up with her before Valentines driver arrived, but after a couple of minutes, there was no sign of his car. Which she was glad about, because she needed space, and if anyone understood that, it was Sebastian.
A limo pulled up at the curb a few minutes later, and she got in without a second thought.
Sebastian was panicking.
He was not in control of this particular situation, and he did not like that.
Especially since it was relating to one of the only two people that he loved in this world.
It had been almost six hours since Clary had stormed out of the house, and at first, he had stayed there, because he knew that when he was in a shitty mood, he wanted space. Sometimes he wanted Clary and Jace, but when he was annoyed at them, he just wanted time alone. So that's what he decided to give her. But he thought that she would be back by at least lunch time, and now it was after three in the afternoon and he still hadn't heard back from her.
He opted for cigarettes rather than weed, sitting out on the balcony and puffing away as he looked out over the beach. It was a hot day, and he didn't really have all that much that he could be doing right now, and usually on days like that, he would be down there, on his surf board, enjoying the cold water. Given he couldn't find his favorite red head, though, was putting a damper on his spirits.
It wasn't that he thought she was in trouble or anything, she was probably just at some bar with Maia letting off steam. But he hated the idea of her still being mad at him.
He had tried calling a couple of times, but it just went straight to voice mail, and he forced himself not to use the Find My Friends app that he had installed on his phone, because that was only meant to be for emergencies, not for finding his girlfriend after they had had a spat.
She was fine.
She was just pissed.
He knew it was rightly so, as well.
Jace had wanted him to look into Valentine when they had first found out that he was on the island. Sebastian was better at the technology side of thing, not as good as Max, but still better than Jace—Jace was the people person of the business, and the one who dealt with growing the plants. He was good at digging up dirt, and so he had spent the past couple of days looking into Valentine, with a bit of help from Max. Both boys had agreed that they wouldn't tell Clary just yet, and that they would make it up to her once they eventually did tell her. Any delicate tactics that they might have used to break the news to her had all gone out the window now, though.
"Fucking hell," Sebastian grunted as he stubbed out his cigarette and stood up, stretching his arms over his head. Jace was going to be home in about an hour or so, and then he was going to need to tell him about the fact Clary had found out they were looking into Valentine.
The thing was; they had every reason to be looking into this man. And now, looking back on it, Sebastian was pretty sure Clary would understand that if they had told her straight up.
Hindsight was a bitch.
Valentine had left Clary and her mother years ago, a couple of months before her tenth birthday. And even when he was around, she didn't see him all that much. Clary didn't talk about him all that often, but there had been bits and pieces that Sebastian and Jace had heard over the years that they both remembered. Apparently he was a business man who did a lot of travelling, and when he came back, he would always bring back expensive gifts for both Clary and Jocelyn. When he left, Jocelyn had spiraled out of control for about a year, and then she had prettied herself up and moved onto the next man. Clary had fallen to the side in the years following, which is when she got mixed up with the wrong crowd and drugs and far too much alcohol.
Valentine had sent her texts and there had been a couple of phone calls on her birthday or around Christmas, and she had seen him about three times since he left. While she acted strong around the boys, but they could see that it still affected her.
When he had popped up this time, Sebastian had done a little background research. They had never really looked into him before, because he had never been around since Clary had been with them, so they had just taken him for what he was at face value; a dead beat dad. But as soon as he had started looking into this guy, he knew that something was wrong, and when he called Jace to have a look at what he had found, Jace could see it as well, so it wasn't just Sebastian's naturally suspicious nature being over-protective.
Sebastian had had Max look further in, because at the end of the day, Max was better at all of this than Sebastian, but Max had come up empty handed as well. Jace had told Clary at the time that they were worried about Valentine, and that they couldn't find anything on him, and she had reacted in not such a good fashion. She had protested that they were invading his privacy, and that he was just an asshole, that didn't mean he was dangerous or doing anything illegal. Jace had told Sebastian and Max to continue looking into her father and not say anything else to her until they had solid evidence.
Unfortunately, they now had solid evidence, and they hadn't told Clary. The plan was definitely to tell her, they just hadn't got around to it, and now she had found out that they were going behind her back. Not lying to her, but definitely not telling her the full truth, and that wasn't how their relationship worked.
Max had run facial recognition on Valentine, and he had sent it over to Hodge Starkweather, who was their friendly local DEA agent who just so happened to be one of their most loyal customers. Hodge had run the picture through their database and that was when the boys had found out that Valentine was one of the biggest drug dealers in their hemisphere, and definitely one of the most dangerous. He had been under surveillance for years, but they had never been able to make a move on him because all of their witnesses and evidence kept disappearing. He wasn't under the name Valentine though, he had a number of aliases, but it looked as though the DEA had a lot of them.
That was how they got all of the surveillance photos and the reports.
The next hour went by quickly and then Jordan's car was pulling up outside their house and Jace was getting out of the car, walking inside and shouting out goodbye over his shoulder to their friend. When he opened the front door, he dropped his bag down on the ground and Sebastian could hear him kicking off his shoes.
"Seb! Clary!" Jace called out as he walked into the kitchen and opened up the fridge door, pulling out a beer and snapping off the lid. "You guys home?!" Jace asked as he took a pull from his bottle of beer and walked through the lounge, catching a glimpse of someone out on the balcony. Jace grinned when he saw Sebastian sitting out on one of the lounge chairs, a cigarette in his hand, but the smile quickly dropped off his face when Sebastian lifted his head and he saw his lovers somber expression. "What's wrong?"
"Uh," Sebastian ran a hand through his short hair, causing it to stick up in different directions. "Clary."
"What the fuck?" Jace asked, his body tensing up and fingers tightening around the neck of his beer bottle. "What's wrong—is she okay?"
"Yeah, yeah, she is," Sebastian quickly assured him. "Or at least, I think she is—I don't know where she is, Jace, that's the thing."
"What do you mean?" Jace looked confused. "What, she got out with Maia or something?"
"No, we..." Sebastian let out a heavy breath through his nose. "No, we had a fight this morning, alright? Because—because she saw the photos and reports and shit on my laptop." Jace's eyes widened in recognition and he let out a hiss between clenched teeth, moving to sit down on the lounge chair opposite Sebastian.
"Shit," he muttered.
"Yeah," Sebastian agreed in a low voice. "Exactly." They were quiet for a moment before Sebastian continued. "She saw it and came up to the bedroom and we kinda argued, or more like—she shouted, and then she stormed out." Jace sighed and collapsed backwards on the lounge chair, staring forward blankly. They fell back into silence and Jace drummed his fingers against the side of his beer bottle, Sebastian puffing away on his cigarette.
"Did you try calling her?" Jace asked. Sebastian rolled his eyes over to him.
"No, Jace," he replied, his voice laced with sarcasm. "I didn't try and do the most obvious thing and call her."
"Look, I was just asking," Jace growled in response.
"Yeah, well, her phone is off," Sebastian muttered. "Can't get through to her."
"Did you use the app or GPS to find her?" Jace asked.
"No," he shook his head. "I was going to wait a bit before doing that. If she finds out that we used that to trace her, she's going to be even shittier, and I didn't really want to risk that at the moment. Pretty sure we're both on thin ice right now." Jace let another huff through his nose and then nodded.
"That's a good point," he agreed. "Did you leave messages on her answer phone?"
"Yeah, a couple," Sebastian replied.
"Right, well, I guess we just need to wait. Give her her space and shit," Jace sighed and took another drink from his beer. A second later, both of their phones vibrated and beeped, indicating that they had received a text message. They frowned at each other before they pulled out their phones, opening up the message.
Stop looking into me. It's far too easy for me to get the people you love most.
Underneath the message was a picture—of Clary.
She clearly didn't know the photo was being taken because it was from a low angle, and she was looking at someone to her right. It was taken today, Sebastian recognized that clothes that she was wearing as the ones that she had left the house in, and he felt his blood chill in his veins as he looked over at Jace, who was wearing an identical worried expression on his own face.
So...? How are we all feeling? We okay?
Please leave a review and you'll get a preview of the next chapter?
Oooh, and I'm off to see Batman vs Superman tonight! Batman all the way!
Oh yeah, and I totally solved the big siblings dilemma in the show! A simple DNA test, bitches. Takes two seconds, and then next episode, we're back on track again.
