Penelope pulled herself out of her train of thought.  This was not what she wanted to be thinking about at that moment.  She needed to understand what was going on with the family that she had come to love just as much (if not more) than her own.  Something was going on, and she knew that it had a big deal to do with her.

                “Okay…”  She took a deep breath.  “What’s going on?”  Ryan, back in his chair, assessed her for a moment before speaking.

                “Penelope… do you know how Dylan died?”  She gave him a confused look.

                “What does that have to do with anything?”

                “Do you know?”  He urged.  She sighed.

                “He was murdered right?  By some psycho?  Lady Manson told me that they had said that the killer had skinned him, then burned the body.”  Penelope shivered.  She hated to think of her friend like that.  It practically broke her heart.  “She had to go and identify the ring he was wearing as his.”  She gave Cleo a sorry look.  Ryan sighed.

                “I suppose that is what you would have heard.  I guess telling you the truth would be a violation…”  Ryan grumbled as he slid some lettuce into his mouth.  Penelope’s eyebrows shot up on her forehead.  The “truth”?  She had been lied to?  By Lady Manson?  She studies her replacement mother’s face.  It was a shadow of pain.

                “She only needs to know what she does already…”  Logan snapped.

                “I really think that’s up to her, Logan.”  Ryan said emotionlessly.  His brother was anything but.

                “It’s not bad enough that Dylan died on your little crusade, now you want Penelope too!  It’ll never end Ryan!  Not until everyone is dead, and I will not stand by and watch you recruit her into a suicide mission.”  His eyes were mad with anger as he said, “I won’t let you kill her.”

                Ben joined the argument.  “I can’t believe you see it like that!  They are fighting for a good cause!  A cause that your mother and I once fought for as well, and look, we’re still alive.”  He gave his son a disappointed look.  “We accepted it when you said that you didn’t want to join.  We let you make your own decision, even if we didn’t like it.  Give Penelope the same courtesy.”

                “Doesn’t anyone else care that she could DIE!?”  Logan boomed.

                “Shut up Logan!”  Penelope snapped.  He turned to her in disbelief, but was instantly silenced by her expression.  Her face only showed a fraction of the anger and pain that she had felt.  They had lied to her.  All of them.  They had lied about their lives, their family, even their own son’s, her best friend’s, death.  It took all her control to keep the tears from slipping from her eyes.  She turned slowly to look at Ryan, the only one of them that she could trust, the only one who had told her the truth.  “How did Dylan die?”  She hissed.

                He gave her a sullen look.  “He was murdered… but…” he hesitated.

                “But what?”

                “Do you really want to know more?” He gave Penelope a dark glare, as if daring her to say no.  She gulped back the bile that had built up in the back of her throat.  She would not be afraid of him.  Yet, she couldn’t get her mouth to move.  She just nodded, staring back with a look she hoped was just as hard.  He gave her a wicked smile.  “Then we should be going.”  He got up from his chair.