Bad News

How was he supposed to tell them?

That was a big thought. Something important. He had to tell them something, because if they found out through another source it would be devastating. Even if no one know what Shay had done, people would quickly realize that she wasn't around. People would ask questions. You couldn't just go missing for more than a month without someone noticing. Someone would notice. Someone would ask. He needed a story, but he hadn't spoken to Shay yet, and he needed to talk to everyone else.

Enzo. Caterina. They could get the full enough story, although Enzo might not get all of it. What about the kids though?

Angelo knocked carefully on Roa's door not long after he'd arrived home. He looked distressed. Civilian clothes for once, but his face was pinched, showing his age far more than usual.

He was tired.

"Roa?"

Angelo wasn't the kind of person who beat around the bush. Roa was only sixteen, but he'd seen a lot. He wasn't an adult, but he wasn't a kid either. Caelin would be getting a heavily abridged version that left out most of the important details, but Roa wasn't going to.

"You'll probably want to sit down," Angelo said, gesturing to the bed. "It's important. No one's dead."

Probably best to get that out of the way, before Roa feared the absolute worst.

Technically someone was dead, but not someone Roa was likely to care about. No one in the family, anyway, and Angelo was upset enough someone might confuse the situation and thing someone was.

Angelo cringed when Roa didn't so much guess as slam directly into the heart of the matter. It was Shay. Angelo had suspected, and Roa had every reason to suspect for those very same reasons.

"Shay was arrested," Angelo said, unclear on how much Roa did or didn't know about the murder that had happened. "She... defended herself, and it went badly. The police aren't publicizing it to protect her, and we don't know how long she'll be away, but she's taking a plea bargain that means jail time."

Straight to the point. No beating around the bush. He didn't expect Roa to react well--Roa would set a box of cereal on fire if he discovered it empty--but the way he was so oddly calm didn't help things either.

Rage was better than calm when it came to Roa.

There was a lot to say. Not just murder. Not just self defense. The framing. Probably the worst part of the whole thing, because that was a betrayal of Roa. Shay had demon family members, and yet she'd made a situation where they would be afraid. Self defense wasn't anything to be ashamed of.

What she'd done after was.

And while a part of Angelo really, truly doubted how much of it was even self defense, he wasn't going to tell that to Roa. Roa didn't need to hear those dark suspicions.

"She would have been fine," Angelo said. "But she didn't go tell the police, or report it. She... she tried to cover her tracks, and rigged the whole thing up. I don't know if you heard about the murder a few weeks ago, the one they thought the CAE had done, killing a demon. That was her. He was just a gang lord who got too close." He assumed probably recognized her from her time with Klaus was implied by the situation.

With everything being taken into account, Angelo had to say that Roa had reacted pretty well. The news was awful, a betrayal of all the progress they'd made since he'd taken them in, and the fact that Shay had done it could have seriously hurt them. If it had come out in public, the house could have been targetted, and while Angelo had plenty of security there, he couldn't stalk every single child around.

"I haven't spoken to her yet," Angelo said. "But i'm assuming no. Lots of people panic after they kill someone, even if there was a good reason. She probably thought it'd be easy to push the blame onto the CAE, and didn't think beyond that."

Or at least he hoped so. He vastly preferred the option where she just didn't think things through over the one where she did.

"I think that's about it, though. I'm going to go see her in a few days, after she settled in. I'll figure out what story she wants to tell people."

There was a moments pause, and it was hard not to notice the literal flames licking around Roa's eyes.

"...it's alright to be upset," Angelo said, his face serious, and he held out an arm, offering the option if Roa wanted to be close to someone. "It's fucked up, what she did."

All those thoughts about trying not to swear around the kids didn't matter all that much. It was a good time for swearing.