by Hart, Stella
“Look who’s back,” he said, glancing up as I stepped inside. “Where the hell have you been?”
I rubbed my jaw. “Uh…”
He snorted. “I knew it. You were fucking around with that girl from earlier, weren’t you?”
“What girl?”
“Don’t play dumb with me. The one from the tasting room.”
I nodded slowly. “Right. Yeah. Gemma.”
He got up and approached me. “Don’t worry, I won’t tell Willow.”
“Thanks,” I muttered.
“You know, I always thought you took after your mother,” he said, cocking his chin to one side. There was a distinct twinkle in his eyes. “But now I see that you’re actually your father’s son after all.”
I flattened my lips. “Hmph. Yeah.”
He clapped a hand over my shoulder. “This trip has been good. I’m glad you had the idea,” he said, lips curling up in a genuine smile. It faded when he caught sight of my hands. “What the hell happened there?”
I glanced down at my red-raw knuckles. “Clumsiness. Slipped on some wet leaves and broke my fall with my hands,” I replied. “What are you doing up, anyway? You were dead to the world when I went out.”
“Went out? Sneaked out, more like it,” he said, flashing me a knowing look. He turned back to the couch. “Anyway, I woke up because of this,” he went on, picking up his phone. “I forgot to turn off the notifications for this breaking news app I downloaded last week. It started going crazy over the last hour. Have you heard about this plane thing?”
“What plane thing?”
“A private jet exploded midair, just a couple of hundred miles off the coast of New Jersey,” he said, brows furrowing as he scrolled through something on his phone screen. “They think it might be some sort of terrorism incident.”
“Why?”
“Because that damn prince was on it,” he said, nose wrinkling. “Everyone’s assuming someone put a bomb on board to assassinate him. I think it was probably an accident, though. Onboard fire or explosive decompression. More common than airlines would have you believe.”
My blood froze in my veins as he spoke. “What prince?” I asked in a low voice. Please, not that one….
Dad’s upper lip curled. “That asshole Keshari guy. He was here in the States on some bullshit diplomatic business. Apparently he actually spent the last leg of his trip right here at this resort. Crazy, isn’t it?”
His words sent a shockwave through my system. I staggered back, eyes bulging as my breath hitched in my chest.
Dad frowned. “What’s wrong?”
I couldn’t speak. My tongue was paralyzed and my throat had closed up as if two icy hands were coiled around my neck, choking me until my lungs burned.
“Logan?”
I turned away, pretending to look out the window. “I’m okay,” I finally muttered. “I think something just got caught in my throat.”
“Right.”
I turned back to him. “So this plane… it really exploded?”
“Yes. There were a few boats out on the water, and some of the people on them were filming on their phones for some reason. Stargazing, I think. They caught the explosion and posted it on Twitter.”
“It was definitely the Keshari Crown Prince’s plane?”
He nodded. “Yes. All flights have to be registered, for obvious reasons, and according to this article I read a minute ago, they confirmed it pretty quick. It was right there on the radar one second, and then it just vanished.”
Fuck, fuck, fuck….
I scrubbed a hand over my face and took a deep breath. “What are the odds of anyone surviving?” I asked.
My father let out a derisive snort. “Are you kidding me, Logan? No one could survive that.”
“People survive plane disasters all the time,” I said. “Remember when that jet caught on fire over Ohio and only half the passengers died?”
I knew I sounded totally fucking delusional, but I needed to cling to this. I needed to believe that Willow could be out there somewhere, cold and terrified but still alive. I couldn’t lose her like this. This couldn’t be where our story ended.
“Look at this,” Dad said, holding his phone out to me. “It’s one of the videos shot from the boats.”
With a clenched jaw, I looked down at the screen. The video was clearly amateur footage from a cell phone, shaky and out of focus at the beginning, but it cleared up about thirty seconds in.
“Check out these stars, man,” a stoned-sounding male voice was saying from behind the camera as it focused on the night sky. “So bright out here. So peaceful, too. You should—holy fuck! Did you see that? What the fuck?”
A plane had been passing over at the top of the screen, only visible due to the blinking green lights on its tail. Halfway through the man’s little speech, there was a blinding flash. The plane ignited in a ball of orange flame which instantly billowed outwards, lighting up the night sky with great rags of fire.
Grief and horror roared up inside me, blazing hot like the blast I just witnessed.
Dad was right. There was no way anyone could survive that.
Willow was dead.
12
Logan
“Logan. Wake up.”
I peeled my eyelids open, painstakingly slowly. My mouth was dry as cotton and my brain felt like scrambled eggs.
For a few seconds I was convinced last night was a terrible alcohol-induced dream and Willow was right here next to me, coaxing me to wake. “You’re here,” I mumbled, wondering how much I drank to have a hangover this bad.
“Of course I’m here,” my father replied testily. “I’m driving.”
My foggy thoughts instantly cleared as the truth rushed at me like a bullet train from hell. This was no hangover.
I sat up straight and rubbed my eyes, looking out the car window as pain and nausea hurtled through my system. Sorrow had seeped into every cell of my being, cold and cruel, and I was drowning in it.
She’s gone.
I shut my eyes, picturing Willow’s face as the grief began to come in waves, engulfing me all over again. She was my world, and I never got the chance to tell her that. Never got the chance to give her everything she deserved for the rest of her life. Instead she spent her last few moments miserable and petrified on a stranger’s plane, headed for servitude.
The terrible thoughts tormented me, whispering darkly, cobwebbing and tangling in my mind, strangling my veins. I was so choked up I could barely breathe.
“What’s wrong with you?” Dad asked, turning to me as he waited for Wonderland’s main front gate to open. “You slept half the day and you look like hell.”
I’m in hell.
“Hangover,” I said listlessly.
After last night’s news, I never thought I’d eat or move or sleep again. I simply sat there on the bed in my suite at Lilith Hall, staring into space, wishing I could change the past or simply erase the last few months. Wishing I could steal Willow back from the jaws of death so I could hold her, breathe her in, touch her silken hair, tell her how much I loved her.
At some point it all grew so overwhelming that I passed out, slipping into a sleep so deep it might as well have been a coma. I only woke when my father roughly shook me somewhere around lunchtime and told me that we needed to leave the winery and head home because he had an afternoon meeting.
“Right. Anyway, what did you think of the place?” he asked as the gate opened. “Think you’ll book it for the wedding?”
There’s no fucking wedding, I wanted to shout. Instead I gritted my teeth and dug my nails into my palms in an attempt to steady myself. “Maybe,” I finally replied. “It was a nice spot.”
He narrowed his eyes as he pulled into one of our private parking spaces. “You sure everything is okay?”
I swallowed thickly. “Yes.”
I headed up to my suite on the top floor of Wonderland, eyes heavy-lidded and arms like dead weights by my side. I looked and felt like a
zombie, making my way through the world on pure mechanical instinct, wishing someone would put a bullet in my head to put me out of my misery.
Was this the universe’s way of balancing things?
Was this my karma for all of the terrible things I’d done in my life?
The things I did to Willow, the way I threatened her brother’s life, the way I shot my friend right in the head… I had to be punished for it somehow, even if I thought it was all justified at the time.
But why her? Why take her from me? She didn’t do anything wrong.
It should’ve been me.
I pulled my arm back and slammed my fist into the mirror hanging on the wall near the bed. Pain flared across my knuckles as my reflection cracked and disintegrated into a hundred pieces, but I kept going, hitting it over and over until shards of glass littered the floor at my feet, speckled with the blood dripping from my hand.
“Mr. Thorne?”
A feminine voice tentatively called out to me from somewhere across the room. I whirled around to see one of the maids staring at me with wide eyes, clutching a duster in one hand. She had auburn hair, just like Willow.
Grief roared up inside me all over again, like a thousand icy needles stabbing at my guts. Everything would always remind me of Willow. Everywhere I looked, everyone I saw… there was always going to be something that made me think of her.
“Sorry,” I muttered. “I didn’t know you were in here. Just ignore this. I’ll clean it up later.”
The maid opened her mouth, probably to argue that it was her job to do it, but when she saw the look on my face, she pressed her lips firmly shut, nodded, and passed me some tissues to put on my bleeding hand.
“Thanks. I’ll be back later,” I said curtly before exiting the room and striding down the hall to Chloe’s suite.
My sister was fast asleep in her specialized bed, tightly tucked under the white sheets and thick mint green blankets. I went to her side and took a seat, lifting my uninjured hand to hold hers.
“Hey, Chloe,” I whispered. Tears were stinging the backs of my eyes now.
As usual, she didn’t respond.
“I have to tell you something,” I said, leaning closer. “It’s about Willow.”
I thought that might wake her up, but her eyes remained firmly closed as her chest steadily rose and fell.
“She’s gone,” I went on. “She’s gone and it’s all my fault. I didn’t do enough to save her. I should’ve…”
I trailed off and took a deep breath, squeezing my sister’s hand. She let out a little groan, but she still didn’t wake.
“I just wanted to tell you that I’m not going to give up on you,” I said gruffly. “I still have to keep you safe. There’s others, too. I think Mom and her cronies are running some sort of sex slave operation up at Lilith Hall.”
Chloe let out another moan as her eyelids fluttered. I loosened my white-knuckled grip on her hand. “I know this is what Willow would want,” I murmured. “She’d want me to help you and the others, and I promise I will. I still don’t know why Mom did this to you, or why she’s done anything to anyone, but I’m going to find out, and I’m going to make her pay. I’ll make sure she never hurts you or anyone else ever again.”
I stood and then leaned down to plant a soft kiss on her forehead. She was fast asleep again.
A knock at the door startled me, and my gaze shot up as my mother entered the room. Speak of the fucking devil.
Fury boiled up inside me, and I strode forward to block her from moving any closer to Chloe. “She’s asleep,” I said, mustering up every bit of willpower I had left in order to stop myself from throttling her. “Probably not a good time to visit.”
Mom smiled sweetly. “I know. I actually came to find you. I thought you might be in here.”
“Oh.”
She tilted her head to one side. “Are you all right, darling? You look exhausted. And your hand… it’s bleeding. What happened?”
“Drank too much and fell over. Broke my fall on my hands,” I said, repeating the lie I told my father last night.
“We should put some Neosporin on it,” she said.
She briskly crossed the room, heading for the large white cabinet where Chloe’s medical team kept their supplies. I followed her, chest tight and aching. It was so fucking hard to pretend everything was fine. So hard to pretend I didn’t hate this woman with every inch of my soul.
I had to do it, though. My revenge had to be thoroughly planned and perfectly executed, and that could take a long time. For now, I had to act like I knew nothing. Suspected nothing.
“Here we go,” Mom said as she rummaged through the top drawer. She lifted up a small tube of ointment and some cotton buds.
I held out my hand and let her wipe the blood away before dabbing the antibacterial cream on my knuckles. “This looks very fresh,” she said, brows puckering. “When did it happen?”
“Last night. It started bleeding again a few minutes ago, though.”
“Oh. You were in New York with your father last night, weren’t you? Checking out a rival hotel?”
“Yes.”
“How did that go?” she asked, giving me a sweet smile.
“Fine, aside from the crazy hangover.”
“That’s good. I’m glad you two are spending more time together,” she said. She raised one eyebrow. “Have you heard from Willow again?”
Another wave of heat flushed through my body. “No.”
“She must be having a lot of fun on her trip, then! Too busy swimming, tanning, and sipping cocktails to think about all of us suffering here in the cold,” she said, letting out a tinkling laugh.
Lord, give me strength…
“Yeah, I’d say so,” I said, forcing a smile. It probably looked more like a grimace, but it was the best I could do.
Mom’s eyes widened slightly. “Oh, that reminds me. I saw on the news that there’s meant to be some sort of storm blowing through the Caribbean over the next few days. I hope the seas don’t get too rough down there. I’d hate for something to happen to Willow or any of her friends.”
I flattened my lips and shook my head. I knew exactly what she was up to; trying to plant a seed in my head about storms and rough seas so that it wouldn’t come as a total out-of-the-blue shock when the news of Willow’s ‘tragic yachting accident’ broke sometime in the next few days.
She was pure evil.
“I’m sure they’ll be fine,” I said. “Anyway, speaking of news, did you hear about that plane explosion?”
I didn’t miss the way her eyes wavered ever so slightly before returning to their usual calm state.
“Yes, I did,” she said. “What a terrible tragedy. I suppose a lot of people wanted that man dead, though. His family aren’t exactly popular, are they?”
“No, they’re not.”
She brought her hand to her chest, brows shooting up. “Oh! I almost forgot to tell you why I was looking for you,” she said. “The staff downstairs called up and told me there’s someone here to see you. Rowan Harris. You went to school with him, didn’t you?”
“Yeah.”
“I had no idea you two were friends.”
“Never used to be, but Willow is pretty close with him, and he works at the NSA, so we run into each other occasionally.”
“So you’re getting friendly for her sake.”
“Something like that.”
She patted my shoulder. “Well, that’s nice. He’s always seemed a little strange to me, but his parents are lovely people. I’m sure he’s lovely too.”
I nodded. “I better go find him.”
“Of course, darling. I’ll see you tonight for drinks.”
I allowed her to give me a hug, clenching my jaw the entire time, and then I escorted her out of the room with one hand on her back, wanting to keep her as far away from my sister as possible.
When I got downstairs, Rowan was standing by the main reception desk, nervously twisting his watch around his w
rist and flashing awkward half-smiles at random passersby. When he saw me, his eyes widened, and he rushed toward me. “Hey. I got your messages,” he said.
My brows wrinkled. “What messages?”
He leaned closer and lowered his voice. “About Willow. The plane.”
I rubbed my tired, burning eyes and nodded slowly. I’d forgotten all about this until now, but during the initial stages of shock last night, I’d sent a flurry of messages to Rowan detailing my failure to save Willow.
“Right. Thanks for coming to see me,” I muttered, shoulders sagging.
“Is there somewhere we can go to talk?” he asked. “Somewhere quiet. Private.”
I nodded. “There’s a library on the second floor. It’s for guests who want to relax and read, but it’s usually pretty empty because most people who visit this place want to drink, dance and fuck.”
“Sounds good,” Rowan replied. “Er… the library, I mean.”
I led him over to the private elevator, and we rode to the second floor in silence. The guest library lay at the end of the main hall. “After you,” I muttered, holding the door open for Rowan.
The spacious room was laid out like an old-fashioned university library with high ceilings, dark hardwood shelves, black and gold reading lamps on tables, and leaded glass windows. Just as I predicted, it was empty.
I slumped into a chair by one of the tables and put my head in my hands.
“How are you feeling?” Rowan asked softly, reaching one hand out to awkwardly pat my back.
I glanced up at him. “How the hell do you think I’m feeling?”
He quickly drew his hand back. “S-sorry. I never know the right thing to say. I just—”
“No, I’m sorry,” I muttered, cutting him off. “It’s not your fault. I know you’re just trying to help.”
He nodded and sank into a chair opposite me. “That’s why I came. I want to help. Can I show you something?”
I shrugged. “Sure.”
He pulled out a laptop and opened the lid. “Have you been watching the news or reading any of the details of the plane explosion?” he asked, eyeing me over the top of the computer.
I closed my eyes, picturing last night’s horrifying video, and a chill instantly shot through me. “No,” I finally said. “I already know what happened.”