by Hart, Stella
Mom let out a frustrated sigh. “Yes. His parents are furious. I just spent the last four hours arguing with them about a refund. They think they should get the whole ninety-six million back, purely because Darius was never actually able to use his purchase.”
“That’s ridiculous. It’s not our fault his plane blew up.”
“That’s exactly what I said. The transaction was already complete when he boarded that plane, so we don’t owe them anything,” Mom said. “I offered to give them five million as a sort of goodwill gesture, but that’s all.”
“Did they accept?”
“No. I knew they wouldn’t. Something about losing honor in their culture. I only offered it in the first place to get them off my back,” she said smugly.
“I see,” Jamie replied. “Anyway… have you actually heard anything about the cause of the explosion?”
“My sources are telling me it was probably some sort of anti-fascist group. Used some sort of missile.”
“I heard the same thing,” Jamie said. “It’s a shame, isn’t it? Poor Willow.”
Mom sniffed. “Honestly, it’s probably a good thing. The Crown Prince was a real piece of work, so Willow would’ve been dead within a few months of her arrival in the Kingdom anyway. At least this way she died instantly. No fear or pain. Just a flash before she turned into a pink mist along with everyone else on that plane.”
“That’s true.”
“Also, now that this has happened, I don’t need to feel so bad about Logan. He’s grown quite fond of Willow over the last few months, so the idea of lying to him about that fake yachting accident actually made me feel a bit guilty,” Mom went on. “But now it’s not really a lie, is it? She really is floating out there in the ocean somewhere, dead as a doornail.”
She let out a tinkling laugh, and I curled my hands into fists by my side. Fuck, I couldn’t wait to destroy her.
“Do you need me back at Lilith Hall after I’m done at the White House today?” Jamie asked.
“For a few hours, yes. We have another issue on top of the angry Keshari royals.”
“What is it?”
Mom sighed again. “One of the girls has gone missing, and it looks like a guard had something to do with it. I’ll need you to handle the situation, because I have to head home for a while before Chuck starts to get suspicious. There’s only so long I can claim to be out planning a charity ball.”
“Fuck. We’re having problem after problem at the moment.”
“I know, but don’t worry. It’ll blow over soon, and in the end, it’ll all be worth it.”
They started discussing something about the DOJ investigation into President Rutherford’s murder. I tuned them out and turned to Rowan.
“This proves you were right,” I said in a low voice. “Jamie really is one step ahead of my mom. She has no idea that Willow is still alive.”
Rowan nodded excitedly. “Yeah. Did you hear his voice when he asked her what she knew about the explosion? He sounded nervous, didn’t he?”
“Yup. He was obviously trying to figure out whether he was in the clear or not.”
“Right now, he thinks he definitely is,” he said with a thin smile. “We have to keep it that way until we find Willow.”
I frowned. “Well, we know he’s going to be back at the White House today, and after that he’s heading to Lilith Hall for a while. We could just follow him when he leaves, right? Then we can figure out where he’s keeping her.”
Rowan picked at a stubby fingernail as he considered my idea. Then he shook his head. “That won’t work.”
“Why?”
“Because we aren’t professionals at this sort of stuff. If we try to tail him, he’ll spot us a mile away, and we really can’t afford to rouse his suspicions at the moment.”
“I guess that’s true.”
“It’s a good idea, though. We just need to hire professional private investigators to do it.”
“Shit,” I muttered. Even with the connections I had, it would take days to make that happen. That was too long. I needed to find Willow right now.
“Sorry. I don’t know what else to suggest. Jamie really isn’t making this easy,” Rowan said, brows puckering. “Unless we can question his best friends or family about his favorite hidey-holes, that’s our only real option right now.”
His words shook something loose in the back of my mind. “I think I might actually have an idea,” I replied, straightening my spine. “Just give me an hour….”
* * *
“Logan. What are you doing here?” My father stared up at me from his desk, glasses halfway down his nose.
I stepped inside his study and closed the door. “I need to talk to you.”
He nodded and gestured to one of the spare chairs. “More wedding stuff?”
“No,” I replied. “In fact, if you don’t listen to me very carefully and agree to help me out today, there might never be a wedding.”
He frowned. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“Before I tell you, I need to make you a promise,” I said, sliding into a chair. I leaned forward and clasped my hands in a pyramid on the desk. “If anything I tell you within the next half-hour leaves this room, I’ll go to the media and the police. I’ll tell them every sordid little detail about our family and the way we’ve operated for so long. Not to mention all of the major tax evasion schemes you have running through Wonderland. I’m sure the IRS would love to hear about that.”
Dad stiffened. “So you came here to threaten me,” he said, eyes narrowing. “So much for repairing our relationship, huh?”
“It’s not a threat. It’s a promise,” I said evenly. “I’ll get in just as much trouble as you if I actually go ahead and speak to the cops and journalists about our family. The shit with Willow alone would land me in prison forever. But I’m willing to take that risk if it means taking you down for not being able to keep your fucking mouth shut.”
He swallowed audibly and pushed his glasses up his nose. “You’ve made your point,” he said. “I won’t repeat whatever you tell me to anyone else. Okay?”
“Okay.” I nodded slowly. “First things first. I know who Q is.”
Dad groaned. “You said you’d stop this ridiculous investigation of yours.”
“Well, I didn’t, and I know the truth now. I also know you weren’t lying when you said you had no idea who Q is. You really don’t know, do you?”
“No, I don’t, and I have no intention of finding out,” he snapped. “So if that’s all you had to tell me, then you can shut up and leave my office right now.”
I lifted a brow. “Come on, Dad. I know you’ve always wanted to know who he or she is. I know it fucking kills you to know the shadow council are allowed to know, but you’re not, even though you do so much for the Order,” I said. “I have the name. I can tell you.”
His cheeks reddened, and something flickered in his eyes. For a few seconds, it looked like he was on the verge of giving up and asking me who Q was. Then he shook his head and cleared his throat. “Logan, you need to stop talking right now. I’ve told you before and I’ll tell you again: this is a very dangerous subject.”
My eyes narrowed. “It’s not dangerous if you don’t repeat this conversation to anyone else.”
He shifted nervously in his seat. “It doesn’t matter. Q has a way of finding things out,” he said. “Trust me, I’ve seen terrible things happen to people who tried to cross him in the past.”
“I know. Chloe is one of them.”
His eyes widened. “Excuse me? Did you say Chloe?”
“Yes. She’s lying in that bed down the hall with half her brains scrambled because of Q.”
Dad abruptly rose to his feet. “This is ridiculous. Get out.”
“I’m not lying. Q engineered the hit-and-run against Chloe.”
“Why?”
“I’m not sure exactly why, but I think it might be because she looked into the Order and found out too much.”
“That’s impossible.”
“No, it’s not. You broke the rules and told both of us about the Order when we were young. Chloe could’ve spent years looking into it after that, and you remember what she was like when she decided she wanted something.”
He sat down again, jaw set. “You have proof Q hurt her?” he asked curtly.
“Yes.”
He scrubbed a hand over his chin. “Jesus Christ,” he muttered. “Chloe….”
“I’m sorry. I know you weren’t expecting that, but it’s true. Q set her up.”
“Who is he?” he asked, eyes darkening. “Just tell me.”
“It’s not a ‘he’. It’s a ‘she’.”
“Who the fuck is she, then?”
“It’s Mom.”
He stood up again. A vein was visibly throbbing in his neck. “So that’s what this is? Some sort of sick fucking joke?”
“No. Listen to me. It’s Mom. She’s Q.”
Silence reigned in the study for the next two minutes.
“You’re serious? It’s Liz?” Dad finally said.
“Yes. I have irrefutable proof.”
“So she hurt Chloe.” His eyes were turning flat and deadly as the initial shock wore off and anger began to surge through him like electricity. I knew exactly how it felt, because I felt it too.
“She hurt Willow, too,” I said. “That’s why I’m here.”
“Christ. I should’ve known,” he muttered. “Her family and the way they forced our marriage on us….”
He trailed off, and I reached over and patted his arm. “Don’t blame yourself. She hid it really well.”
He went silent again for a long time. I’d never seen him look so tired before. “Tell me everything,” he finally said in a low voice.
I told him the story from the beginning—the way Willow and I initially suspected him, the way I managed to sneakily procure Q’s saliva to prove that theory, the DNA test which proved it was actually a female relative of mine, Rowan’s personal research at the NSA, the real Lilith Hall, and the sordid auction night.
“I know one of your high council duties is to buy babies from women who don’t want them,” I said partway through. “Willow and I figured that out too. What exactly do you do with them?”
“We assist with the pregnancy and birth, along with the contractual side of things, and then we leave the children at the Order Hall for Q and the shadow council to collect,” Dad muttered, head in his hands.
I leaned forward, forehead creasing. “But what exactly do you think happens to the babies? What were you told?”
“There are a lot of wealthy people who want to bypass the adoption process, so the babies are sold to them. I’m well aware that it’s highly illegal, but the Order needs to make money somehow, and it’s an effective method.”
I shook my head. “You’ve been lied to all along,” I said. “When I went to Lilith Hall, I saw a lot of weird, fucked up shit. I think the babies are raised there to be slaves. Then they’re auctioned off the same way Mom auctioned Willow off.”
“No…”
“Yes, Dad. That’s what you’ve really been doing in all of your decades of service to the Order. Participating in human trafficking. I’m sure Q designed it that way—if she goes down for it, then so does everyone else for being complicit in her schemes.”
“Fuck,” he muttered, nostrils flaring. I could see the waves of anger rising inside him again, sheer fury with a cold, brittle edge to it. He slammed a fist into his desk. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!”
“Calm down. Mom might be here somewhere, and we can’t let her know that we know anything just yet.”
“I’ll kill her. I’ll fucking kill her.”
“Dad, stop. We need to help Willow before we do anything to Mom. We might’ve been too late to help Chloe, but we can still do this.”
He slumped down and let out a long, exhausted sigh. “We’re all going to prison. Forever.”
I reached over to shake one of his shoulders. “If you help me find Willow and expose all of this shit to the world, you might be able to get some sort of deal with the prosecutors. You probably won’t avoid prison, given everything you’ve done for the Order, but it’ll help.” I stopped and hesitated for a few seconds before going on. “Trust me, Dad… Chloe would want us to do this.”
He finally looked up. “What can I do?”
“Mom’s right hand man has her. Jamie Torrance.”
“Jamie Torrance?”
“Yeah. He’s on the shadow council. He’s basically Mom’s lapdog.”
“Why does he have Willow? I thought you said your mother auctioned her off.”
I quickly told him the rest of the story, along with everything Rowan and I had discovered.
“We think she’s on an island,” I said. “But there are hundreds of them up there, and we have no idea where to start looking.”
“I don’t understand what you expect me to do,” Dad said, brows furrowing. “I agree with your friend Rowan. Hire a professional to tail Torrance.”
“We will if you can’t help us,” I replied. “But I think you can, and I think it will be much faster.”
“How?”
“You know how Willow and I were both totally convinced that you were Q?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“We aren’t the only ones who thought that. Half the Order thinks it’s you. You’re the head of the high council, and you’re mega-rich and powerful. There’ve been rumors floating around for years about how you’re probably Q.”
“I know,” he said stiffly. “I don’t see how that’s relevant here, though.”
“It’s relevant because you can use it to your advantage.”
“How?”
“A few of the lower Order members are friends with Jamie Torrance. They have no idea that he’s secretly a member himself, of course, seeing as he’s on the shadow council, but I bet they know a lot about him and his life in general. That means they might have an idea of where he’d go if he wanted to hide.”
“So you want me to talk to them and try to find out?”
I nodded. “Yes. Act like Jamie has crossed the Order somehow, and you need to figure out any places he might go to hide in the future,” I said. “If the questions come from you—the guy everyone assumes is Q—they won’t hesitate to answer. They’ll probably be too scared of crossing you to ever say no.”
“I don’t know about that,” he said reluctantly. “If your mother finds out…”
I cut him off. “She won’t. Just strongly hint that you’re Q and that the conversation has to remain between you and them. They’ll be too scared of reprisal to let anyone else know the conversation even happened.”
“I suppose so.”
I leaned forward again. “Dad, I really need you to do this. I need to be able to trust you, too. Can I count on you?”
He replied in a low murmur, staring at a clock on the wall. “You said earlier that Chloe would want this.”
“She would. Before she went into the coma that night, the last thing she tried to do was help Willow. She warned her to get away from Q.”
He nodded slowly. “Okay. I’ll help you,” he said. “Just tell me who to call.”
I wrote down a list of lower-level Order members who were known associates of Jamie Torrance, and then I handed it to him. “I really hope this works,” I said.
“Don’t get your hopes up,” Dad muttered. “If he’s managed to hide the fact that he’s on the shadow council from everyone he knows, then he’s probably managed to hide a lot of other things too.”
“We’ll see.”
He rose to his feet. “I’ll go outside to make the calls. You stay here and wait for news from your friend. He might find Willow before we do.”
He left the room, and I sat by his desk for what felt like an eternity with a sinking sensation in my stomach. I could feel my pulse, quick and shallow, at the base of my throat. What if I made the wrong choice in trusting my father? What if h
e was outside right now, telling my mother everything?
Fuck.
He finally returned at half past two. The air seemed to hum with electricity as I waited for the hammer to drop, and I set my teeth on edge. “Any luck?” I asked, half-expecting my mother to step inside at any second.
Dad gave me a thin smile. “I think so. You said something about an island, right?”
My heart leapt as I nodded. He was actually helping me, and Mom wasn’t coming.
I made the right choice after all.
“I found out from one of his friends that the Torrance family used to own almost every single island off the coast of New Hampshire,” Dad went on. “They sold the biggest one to the Order many years ago. That’s Fire Island. When he told me that, I had to pretend as if I already knew about it, seeing as I’m supposedly Q.”
I nodded. “Of course.”
“It was sold over a hundred years ago, so I’m guessing it means the Torrances have been linked with the Order for a long time, although I would’ve never guessed that.”
“Right. How does this help us, though? If they own almost all of the islands up there, that doesn’t really narrow it down, does it?”
“I said they used to own all of them, including Fire Island,” he said. “Nearly all of them have been sold off to other people now. All except one, in fact.”
My pulse picked up again. “Which one?”
He moved closer to me and brought up a map on his phone. “I was told it was a small boot-shaped one about thirty miles east of Fire Island,” he said, handing the phone to me. “So I’m guessing it’s this one.”
He tapped the screen to zoom in, and I squinted at the spot. “That’s it? You’re sure?”
“As sure as I can be.” He switched the map to the satellite display option. “There’s a building on it.”
“Looks like a house,” I said with a slow nod. “A pretty big one, too.”
“Are you going to go?”
“Of course I am.”
“Good.” Dad smiled faintly. “Be careful, and bring Willow home safe. Then we’ll deal with your mother.”
I returned his smile and nodded, though my mind was already miles away. Adrenaline had burned off all of the fear and fatigue, and all I could think about was finally seeing Willow’s face again, bright and beautiful.