by Stella Hart
Nate pulled me back over to him. “What happened in 2009?” he asked, eyes still on Greg. “Why did the Golden Circle end up going after you?”
“Things started to fall apart for them that year,” Greg said, wiping the spittle from his forehead with the back of his hand. “I simply hastened their end.”
“Why? You said you loved working for them.”
Greg went silent for a moment, eyes focusing dimly on the opposite wall. “I was one of the most important parts of their operation, and I loved the work,” he finally said. “But they didn’t appreciate me.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean the other members of the Golden Circle treated me very poorly despite their need for me,” he replied, brows furrowing. “See, they didn’t like to think about me slicing up the donors. They only liked to think of the money rolling into their bank accounts. So whenever I was around them, they treated me like some sort of… other. Like I wasn’t really a person to them, even though I was the main reason all that money was pouring in.”
“So you got sick of that,” Nate said.
“Who wouldn’t? They were ungrateful cunts,” Greg said, eyes narrowing. “But they messed up. They pushed me too far with their shitty attitudes, and at the same time, they made a huge mistake. Two separate things that ended up converging.”
“What was the mistake?”
Greg smiled thinly. “That year was a rough one for Avalon. Horrible winter that came very early,” he said, rubbing his chin. “The business side of the Golden Circle had potential clients lined up everywhere, desperate for organs, so they needed the next cycle to start. But because of the awful weather, they found it very difficult to obtain donors. No one could fly to the mainland or anywhere else at the time, and boats were out of the question as well.”
“So the families had to hunt on the island.”
“Yes. They tried to select people who wouldn’t be missed as much as others, like wayward teens or poor scholarship students from Blackthorne. They figured they would be far less likely to get media attention than missing rich kids. But it all blew up in their faces anyway.” His twisted smile widened. “That was really their undoing—thinking they could fish for subjects in their own backyard.”
“Stop saying subjects and donors,” I spat. “You mean victims. Like Emilie Santal.”
Greg waved a hand. “Whatever. Victims, then,” he said. “Anyway, by that stage, I was getting sick and tired of being treated like shit by the others. Like my work wasn’t important. So I decided to show off my talents to the rest of the world and let them appreciate it instead.”
My stomach lurched. “That’s why you gutted those people and strung them up all over Blackthorne? For fucking recognition?”
“Yes. Their eyes and organs still made it to the clients who’d paid for them, of course. But instead of burning the remains like I usually did, I put them out on display.” He cocked his head to one side. “Everyone noticed my talents then, didn’t they?”
His eyes were bright and wild as he spoke, like he’d been possessed by a demon.
“What happened after that?” I asked, trying to keep the tremor out of my voice. “How did my father get involved?”
He let out a theatrical sigh. “After I left the bodies on the campus, the rest of the Golden Circle went into damage control mode,” he said. “They were terrified that I’d brought the whole operation down on their heads with what I’d done, and to be honest, when I woke up the next day, I did feel that I may have slightly overreacted with the whole thing. So for a while I was concerned that they might try to get rid of me as punishment.” He paused and tapped the side of his head. “I knew something, though. Something that could help me gain their favor again.”
“You knew about my father’s investigation?”
He smiled. “Yes. But it wasn’t just your father. It was Francis, too,” he said. “I had a feeling about him a few weeks before all of this happened. Like he might know something.”
Nate lifted a palm. “Wait, Dad wasn’t a part of the Golden Circle operation?”
Greg’s upper lip curled in a disdainful sneer. “Of course not. He wasn’t a true Lockwood,” he said. “The people who married into the families were never told the truth about the business. Only those who had the real blood running through their veins were let in on the secret.”
“Right.”
“Anyway, a while before all the shit went down, I started to worry that Francis knew something. He started coming to visit me in the city, acting like he wanted to strike up some sort of friendship with me. At first, I thought he suspected something about me and Annalise, but I realized later that he’d been going through the Lockwood finances, and he’d caught on to the not-so-legal income stream, even though precautions had always been taken to launder the organ profits. That’s the problem with corporate lawyers who deal with financial crimes all the time. They pick up on illicit activity like that.” He snapped his fingers. “When I realized what was going on, I went into his study and broke into his safe to see if he was hiding anything in there. The password was stupidly easy. Your birthday, Nate. Once I was in, I found some notes Francis had written. He’d actually figured out quite a lot, and he was working with Peter Covington to create some sort of exposé on the matter.”
“What did you do then?” I asked.
“Well, with the Golden Circle about to implode, I made a suggestion to them. My mea culpa,” he said. “I told them about Francis and Peter, and I suggested that we set Peter up for the bodies at Blackthorne. I said I’d kill him so he couldn’t squawk about his innocence for years afterwards, and the world would think he was just a crazy guy who snapped one day and committed a terrible mass murder. That way nothing would blow back on the organization.”
“Jesus,” Nate muttered.
“They accepted the idea,” Greg went on. “One of them slipped some money to a couple of dirty cops, and they planted fake evidence in Peter’s office and home for the other cops to find once someone called in an anonymous tip about him. Then we paid off some guards to let us break him out of prison a few weeks later. The rest is history.”
He grinned wickedly and drew a finger across his throat in a slicing gesture. I surged forward, wanting to cut it open for real.
Nate stuck an arm out to hold me at bay. “Remember what I said,” he whispered to me. “We can’t kill him. Not yet.”
“He’s seriously lucky you’re here,” I muttered in response, shrinking back.
He turned his attention to his uncle again. “What happened to my father?” he asked.
Greg tilted his head slightly to one side. “Don’t worry, I’m getting there,” he replied. “After we blamed the Blackthorne murders on Peter and got rid of him, we obviously still had to deal with Francis. He knew too much. He hadn’t said anything to anyone at that stage, because he knew we were onto him, but it was only a matter of time before he tried to turn us in and run away. So someone from the syndicate gave him a warning: Talk or leave the island, and your son will be the next one hanging from a tree with his eyes and guts missing.”
“You would’ve done it, too,” Nate said. “You would’ve killed me.”
“Of course. I didn’t care about you,” Greg replied with a shrug. “Anyway, that shut him up long enough for the rest of the Golden Circle to decide what to do with him. I don’t know why they took so long to decide, though. Death was the clear answer.”
“Sick fucks,” I said under my breath.
Greg fixed me with a cold stare. “You know, you’re actually right. Those bastards were sick fucks. Wanna know why?”
“Why?”
“Because after everything I’d done for them, they were still using me to do their dirty work. They got me to kill Peter, and they were going to get me to kill Francis as well. But then I found out they were going to have me killed too. Apparently I’d become too much of a liability to them.”
I sneered at him. “I can see how they’d think t
hat after what you did.”
Nate cut in again. “How did you find out they were planning to betray you?”
“Annalise told me. She was at the board meeting about the issue, as the Lockwood representative,” Greg replied. “Everyone else thought we had a terrible relationship because of the way we’d hidden our affair, so they had no problem talking about killing me in front of her. She went along with it, agreed that I had to die, and offered to do it herself. She said she’d set up a terrible car accident that would kill both Francis and me at the same time. That way they’d kill two birds with one stone.”
Nate and I exchanged glances. He was right last night. His mother was neck-deep in the Golden Circle, and she was also the reason his father was dead.
It was probably her fault that Emilie was murdered, too. It was her decision to stop the car at that rest stop ten years ago, and while she’d always told Nate it was because he was a problem child who wouldn’t stop kicking her seat, I was willing to bet that the whole thing was actually planned out in advance. She probably had someone waiting at that rest stop, ready to snatch Emilie as soon as she got out of the car, and she’d distracted Nate by chasing after him and making him run into the woods before later telling him that he’d chosen to run off like that.
My chest ached at the thought. Despite all the shocking evilness the Golden Circle had pulled off over the decades, this particular incident seemed like the worst one to me. Annalise had convinced her own ten-year-old son that it was his fault his beloved babysitter was horribly murdered.
No wonder he was so fucked up.
“So the others in the Golden Circle went for it?” I asked, turning my attention back to Greg.
Greg smiled. “Yes. They had no reason to believe that she’d be particularly bothered by my demise after the way I’d supposedly treated her over the years. They told her she had a week to make it happen.”
“How’d you pull it off?”
“I went to the estate and knocked Francis out with a rock. Then I put him in his car and drove it all the way up to Pickersgill. Annalise followed me in her own car. We moved Francis to the driver’s seat and pushed the car off the cliff together. We made sure it landed on the rocks, right next to the water where all the sharks hang out. That way everyone would believe I was in the car because Annalise said so, and they’d assume my body was taken in a feeding frenzy once the sharks smelled the blood in the water.”
“You put your blood in the car too, right?” I asked, tilting my chin. “To convince the cops.”
He nodded and lifted his left arm to show us an old white scar just below his wrist. “Annalise collected some of my blood to put on the passenger seat. She put some on a few scraps of an old shirt as well, and when the police found it later, she told them it was the shirt I was wearing that day.”
“What happened after the car went off the cliff?”
“We went back to the estate with me hidden in the trunk. Annalise told the house staff that she was worried about Francis. She said she thought he’d been drinking before he went out with me. Then she called in an anonymous tip with the police up at Pickersgill. She told them she was a local who’d driven past a certain cliffside area a few miles out of town and spotted suspicious skid marks on the road. They found the car a few hours later.”
“And then you went to hide in the bunker.”
Greg nodded. “I’ve been here ever since.” He lifted his uninjured leg to rattle the chains again. “Like I told you when you first found me, the restraints are really for my own safety. Annalise knew I’d be tempted to leave the bunker without them, and she didn’t want that to happen because we’d both be killed if anyone from the Golden Circle saw me and realized what we’d done. She was also aware of the fact that I enjoyed killing all those people, and she knew I’d be tempted to hunt for more if I ever got out, which would obviously arouse suspicion as well.”
“She wasn’t wrong about that last part, was she?” I said with a scowl.
He flashed me a wicked grin. “No.”
Nate lifted his palms. “Let me see if I’ve got this story straight. You and Mom—along with a bunch of other Lockwoods—were part of a multigenerational organ trafficking scheme with some other rich Avalon families. Then you pissed them all off by losing your shit and going rogue, and Mom double-crossed them to save you. Now everyone thinks you’re dead.”
“That’s right.”
“So you aren’t in contact with the Golden Circle anymore.”
Greg snorted. “Of course not.”
“Do they even exist anymore? You said the organ scheme ended in 2009.”
“From what Annalise has told me, they still exist in the sense that the members are still alive, apart from a few of the very old ones who’ve died over the last few years. Like your great uncle Roger, for instance. Aside from that, they’re defunct.”
“Why?”
He sighed. “Well, even though I took the heat off them by helping them frame Peter Covington for the bodies at Blackthorne, they decided to stop the whole operation anyway. It was too risky,” he said. “Remember, it was 2009 by that point. Good forensic technology existed by then, and with the internet everywhere, it was much easier for information about missing people to spread all over the world. So it was only a matter of time before someone realized something was off about Avalon.”
“I suppose you already had your fortunes, too.”
“Exactly. By that stage, most of the families had invested their profits and earned billions off the whole scheme. So the board made the final decision to shut things down. That’s why your mom never told you about any of it, Nate. You were still a kid when they ceased operations, so what was the point? You never needed to be involved.”
Nate rubbed his jaw and muttered something under his breath. I didn’t catch what it was, but I could tell by his tone that it wasn’t pretty.
“So that’s it,” Greg went on, raising his palms. “As far as I know, the Golden Circle exists in name only now.”
I looked over at Nate again. “Can I talk to you in private?” I asked in a hushed tone.
“Sure.”
He led me out of the main room and up to the steps at the end of the passage. “What’s up?” he asked.
“I just thought of something,” I replied, heart hammering. “You know how Greg said the Golden Circle had a board that made all of the major decisions?”
“Yeah.”
“It made me remember something. When I broke into your house a few months ago, I overheard your mom talking to a guy named Devin.”
“That’d be Devin Holland. He’s a friend of hers.”
“Right. I didn’t think much of it at the time because it sounded like boring business chatter, but Devin was saying something about wanting to start things up again because he needed money. Your mom refused and said it was too risky, and that he should sell some assets if he’s that desperate for money. Devin got angry at that and said he’d take it to the board.”
“You think he might’ve been trying to get the Golden Circle back together?”
“That’s exactly what I think. The board agreed to start things up again, a bit slower this time, and that’s why Nessa Pratchett and Claire Reilly were killed,” I said. “Everyone thought it was just a random Butcher copycat, but it’s the Golden Circle. They must’ve found another surgeon.”
Nate’s brows dipped in a frown as he considered my words.
I kept going. “I know you’ve always thought it was me. That I’m a killer,” I said, eyes widening as I held up my palms. “But I’m not. I swear. I really think this is the answer to everything.”
Nate finally gave me a curt nod. “You might be right,” he said. “But there’s only one way to find out for sure.”
“From your mom?”
“Yeah. If the Golden Circle has actually started killing people for their organs again, she’ll know all about it.”
Nausea suddenly clawed at my throat. I tried to force down the sic
kness, but it was too late. Chunks of croissant rose into my mouth, and I gagged and started to retch.
“Shit,” Nate muttered, laying a hand on my back. “Come on. Let’s get you outside.”
I clamped a hand over my mouth and let him pull me up the steps. As soon as we were out of the bunker, I fell to my knees on the ground, stomach contracting as it forced everything up and out.
“Sorry,” I gasped, wiping my lips as the pungent smell invaded my nostrils. “I just can’t stop thinking about all the fucked up stuff Greg told us. It’s literally making me sick.”
Nate crouched next to me and rubbed my back. “Trust me, I know how you feel,” he said in a grim tone. “I just found out my uncle is a fucking serial killer who murdered over five hundred people so their organs could be sold. On top of that, he’s been having an incestuous affair with my mother, and on top of that, the two of them murdered my father.”
I glanced up at him, heart aching. I knew his pain inside and out. “At least you know the truth now, I guess,” I murmured.
“Yeah.” He dipped his chin in a brief nod. “Let’s go back inside. There’s water in there. It’ll make you feel better.”
I got up on shaky legs and followed him back into the bunker. He went over to one of the storage cupboards and fetched me a bottle of water. As I gulped it down, he turned his gaze to his uncle.
“We need more answers from you,” he said. “Obviously, our family was in the Golden Circle, and we think the Hollands might’ve been involved too. But we have no idea about the rest.”
Greg lifted a brow. “So?”
“So we want to know if Peter and my dad were right. Were there twelve families altogether?” Nate asked. "If so, who were they?”
A familiar wicked grin curved up Greg’s thin lips. “I’m done talking,” he said. “No more answers.”
I narrowed my eyes. “You remember what I said I’d do if you refuse to talk, right?”
“Yes. I remember your little threat very well. But something just occurred to me while you were outside,” he replied. He lifted a finger and tapped the side of his head. “Everything you want to know is in here, and in Annalise’s head too. So you can hurt us, but you can’t kill us. Not as long as you need us for our information. So why would I say another word? I don’t want to die.”