by Stella Hart
“True. Speaking of that, where do you think we should start looking for them?”
“Hm.” I bit my bottom lip as I considered it. “Let’s go and look at the map.”
Nate glanced at his watch as we headed across the lobby. “It’s only eight, so we can probably skip the nightclubs for now. I doubt anyone’s hitting them this early.”
“Yeah. We’re looking for older members, anyway, and they probably don’t even like the nightclubs,” I replied. I peered at the Mayfair map on the wall. “I’d say they’re more likely to stick to the bars, restaurants, casino, cigar lounge, or jazz bar. Or the private suites on the top two floors.”
“Or the sex dungeon, if those rumors are true,” Nate said with a wicked glint in his eyes.
I grimaced. “Great. Now I’m picturing a nude eighty-year-old man tied to an X-cross.”
Nate laughed wryly and pointed to one of the first-floor restaurants on the map. “Let’s start here. We can get some dinner while we’re there.”
“Good idea. I’m starving after all th—” I cut myself off abruptly, eyes widening as something near the reception desk caught my attention.
Nate stared at me. “What’s wrong?”
“Do you see the man near the reception desk?” I said in a low voice. “He’s with the skinny blonde woman.”
“The short guy with gray hair?”
“Yes. He’s wearing a signet ring.”
“Does it have one of the symbols we’re looking for?” he asked, eyes narrowing as he peered at the man. “I can’t tell.”
I lifted one shoulder in a slight shrug. “I can’t tell either. But we should try to get closer so we can check it out, right?”
Nate nodded. “Let’s go and stand behind them. We can pretend we’re waiting to speak to the staff at the desk to get directions.”
We headed across the black and white marble-tiled floor and stood a couple of yards behind the well-dressed couple at the desk, trying not to make it too obvious that we were checking out the man. A moment later, he briefly turned his head to look over his shoulder, seemingly sensing our gazes on his back. He had a thin nose, wide forehead, and sharp hazel eyes.
I stared past him vacantly, acting as if I couldn’t care less about his presence. Nate leaned down to my neck, pretending to plant a kiss there. “I recognize him,” he muttered. “His name is David Rosewell.”
“Friends with your mom?” I asked, pasting on a smile as I pretended to react to the kiss.
Nate nodded. “Yup. Billionaire, too. Definitely a candidate.”
I nodded slowly and squinted at the man’s right hand, pretending I was just yawning. “I still can’t see the pattern on his ring,” I whispered.
“Neither can I, but we can’t get any closer without looking weird,” Nate replied. “Hold on. I have an idea.”
He took out his cell phone and opened the camera app. “By the way, look at this stupid message I got earlier,” he said loudly enough for anyone within a few feet of us to hear. Then he held the phone up as if he were actually showing me something and brought two fingers to the screen to zoom in on the camera app.
I waited with bated breath for David Rosewell’s right hand to come into view again. When it finally did, my stomach fluttered, and my pulse began to race. “Gemini,” I whispered to Nate.
He nodded and made a quick note in his phone before sliding it back in his pocket. “Six down, six to go,” he said, raising a brow.
We turned away from the reception area and headed down the hallway toward the nearest restaurant.
I recognized it from the website photos as soon as we stepped inside. Chandeliers with crystals carved into leaf shapes hung from the ceiling, and the walls were decorated with avant-garde paintings. A gleaming dark wood bar ran through the center of the room, and the tables were set in booths around the edge with colorful velvet cushions on the seats.
Nate and I selected a central table on the right side, as that seemed to be the busier side of the restaurant. A friendly waiter scurried over and took our food orders within seconds of us sitting down. Once he was gone, we peered around the room, inspecting the nearby guests for any sort of jewelry that might match what we were searching for.
Nate stood up a moment later. “I’m going to the bathroom,” he said. “I’ll check out the left side on my way back.”
While I waited, I cast my gaze around the restaurant again, using Nate’s phone camera trick to zoom in on the other patrons. Many of them wore jewelry, but none of it fitted what I was looking for.
Nate returned a few minutes later and leaned across the table to whisper to me. “There’s a man standing at the bar over there,” he said, briefly darting his eyes to the right. “I’m ninety-nine percent certain he’s wearing a tie pin that looks like the Aquarius waves, but I don’t know his name. I need to figure out a way to ask him that doesn’t sound totally fucking weird.”
I flashed him a devious smile. “I’ll do it.”
I headed over to the central bar and stood a couple of feet away from the man Nate had mentioned. Then I leaned over the polished wooden counter, curving my body so that my ass looked as perky and rounded as possible.
I saw the man give me an appreciative look out of the corner of my eye, but he quickly turned his attention back to his tumbler of whiskey. I pretended I didn’t see him at all and ordered a glass of soda water with lemon from the bartender.
While I waited for my drink to arrive, I looked around, affecting a bored expression. When my gaze fell on the man next to me, I widened my eyes and let my jaw drop. “Oh! Hello again!” I said, flashing him a bright smile. “Sorry, I only just noticed you there.”
His forehead wrinkled. “Er… sorry… have we met?”
I nodded and stepped closer. Nate was right. The man was definitely wearing a tie pin that matched the Aquarius symbol. “We met at the Christmas gala last year, remember?” I said. “You were talking to my mother for half the night. She introduced us.”
The man rubbed the back of his neck. “Which Christmas gala?” he asked.
“The one at the Plaza in Avalon City.”
“I’m not sure I went to that one,” he said, looking perplexed.
“Oh. Maybe it was another event. But I’m sure we met. I always remember people’s eyes. Never their names, though,” I said with a tinkling laugh, laying on the ‘airheaded young woman’ act as thickly as possible. “Anyway, I’m Letitia. Letitia Hawthorne,” I added, giving him my go-to fake name.
I extended my hand, and the man smiled and shook it. “Henry Redstone,” he said.
“That’s right! Henry! I remember now.”
He nodded slowly. “You know, come to think of it, you do look quite familiar,” he said. “Perhaps we met at last year’s benefit for the Historical Society. I think that was held at the Plaza as well.”
“That must be it, then,” I said, casually waving a hand. “All I really remember is you talking to my mother all night. You were telling her about something that happened to you when you were overseas. Somewhere in Africa, I think. Or maybe it was Asia.”
Henry grinned and nodded. “I must’ve told her about my safari in South Africa. Lots of interesting stories there.”
I smiled and politely nodded along as he launched into a tale about a pride of lions escaping from a nature park and blocking off a road.
It was amazing what you could convince people of with a little bit of suggestion. I’d never met this man in my life, and he’d certainly never spoken with my mother, but now that I’d planted a few seeds in his mind, he was absolutely sure that he’d met us and told us all about his travels.
I let him chatter for a while, and then I looked over his shoulder and grimaced. “Oh no. My date is starting to look a little murderous, so I should probably get back to our table,” I said. I held out a hand. “It was nice to see you again, Henry.”
“You too. Hopefully I’ll see you and your mother at the next event,” Henry replied, shaking my ha
nd. “I actually remember her now. Lovely woman.”
I gave him one last winning smile. “I’ll tell her you said hello.”
I headed back to the table and sank into the comfortable chair with a sly smile. “Redstone,” I whispered, putting my elbows on the table and leaning forward.
Nate added it to the list. “Good job. Just five more now.”
We finished our meals quickly, anxious to look around the rest of the Mayfair. Then we headed to the next restaurant and wandered around slowly, acting like we were searching for a friend while we surreptitiously checked out the patrons.
There were plenty of people wearing signet rings, tie pins, lapel pins, cufflinks, and custom pendants on necklaces, but none of them matched any of the remaining star signs on our list. I wasn’t discouraged, though. It was amazing that we’d already managed to identify seven families without any help from Greg or Annalise.
The next restaurant was the same as the second. No dice. The casino was just as bad. It was packed with well-dressed people, all of them swarming around the game tables and slot machines, but none of them matched what we were looking for.
“Let’s go to the jazz bar,” Nate suggested. “I think a place like that would attract a few older members.”
We headed to the nearest elevator and rode it to the second floor. The jazz bar was on the southern end, well away from the noise of the bars on the northern side.
It was a large space with low lighting and round tables with wingback chairs. Musicians improvised on the stage in a swinging rhythm, surrounded by a smoky haze from a dry ice machine.
When a saxophone started playing, I felt a familiar pang of grief in my stomach. My father had always loved sax music, so I thought of him whenever I heard it.
Nate took my hand and led me over to a table. “See anything?” he asked in a low voice.
I cast my eyes around the room. It was too dim to make out many details on most of the patrons, but a gleaming gold brooch on one white-haired woman stuck out like a sore thumb.
“Over there,” I whispered. “There’s a woman sitting with two men. Her brooch looks a lot like the Aries symbol.”
Nate followed the direction of my gaze, and his brows shot up. “I know her,” he said. “She’s on one of the philanthropic committees that my mother is on.”
“What’s her name?”
“Hazel Goulding.”
“Are the Gouldings on our list?” I asked. “I can’t remember.”
“Yup. They’re rich as fuck.”
My brows dipped in a frown as I looked over at the woman again. “If you know her, maybe you should go over and say hi. Make sure it’s actually an Aries symbol.”
“Good idea.”
Nate strode over to the table with a friendly grin plastered on his face. Hazel Goulding lit up when she saw him. She stood up to give him a kiss on the cheek before turning back to her two male companions, presumably to introduce them.
They chatted for a while, and then Nate excused himself and came back over to me. The grin on his face was real now.
“Was I right?” I asked, heart pounding.
“Sort of,” he replied, arching one brow. “It’s definitely an Aries symbol, so the Gouldings are number eight on our list. But there’s more.”
“What?”
He leaned forward, fingers entwined on the table. “Her friends had signet rings. Cancer and Libra.”
My hand flew to my mouth. “Are you serious?”
“Yes. It makes sense,” he said. “The Golden Circle members all know each other, so why not hang out with each other sometimes?”
I nodded slowly. “What are their names?”
“Samuel Chabert and Herbert Perrier. They’re nearly old enough to be founding members.”
“I can’t believe it,” I said. A giddy feeling of excitement was threatening to overwhelm me. “We’ve found ten families already!”
I glanced at the list to double-check the numbers. Lockwood, Holland, Montgomery, Van Zandt, Ellesmere, Rosewell, Redstone, Goulding, Perrier, Chabert.
Definitely ten.
Nate nodded. “It was a good idea to join this place. I’m glad you convinced me.”
“Even though we practically had to sell our souls?” I said with an arched brow.
He let out a wry laugh and stood up. “Let’s look for the last two.”
We headed out of the jazz bar and continued our search. Unfortunately, our luck had dried up. We looked through the main areas of the Mayfair for the next hour and a half to no avail. The three bars were teeming with members but devoid of anyone we actually needed to see, and the lavishly-decorated cigar lounge was the same.
We went back to the casino for a while to see if anyone else had showed up there for the evening, and for a few exciting seconds near one of the blackjack tables, we thought we’d spotted someone new to add to our list. Then we realized with crushing disappointment that it was just a guy from the Montgomery family, which we already had on the list.
“Dammit,” I muttered as we headed back into the hallway outside. “We were doing so well before.”
Nate rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Maybe no one from the other two families is here tonight,” he said. “They could have had other plans. Or they could be traveling.”
My shoulders sagged with disappointment. “Good point,” I muttered. “I was really hoping we’d find them all tonight, though.”
“Well, we can’t give up just yet. We haven’t checked out the nightclubs yet, and we still need to go and look at the rooftop restaurant,” Nate said, giving my lower back an encouraging rub. “They could’ve booked private suites or dining rooms, too, so if we get really stuck, we can go to the fourth and fifth floors and wander around there. One of them might come out eventually.”
I nodded and lifted my chin. “You’re right. Let’s go to the rooftop restaurant.”
We took the elevator to the fifth floor and followed a series of signs until we reached the restaurant. It lay on an enormous terrace on the northeastern side of the Mayfair building. The edges were lined with plants and tall outdoor lamps lit with gas-generated flames that kept the space warm and cozy despite the cold weather.
“It’s a lot bigger than I thought it would be,” I said, craning my neck to get a better look at the place. There was a long central bar splitting the space in half, and well-dressed guests were lined up on either side, waiting for cocktails or chatting to friends.
Nate nodded. “It’s more of a bar than a restaurant, isn’t it?” he said, following my gaze.
“It’s packed, too. It’ll take us an hour just to look at everyone.”
“Why don’t I take the left side, and you can take this side?” he asked. “That’ll save us some time.”
I nodded. “Okay. I’ll call you if I see anything.”
He strode away to the left, and I turned and headed to the right. A young man with a glass of whiskey bumped my shoulder as I walked, almost spilling the drink all over my arm. I turned and scowled at him. He gave me an apologetic shrug and disappeared into the crowd.
As I turned my gaze back to the front, I slammed right into a tall man’s chest.
“Shit. Sorry,” I muttered, feeling like a total hypocrite for getting mad at the other guy for bumping into me when I’d just gone and done the exact same thing. “I wasn’t watching where I was going.”
“No, you weren’t,” came the terse response.
I took a step back, and my eyes widened as I realized who I’d bumped into. It was my grandfather. “Oh. Hi, Edward.”
He looked down at me, face impassive. “I’m sorry. Have we met before?”
“It’s me. Alexis.”
“I don’t think I know you,” he replied, averting his eyes from mine. I could see the expression in them that he was trying to hide from me; that familiar mix of unease and bone-deep disgust.
Irritation surged through me in a hot flush. “You’re seriously going to pretend we’ve never met?” I asked,
narrowing my eyes.
A flinch crossed his face, and he grabbed my arm and leaned down, fingertips digging into my skin. “Stop,” he hissed, so close that I could smell the sugary peppermint on his breath. “We don’t know each other.”
Suddenly Nate was by my side, as if he had a radar for detecting when I was in any sort of trouble. “What the fuck are you doing?” he growled, glaring at my grandfather.
The two men suddenly seemed to realize who they were dealing with in the same split-second.
Edward dropped his arm from mine and took a step back, putting a reasonable amount of distance between us. “Oh. Nate.”
“Mr. Paxton,” Nate replied, raising his brows. “Sorry, I thought you were some random guy trying to grope Alexis.”
“Oh, no. Of course not.” Edward coughed nervously and tilted his chin to one side. “You were supposed to come and see me about that issue of yours, but I never heard from you.”
Nate gave him a tight smile and patted his abdomen. “It’s healed up just fine.”
“Well, you should still come and see me, just in case,” Edward replied, still looking a little shell-shocked to see us standing next to each other. “Anyway, er… how do you two know each other?”
“We’ve been dating for a few months,” Nate said, slinging an arm around me.
Edward’s eyes widened even more. “Oh, I see,” he said. He paused for a second and arranged his face into what I presumed was meant to be a pleasant expression. “I actually met Alexis in a class I was guest-lecturing in at Blackthorne, and—”
Nate cut him off. “You don’t need to lie to me,” he said in a low voice. “I know you’re her grandfather.”
Edward turned to me, face thunderous. “You told him?” he hissed. “I warned you about ever—”
Nate cut him off again. “Calm down. She didn’t tell me anything. I figured it out myself,” he said. “And I haven’t told anyone else.”
“Ah. I see.” Edward looked slightly mollified by the new information, but his eyes were still flickering with animosity.
I folded my arms. “Don’t worry, I have no intention of telling anyone about you,” I said in an acid tone. “It’s like I said at my apartment last time I saw you—I’d rather not have people know I’m related to someone like you. Someone who would abandon their own family.”