by JA Huss
“What do you want us to do?” I ask, completely frustrated with all the details I’ve been in the dark about. “What can we do?”
“I have a plan,” Victoria says. “And it’s a really great one that will get rid of Liam Henry and Lucio Gori Senior for good.”
“You want us to… kill them?” Ivy asks. She’s stunned.
“Not us, Ivy.” And then Victoria smiles a smile that reminds me of Paxton when he’s got someone in his sights. “That’s the best part, I told you. We don’t have to kill anyone. We just need them to kill each other.”
“We—” Ellie starts. But Nolan comes bursting through the double kitchen doors and she stops short.
We all go silent.
“What?” he asks. “What’s going on in here? I thought you busy were making dinner?”
“Don’t be silly, Nolan,” Ivy says, recovering first. “We have Elizabeth for that. And she prefers the regular kitchen when she cooks, remember? I mean, why employ a first-rate chef if you can’t show her off to your best friends?”
“Oh, yeah,” Nolan says, looking us all over as he tries to appear calm. “Right. Sorry, I just figured you were busy making dinner when you all disappeared to the catering kitchen.”
“What are you doing in here?” Ivy asks. “Aren’t you supposed to be mediating the Mister meeting?”
“Ahhh, ice.” Nolan smiles sheepishly at Ivy. “I need ice. Two bags, please.”
“Why?” Ellie asks.
“You know.” Nolan sighs, then shrugs. “Just… guy stuff.”
“They beat the shit out of each other,” I say. “Didn’t they?”
“Nope,” Nolan says, putting a hand up. “Nope. Just a few swings and some shouting, that’s all. It’s cool now.” But his gaze lingers on me for a moment and he frowns.
I squint my eyes at him, and he redirects his attention to Ivy, who is busy scooping crushed ice from the ice maker into baggies. She hands them over and Nolan is just about to leave when a chef appears through another set of doors and says, “Dinner’s almost ready. I need everyone out so my servers can prep. So please go grab a seat in the Sapphire dining room and the servers will be in shortly.”
She disappears, but the doors Nolan came through swing open once again. Pax appears, that ridiculous detective coat swinging out behind him as he strides into the kitchen.
“Pax,” I say, walking towards him. “What happened?”
“Nothing,” he says, putting his arm around my waist and pulling me close. “Nothing. We’re all good now.”
Ivy hands him an ice pack for his swollen face and then she and Nolan disappear, presumably to deliver the other ice pack to Oliver.
“Do you ladies mind,” Pax says, looking at Ellie, Victoria, and Ariel, “just… giving us a minute?”
“Sure, sure,” the three of them say, exiting the way Ivy and Nolan left.
When they’re gone I take the ice pack from Pax and place it on his jaw. “You fought.”
“Just a little bit, Sugar. It’s fine, I swear. We’re OK now. He just…” Pax sucks in a breath. “He just needed to say what he came to say and I said what I had to say. And… we’re good now. We’re just gonna stay here at the resort for a few days to try to figure all this shit out, and then we’ll go back to Malibu and live happily ever after.”
I stare up into his eyes. “You’re lying.”
“I’m not,” he insists. “I swear. It’s gonna be fine. Oliver’s not mad, he’s just worried about you.”
“About me? Why?” But I don’t even hear Pax’s answer because my mind is back to the silver envelope hiding underneath the kitchen table.
“I think you better put these back on.” Pax pulls my panties out of his trench coat pocket and hands them to me. “I mean, I sorta dig the thought of you sitting next to me at dinner with no panties on, but I’m pretty sure Oliver would kick my ass for real if he ever found out.” He kisses me on the lips, his tongue seeking mine out. We linger like that for a moment. But then he pulls back and says, “So better to head that little complication off at the pass.”
We meet everyone else up in the dining room. There is a large blackboard decorated with colored chalk on the far end of the room with a seven course meal elaborately written in perfect calligraphy. I’m starving, and everyone else is already sitting, so Pax and I take the two empty chairs at the table.
I stare at Oliver across from me, who is sitting next to Ariel, unable to look up and meet my eyes. Ivy and Nolan are to my left and Pax is on my right. Victoria is on the other side of Oliver and West is to her right. Ellie is next to Ariel, Mac is across from her and Five is at the head of the table like a boss. Victoria looks at me as I place my napkin in my lap, and gives me a slight nod of her head. Like we are co-conspirators or something.
I don’t know what her plan is, but it’s all wrong. It’s all wrong. Maybe Liam Henry and this Gori guy are both involved somehow. And I’m not sure what to make of that comment about Weston’s parents. So who knows about them. But nothing she’s said—nothing any of the other Misses have said—leads back to Mariel Hawthorne and her shiny silver envelopes.
“Hey,” I say to Pax. “Where’s your mother?”
“My mother was here?” he asks back. “When? I didn’t see her.”
“I didn’t see her,” Oliver growls. “You need your mommy, Paxton?”
“Fuck you, asshole.”
Oliver narrows his eyes at Pax, his lip still bleeding a little from their fight.
“She left,” Ivy says. “She said she’ll be back tomorrow, I think? Or tonight? Nolan? Which did she say? You were there.”
“I don’t know,” Nolan says. “Like I pay attention to Paxton’s mother.”
“Well, this is a lovely reunion,” Ellie says, her chirpy voice and easy smile trying to diffuse the situation. “I’m so happy to meet you, Cindy. And Ariel is already one of my most favorite people ever,” she says, nodding to my sister. “The three of us really need to stay close after this, since we’re all in Colorado, you know.”
I manage a smile in return, but I can barely pay attention to the conversation while we wait for the first course to be served. I mostly zone out, wondering how I can get back into that kitchen to recover the envelope.
It has to be related. It has to be.
“Hey,” Oliver says, kicking my feet under the table. “It’s really good to see you again, Cin.”
“Yeah.” I smile at my big brother. “Yeah, it’s good to see you too. I should’ve come home more often.”
Oliver shrugs, then looks over at Ariel, then Pax, before coming back to me. “Do your thing, sis. We know you love us. But you really should come home for the holidays this year. And I guess…” He looks at Pax again. “I guess you can bring this asshole too, if you want.”
“Invitation accepted,” Pax mumbles. “But if you swing at me again I won’t go easy on you next time.”
“Shit,” Oliver says, and not in a joking way. “You wish you could take me. And my dad is still gonna kick your fucking ass.”
“OK,” Five says. “I think this would be a good time to bring it all out in the open. Say what we’ve got to say. Implicate who we think is involved. And try to come up with answers.”
It’s weird being around Five like this. I’ve known him my whole life. He’s like a brother, but a much older one. He was already fifteen when I was born, so we never hung out socially at all. All my sisters but Ariel were so much older, I barely know them. Only Oliver and Ariel were close enough in age to be a major part of my childhood.
“Who are the players?” Five asks. “We’ll start with West and go around the table.”
“Liam, of course,” West says.
“And Lucio Senior,” Victoria adds.
“Yeah,” Pax says next to me. “Liam is definitely involved. I don’t know about Gori though. He’s so…” Pax stops like he’s searching for a word. “Lower class, you know? I mean, he’s the only outright criminal on the list, right?”
“We get it, Tori,” Nolan says. “He’s a bad guy. But is he our problem?”
“My mother pledged me to his son, Nolan. He raped me repeatedly as a kid until my father got me out and gave me a new life. And the night before The Night, he suddenly reappears? No. This is not a coincidence.”
“Well,” Mac says, “maybe if West actually came clean about his past, we’d be getting somewhere.”
“I did come clean, asshole,” West says.
“You’re hiding things,” Five says. “We all know it. But hey, if you want to get all of us killed because you can’t come to terms with your secrets, then you go ahead and do that.”
“I agree with Five,” Victoria says. “Weston’s parents are definitely involved.”
“They are not—”
“They are,” Tori insists. “You don’t buy children, Weston!”
“It wasn’t like that.”
“Then what was it like?” Oliver asks. “Now is a very good time to tell us the rest of the story.”
“No one knows your story,” West retorts. And then he nods towards us. “No one knows Paxton’s story either. Why don’t we start with you two? Because we already know how Mac and Nolan fit it.”
I wait for Pax to tell them about his silver envelope, but he doesn’t. He and Oliver look across the table at each other stoically. Poker faces, both of them.
“What about that bitch Claudette?” Ivy pipes in, breaking the silence.
“Yeah,” Nolan says. “It bothers me that she’s still at large.”
“And she got Boring Richard involved. I bet it was her.” Ivy looks around with a convincing look on her face.
“Well.” Ellie sighs. “I had all that fun with my co-worker, Ellen, don’t forget.”
“And Allen,” Mac adds. “It just makes no sense. Who is running this operation? And why? Why were we falsely accused of raping that girl? Why us?”
We all look at each other, unable to answer, when the chef and her servers appear with plates of crab salad canapés. We are all suddenly quiet as they serve us, and then they disappear into the kitchen.
“I still think it’s Weston’s problem,” Oliver says, looking down at his place setting, scowling at the tiny finger-food sandwich, and then shoves it in his mouth in one bite and chews as he talks. “He’s still keeping secrets.”
“You wanna know my secrets?” West says. “You think I’m the problem? Well, here you go. I might’ve killed Stewart Manchester.”
“We already knew that part—” Oliver interrupts.
“But they don’t,” Weston counters.
“Who the hell is Stewart Manchester?” Ellie asks. I’m glad, because I feel like I’ve been dropped into an episode of The Twilight Zone.
“A guy who figured out who I was back in prep school. He knew the Conrads weren’t my real parents and he blackmailed me for something I found a long time ago. But when we met in our separate yachts out in international waters to hash it all out, he fell over the side and never came back up. I assumed he was dead. I left and never saw him again. That was just before we were accused too. So it’s like, my life was all fucked up, then it wasn’t because my problem died, and then it was again, because of the rape charge.”
“And Victoria,” Pax adds. “She definitely contributed something to that night too.”
“This is what I’ve been telling you assholes all along!” Tori says. “We are all connected! We need to take out Liam and Lucio Gori Senior. They’re the ones behind all this.” She glances at West, sitting next to her. “And your parents.”
“Goddamn it, Tori—”
“West,” Pax says. “You need to come clean about whatever it is you left out the last time we spoke.”
“It’s not even relevant,” West says. “I blackmailed Liam a few years later, OK?”
“Blackmailed him, how?” Mac asks.
“He was pressuring my father about money, OK? The money I never gave up to him, right? So I took him aside one night at a party, back when my business was still struggling, and told him I could use some help. He laughed, of course. But I had an ace in the hole. One more gold coin from my little childhood treasure hunting days. And I told him I planted more treasure on property he owns somewhere and he’d never find it. And if he didn’t leave my parents alone—and help me by giving me all his headhunting contracts—I’d call the FBI and tell them where all that treasure was. He’d be arrested for violating the Archeological Resources Protection Act of 1979. Which states pretty much everything you find treasure hunting belongs to the government. So…” West looks at all of us around the table. “Yeah. I blackmailed him. And he made good on that promise by giving me all those contracts until—”
“Until I showed up as your competition,” Victoria says. “And then you knew something was wrong.”
“Exactly,” West says, reaching under the table to take Victoria’s hand. “I knew he was on to me, or had me in some way.”
“Or was just trying to kill you off,” Pax finishes.
“Right.” West sighs. “I was in denial at first. It was some misunderstanding, or maybe he was just obsessed with Tori’s looks and was trying to piss me off? Or whatever. I didn’t want to believe all that shit from the past was finally catching up with me. So you see, I don’t really think he’s our guy, Tori. I fucked with him, he fucked with me back. It’s that simple.”
“But he came to our house too,” Pax says. And now he’s the one reaching for my hand under the table. He squeezes it and I squeeze back. He said “our house,” which, given the circumstances, shouldn’t make me all fluttery inside, but it does. “So why did he involve me?”
“And Cindy,” Oliver adds.
“Cindy might not be involved. There’s no evidence that she’s involved,” Five says.
Except that silver envelope that came addressed to me at the dating site office today. I look over at Ariel and find her already staring at me. She cocks her head, like she might be putting all these pieces together, but she says nothing as I quickly look away.
If Pax happens to mention his “evidence” from when they were all accused of rape, she’ll figure it out.
But it’s not Pax who directs the conversation to the exact place I don’t want it to go. It’s Ivy. “What about that silver envelope?”
“What silver envelope?” Oliver asks.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
“The one at the house on Martha’s Vineyard? You know?” She looks at Nolan. “Remember? Pax picked it up when he got all the other evidence of our…” She blushes. “Our fantasy night out of the way before the cops saw it. What was in that envelope?”
I chance a glance at Ariel and she’s got her mouth open, ready to say something.
But Ellie beats her to it. “Silver envelopes?” Every head turns to look at her. She looks across the table at Mac. “Didn’t you use silver envelopes for our scavenger hunt on our first date?”
“Yeah,” Mac says. “Pax already asked me about it, but you know what? I don’t really know why I used silver envelopes. Maybe because it reminded me of The Night?”
“Well,” Nolan says, “I guess the next question is… why the hell is Paxton asking about silver envelopes? He asked me too. When Ivy was invited to apply for the job here at the resort, she said it came in a silver envelope.”
“Yes,” Ivy says. “It did!”
I look at my sister again and now she’s scowling. I shake my head.
She shakes hers back.
Later, I mouth silently. Mariel gave me specific instructions when we had our discussion. And it did not involve telling everyone about what she knows.
“Well,” Pax says. And I just know he’s going to tell them about our day at the races with his mother. But he doesn’t. He might, in fact, sort of tell a lie. “It’s just odd, don’t you think?”
He squeezes my hand, like he’s trying to keep this a secret as well.<
br />
I squeeze back, relieved to get to the end of the silver envelope discussion.
“Cindy,” Ariel says, standing up so fast her chair scrapes on the floor. She places her napkin next to her untouched canapé and says, “I have to go to the little girl’s room. Can you come with me?”
“Um, the food is coming soon,” I say weakly.
“Fuck the food, Cinderella. Get your ass up and join me.”
Oliver laughs. “Fucking sisters. They are incapable of peeing alone.”
“Mac,” Five says as Ariel grabs hold of my arm and practically drags me across the dining room. “You never did explain why you were using silver envelopes for that scavenger hunt.”
“Well,” Mac says… But then I can’t hear anything else because Ariel has me out in the hallway.
“What the fuck, Cindy!” she whisper-shouts. “I knew you had a funny look on your face when I was holding up that silver envelope.”
“Ariel, look—”
“No, you look! You have a crucial piece of evidence and you’re withholding it.”
“It was junk mail,” I say.
“No, it wasn’t.”
“I opened it when you were arguing with Victoria, OK? It was a credit card offer in a pretty envelope, that’s all. I threw it away.”
“Then we’re gonna go get it out of the trash. Because I don’t believe a word you’re saying.”
“Fine with me.”
I let Ariel drag me through the hallways back to the catering kitchen, which is now bustling with cooks and servers who are getting our dinner ready.
“Can I help you?” Elizabeth, the chef, asks, when she spots us at the doorway.
“Yes, Elizabeth. Sorry to interrupt you guys in here. But my sister left something in the trash that we need to recover. Do you mind if we look?”
“Oh, sorry. We emptied the trash.”
“Where did you take it?” Ariel asks, her voice stiff and cold. “We really need it back.”