Her eyes popped, her lips parted, but she said nothing.
“Whatever Beryl plans to use those coins for, let’s let him. Let’s give him everything he’s worked decades for. Let him use all those coins on every company, devouring the world like a gluttonous beast, and then when he’s finished…we’ll take Crowne Industries, and we’ll give it all back to you.”
Her brow furrowed. “How?”
“The postnup.”
The one that said Crowne Industries would go to Lottie if Grayson was unfaithful.
She furrowed her brow. “We tried that already—”
“We didn’t work together last time,” I interrupted. “This time we won’t let them ignore us. We’ll tell the world our dirtiest, darkest secret. This time, we’ll give everything to you so Beryl can’t touch it.”
Lottie’s eyes popped. “That’s a lot of power.”
I gripped her hands. “That’s the favor I want, Lottie. Maybe there’s a reason for all of this hell. Beryl killed your father, he killed West, but he discounted you. They kept you captive. They kept me captive. They hung that document over our heads. So let’s do it. Let’s do what we’ve been so afraid of. What they’ve been killing over. What West gave his life for. Let’s do what we’ve been trying to avoid. Let’s blow up the fucking world.”
“Metal,” one of the Horsemen said from the shadows.
“It’s the Swan Swell,” Gemma said. “So, if you’re planning on sneaking in, looking like that…” She pointed at the loaned shirts the Horsemen had given us, wrinkled and oversized.
I studied Gemma. Her short blonde bob was messy and slept in. Her eyeliner smudged around her bright blue eyes, and she wore a black oversized shirt that clearly didn’t belong to her—but somehow she made it look chic.
She could have left us behind easily, but she’d stayed for a month. I think to protect us, to be here for us, but she’d probably say it was because she had nothing better to do.
“I guess we’ll need a fairy godmother then,” I said.
Her smile dropped, and she scrunched her nose. “Because I haven’t done enough for you?”
“We’ll need to call in every single favor,” I said. “If we want to take down Godzilla, we need Mothra. Starting with…”
We turned to the four men keeping us captive.
I mean safe.
“You have nothing I want…” Grim said. My gut dropped, but then he stood off the wall. “Your prince, however.”
“I…” My throat caught, imagining what Grayson was going through. “I can’t make a promise for him.”
Gemma stepped up. “There is one way you can guarantee it.”
Gemma looked at Grim, and he laughed caustically. “Rich Girl, you are really pushing it.”
Sixty-Seven
GRAY
Story’s ghost wrapped around me. Her raspy whisper melded with the salt air flowing like moth-eaten lace into the room.
Nudge.
My head throbbed. My mouth thick with cotton and the taste of whiskey and lemon suckers.
Nudge.
“Is he dead?”
“Kick him again.”
I opened one eye. The room was different in the day, the shadows gone and the ghost with them. Three teenagers stood in a triangle above me, blocking the ceiling with their heads.
I’m still seeing ghosts.
“You look like shit,” Jo said.
Not ghosts, St. Germaines.
“Fuck you,” I grumbled, throwing my arm over my eyes. It was too bright in here, the salt air too bitter.
“No thanks,” Jo said.
The whiskey bottle in my hand felt too light.
Empty.
Goddammit.
I exhaled, sitting up against the wall.
Jo held a cigarette between her fingers, and reminded me a little of my sister Gemma—but without the mask mother forced her to wear.
Dark. Lonely.
It seemed Charles received all the aristocratic features of our father. And fuck, it was hard to tell what was going on underneath all of Keller’s hair.
“Come to fetch me for my grandfather?”
They all shared a look. “Not quite,” Jo said. “So we’re actually on the same side.”
I laughed.
And then I kept fucking laughing, until my throat hurt.
“He’s lost his fucking mind,” Charles said.
“It’s just people who say that to me tend to be fuckheads.”
“Told you he wouldn’t believe us,” Jo said. “Show him the thing.”
Silently, Keller reached into his back pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper, handing it to me.
When the time comes, Grayson Crowne will help you. He’s not the boy you think he is, not the boy his grandfather is trying to make him be.
Sincerely,
Woodson Hale
I slowly sat up, eyeing them. “What the fuck is this?”
“You tell us,” Jo snapped. “For our entire lives, we lived with a shitty stepbrother who never spoke to us, then right before the Holidays, our mother gives us this note, tells us not to come, and then she fucking dies. We loved Woodsy. So…reluctantly…we are inclined to listen to him.”
I shifted. “He was like a father to me.”
“Us too.”
Silence spread. We stared at one another, and I could almost see the walls we’d built crumble.
They’re your competition now, Grayson. Thank your father for that.
I saw beyond that moment that had shaped the course of our lives. I never even knew they had a relationship with Woodsy. I knew nothing about them, really.
How much longer was I going to let my grandfather’s insidious thorns dictate my decisions?
“Then why the fuck were you with my grandfather?” I asked.
“We know he killed our mother. We’ve known he killed our father for years. So for years we just…” Jo trailed off, exhaled. “We waited.”
“And what are you waiting for?”
“We want justice,” Jo said. “We want his ass in jail.”
I laughed. “Beryl Crowne in jail? It would be easier to catch a falling star.”
“So what’s your plan then?” Jo asked. “Audition for the world’s mopiest Heathcliff? Cuz sorry, bruh, but my brother’s already got you beat.” She threw a thumb behind her, to her brother with the shoulder-length hair hiding everything but his eye, leaning against the window—Keller.
Keller kicked Jo behind the knee and she stumbled forward.
I worked my jaw. “My plan was to kill him.”
Keller raised his hands. “Thank you. I’ve been saying this for months.”
Charles and Jo shared a look, then Jo continued. “Mother deserves justice. Our father deserves justice. Your baby mama—”
“My wife.”
“Your wife—doesn’t she deserve justice? Your baby? Killing him is too kind. I want him strung up. I want everyone to know what he did. I want the world to see the ugly. Right now if you search his name, only his charity works come up. People think he’s good. If you kill him now, he’ll die a martyr.”
I slowly sat up, resting my throbbing head against the cool window.
She was right.
Fuck.
“My mother lived in the shadows her entire life…” Jo looked away, a shadow falling across her face. “Beryl doesn’t get to die in them.”
“He has guards,” I said. “The staff. Everyone is on his side.”
“They’re bought and paid for, but they don’t follow him. We’ve spent months—years—playing his bitch, learning who is on his side and who isn’t. I’m sure you know what that’s like, and you already have a good idea who we’re talking about.”
I did.
I knew everyone who listened to my grandfather. So I knew that it wasn’t as easy as just knowing who they were.
“So what’s your plan?”
They all shared a look.
“I mean…” Jo trailed off,
rubbing her neck.
“You don’t have one.” I laughed. “Because you know even if we managed to separate my grandfather from his sycophants, he still owns everyone from the cops to the prosecutor to the fucking judge and district attorney. And do you have any proof of all the terrible things he’s done?”
Their mouths parted, but nothing came out.
I dragged my hands through my hair. “Fucking great.”
Keller stepped off the window. “We could get rid of his guards. We could do that. They’re so afraid of him if we told them they’d gotten on Beryl’s bad side, they’d run without looking back. And you know who controls the staff.”
My mother.
It could work. I remembered her shaking hands as she’d sat on my bed. I think, for once, she wouldn’t choose my grandfather.
But it only gave us a small window.
“We still don’t have proof, and we still don’t have a way to keep him in jail…”
But a plan was forming in my mind.
You could raze a country. Become a king.
“If we can get proof, I know how we can keep him in jail, how we can sever those political ties.” They leaned forward, waiting. “We have to steal back the coins.”
Charles threw up his hands. “And I thought Jo was insane.”
“You’re the insane one,” Jo muttered.
“Do you really think you can steal coins twice from Beryl?” Keller asked. “We know the story. We know how our father stole them and tried to use them to free us. Beryl won’t let it happen again.”
Once again, I felt like my father. Maybe decades ago my father stole those coins for a selfish reason. Or maybe he was like me, staring at the mouth of a gluttonous monster about to destroy the world.
“We have no choice,” I said. “It’s the only way. If we don’t, we have no leverage. And if we don’t, he’s too fucking powerful. If he goes through with his plan he’ll be…unstoppable. He could destroy our entire family.”
“And if we somehow manage to pull this off?”
“We use it to topple a throne, to destroy a king. We use the coin to demand a favor of the man my grandfather has been using to threaten me from the beginning: District Attorney Millard.”
“He could challenge.”
“I don’t think he will. It’s mutually beneficial. I’m sure grandfather has dirt on Millard, and someone like that will jump at the chance to get rid of his biggest threat. We’re promising him a coin, he can use it to become the next governor.”
They were all power-hungry.
Greedy.
“The other three…I think those were always meant for you, anyway.”
Their brows furrowed, and Jo shifted on her feet.
Charles rubbed his neck. “How will we know you’ve done it—”
“I’m not doing it.” I looked at them, my siblings. “You are. You’re the ones who have been playing the long game. If he’s like me, he’s keeping them in his pocket. I don’t know if we can plan it, we just need to look for an opening during the Swan Swell. A moment when he isn’t guarded.”
They all shared a look.
“I’ll handle the DA, you handle the coins.” I exhaled. “If everything goes according to plan, his seat will be empty.”
Someone would have to stay to take it, to watch over my sister, my mother—everyone.
I’ll come back. I’ll always come back.
Story’s raspy voice drifted like the salt breeze. I put my head in my hands. Her voice taunted me, I couldn’t differentiate between now and then.
Liar.
She was a fucking liar.
“Grayson?”
I lifted my head, finding Jo and the other two staring at me.
I cleared my throat. “I’ll take my grandfather’s place, but I’ll need people on the board. Trusted individuals.” I eyed them.
They scoffed. “Us?” Giving shares to a bastard had never been done, not by my father, certainly not by my grandfather.
It was essentially recognizing them as a Crowne.
Wouldn’t that be poetic?
“You,” I said.
They shifted on their feet, brows creasing with vulnerability.
But it was gone in a second.
“Well.” Jo straightened her shoulders. “There’s a lot of what-ifs riding on this master plan. If this fails—”
“If this fails then none of the other unknowns matter, because if this fails, he thinks we’re owed a dynasty, and he’s determined to get one. Even if it means destroying the family he’s so determined to write in stone. But we have what they don’t see coming…”
We have something they don’t have. Something they don’t see coming. Something they can’t steal.
I sat back, Story’s ghost taking shape in the room again. Her determination the night she’d told me she was going to stay with West. Her stony resolve, like her stony eyes.
“What?”
I looked back at my siblings. “Trust.”
Sixty-Eight
STORY
We discussed the plan. The outrageous, insane, possibly suicidal plan. The one that hinged on blowing up our world.
On me telling the truth to the world.
I looked at the phone Gemma had loaned me. The first thing I’d done when Gemma gave it to me was text Grayson a message.
I still hadn’t heard back.
Now I looked at my account, at the hundreds of thousands of followers I’d accumulated, who had been listening to my veiled truths.
As the Horsemen did their thing behind closed doors, Gemma played fairy godmother. She’d bought the dresses without going to Crowne Hall, and I vaguely wondered if she’d gone back at all during this time.
“What are they doing?” Lottie asked, staring at the closed door the Horsemen disappeared behind.
“You don’t want to know.” Gemma fiddled with lace at my back. “Okay. Done.”
Lottie and I stared at each other, two mirror images that refused to obey one another. Matching diamond feathered masks and dresses.
“Do you think it’s going to be enough—my confession?” I bit my lip. “I deleted all the videos West had saved.”
Lottie pushed a curl behind her ear. “We have one video. The video of you and Grayson on my wedding night; my mother saved it…” She looked dark. “She saved it so I would have leverage on him in case my secret got out. It’s on her phone.”
Lottie’s baby started to cry, and she went to tend to him.
“What will we do with our babies?” Lottie asked, lifting him to her arms. “We can’t leave them here.”
Our eyes traveled to Gemma, our unlikely guardian angel.
“Oh no—oh, hell no.”
“I can’t exactly blend in with a baby on my tit.”
“Fine,” she gritted. “But we’re going to watch a shit ton of horror movies in the hopes that it messes them up internally, and then you have to deal with that, like…ten years later as punishment.”
“Oh, well…” Lottie sighed. “If I’m anything like my mother, I’ll just pretend all the bad things about my child don’t exist.”
Gemma went silent at that, brow furrowing. I wondered what it was about what Lottie had said to make her look so…thoughtful.
As if she knew I was thinking about her, she turned to me.
“A year ago, when my sister left with her dog, she came to me and we spent a night together drinking. I asked her if it was really worth losing everything for him. You know, my grandfather has been controlling our love lives since before I was born. Our aunt and uncle lost everything for love, and then her hopeless romantic ass went and left and lost it all too. I’ve been engaged since I was a teenager, but to me, it wasn’t so terrible. Horace and I have an agreement. He fucks who he wants and so do I, and we keep our pretty things.
“Now you’re here and Grayson was on the verge of doing the same thing…” She eyed me and I prepared for the iconic Gemma Crowne tongue-lashing. “But then for a moment, the littl
e boy who used to play hide-and-seek with us when we were kids was back.”
I stared at her.
“Maybe we all died years ago and that house holds all our ghosts captive.”
“Gemma…” I trailed off, not sure what to say, how to offer comfort.
“What will happen to my grandfather after?” she asked.
Again, I was at a loss for words. I wasn’t entirely sure of Gemma’s relationship with her grandfather, so how did I tell her I wanted him dead?
Bleeding.
Burning in hell.
“I want him to rot in jail,” she said, voice hard. “Maybe that’s asking too much.”
I worked my mouth. “I know the servants keep evidence… But even still. It’s Beryl Crowne. He owns every small piece of law enforcement.”
I had one coin left. Maybe I would use it to try to lock up Beryl Crowne for good.
Her eyes blazed. “You have to try. We have to try—”
The door beyond us opened, and we both turned as the four Horsemen came out.
A tattoo.
The Crowne family crest was tattooed bright on Grim’s inner wrist. The Horsemen and the Crownes were now irrevocably tied together.
“Does this make us family now, Rich Girl? Should I call you sis?”’
She worked her jaw.
I didn’t even have a second to contemplate what that meant, or what else Gemma had given up.
Gemma stood off the wall. “Go save my brother.”
Everyone looked to me.
“You don’t have to do this, Story,” Lottie said softly.
“I’m tired of being a pawn,” I said. “I can’t keep being the girl behind the girl. I’ve spent so much time hiding. Hiding my body. My hopes. My dreams. My love.” I paused. “I don’t want to hide anymore.”
Everyone knew my name, and I was hiding more than ever. Hiding under fiction and fantasy.
I took a deep breath and turned the phone’s camera to face me. I’d always been stuck on what happened when the prince chose someone like me. But what happened if I decided I was worth choosing?
Before we faced the final dragon, I had my own to slay.
I would tell the truth.
Destroyed Destiny (Crowne Point Book 4) Page 34