22. Daisy
“Blake always had money,” Wolf started. “We understood that. But money was boring to Blake. He’d always had it, so it didn’t have a lot of novelty for him. He had other reasons for wanting in on the stuff we were doing in high school.”
“What kind of stuff?” I asked.
“Illegal stuff.” There was a challenge in Jace’s voice, like he was daring me to judge him.
Wolf shot him a look, then returned his gaze to me. “Drugs, guns. We started by taking some of the small jobs the Blades didn’t want to do.”
“And Blake was in on that with you?” I asked.
“He was all in,” Otis clarified. “And not because of the money.”
“Then why?” I asked, because they were right: Blake didn’t need money. Our dad had been generous with us all, as evidenced by the credit cards Calvin had demanded when he’d dropped my stuff off at the house.
As Hammonds, we’d gotten used to a certain kind of lifestyle — expensive clothes, box seats at sporting events and front-row concert tickets, five-star restaurants — and our dad was more than happy to perpetuate it, probably because it all made him look even richer.
“Jace and Wolf did it for the money,” Otis said. “I did it to see if we could get away with it. Blake did it for fun.”
I nodded because I could see it. Blake liked pushing the envelope, doing increasingly risky things, seeing how far he could go before someone told him he’d gone too far, mostly because no one ever told him he’d gone too far.
“And then what?” I asked.
“Then…” Wolf hesitated, like he was searching for the right words. “Then Blake got… shady.”
“Shady how?” I asked.
“He started keeping things from us,” Jace said. “Doing his own thing, making his own money.”
“And that’s why you killed him?”
“We’re getting there, sunshine,” Wolf said. “Bear with us.”
I hated the way my stomach warmed at his use of the nickname. I crossed my arms over my chest, like that would head off all the warm and fuzzy feelings that had come crashing back now that I was back in the company of the Beasts. “Fine, keep going.”
“Blake started spending more,” Wolf said. “A lot more.”
“But it wasn’t just the spending,” Otis said. “He was keeping secrets.”
“What kind of secrets?” I asked.
“The ‘selling girls’ kind,” Jace said.
Wolf glared at him.
“The selling…” I forced myself to breathe, positive I hadn’t heard him correctly. “What?”
Wolf drew in a breath. “We didn’t know at first, but then Blake started talking about someone else, someone he was working with, someone who had a way to make money using girls.”
“Like… prostitution?” I asked, trying to figure out what the actual fuck they were talking about.
“You’re getting warm,” Jace said. There was still an undercurrent of derision in his voice, but there was something else there too. Something like an apology. Like he wasn’t entirely thrilled to be telling this story.
“Not prostitution,” Otis said. “Trafficking.”
Wolf lowered his head to his hand in disbelief.
“Trafficking? You’re… you’re saying Blake was trafficking girls?” I felt like an idiot even saying the word because there was no way — no way — my brother had been trafficking girls.
“Well, not yet. Not then,” Otis said. Wolf shook his head and Otis blinked. “What? We said we were going to tell her everything.”
“Just… maybe ease into it a little, for fuck’s sake,” Wolf said.
“Maybe don’t,” I said, aware that my voice had grown cold. What kind of bullshit was this? “If you’re going to feed me a bunch of lies, you might as well feed them to me straight.”
“They’re not lies, Daisy.” If Wolf’s use of my actual name hadn’t been enough to scare me, his voice was, because there was real regret in it. The apology I’d heard in Jace’s voice times a million. Wolf didn’t want to be saying what he was saying. “Blake was working with someone. We don’t know who — Blake called him the boss or Mr. X, but…”
I stared at him. “But?”
Wolf sighed. “We always wondered if it was your dad.”
I stood and headed for the hall on autopilot. I wasn’t listening to this shit.
“Daisy, wait!” Otis called after me.
I turned to face them. “Blake is dead. You killed him. And now you’re going to talk this shit about him? About my dad, who lost his son?”
It wasn’t like there was any love lost between my dad and I at the moment, but this was fucked up. I didn’t know what hurt more: the lies the Beasts were telling or the fact that they were the ones telling them.
That everyone had been right about them after all.
Wolf stood and walked toward me. He reached out a hand. “Please…”
“Don’t you dare touch me,” I said.
Hurt flashed in his blue eyes, but he nodded and held up his hands in a gesture of surrender. “I promise you, we’re getting there, and it all ties into your kidnapping. Just… please. Sit down and let us finish, and then if you decide you want us to go, we’ll go.”
I eased back into the chair by the fireplace, watching them like a wary animal, because that was how I felt: trapped, cornered.
By them? By the stories they were telling? By the turn of my stomach that worried they were the first ones to tell me the truth in a long time?
Maybe all of the above.
“Let’s just say I believe you,” I said. “I don’t, but let’s just say I do so we can get this over with. What does it have to do with my kidnapping?”
The room was suddenly — painfully — silent.
“You wanted me to stay so you could tell me the rest.” I took a deep breath, bracing myself. My reality had already been turned upside down. What more could there be? “So tell me.”