Pay the Price: A Dark New Adult Romance

43. Daisy

The activity that increased in the office leading up to the ground-breaking ceremony didn’t slow down after it. An assortment of new tasks and crises arose daily. There were environmental holds that kept Kyle on the phone for hours, trying to sort them out while construction workers stood by, burning money at the site. More than once, Natalie had to run out of the office and drive up to the ridge to meet with Piers and the architects, trying to work out some new problem or obstacle while construction went on around them.

Diana was kept busy with an assortment of phone calls and paperwork required for the eventual hiring of hundreds of staff for the resort, plus the near-constant demands of Piers, who called her from all over the world when he was traveling (and apparently, at all times of the day and night).

It was like being on a runaway train that just moved faster and faster, and I was in the middle of it all — two days a week and sometimes three, if Diana asked me to come in an extra day — picking up whatever slack I could as the one and only intern in an operation that could have used five of them.

Sometimes Gray traveled with his father, providing temporary relief from the awkwardness that had never really dissipated between us. I didn’t trust him, and I still remembered the way he’d looked at Ruth at the ground-breaking ceremony — the way he’d looked at me, like my little sister was a gauntlet I’d thrown between us.

We were all working double-time on July 3rd, hoping to clear our desks of the most important work so we could enjoy the long Fourth of July weekend.

After the fight that had broken out between the Beasts during Summer Shit, I was nervous to go back to the Blades’ compound for the event, but I’d been informed by Otis that the compound had the best food and the best view of the fireworks, so why would we go anywhere else?

It was just after five p.m. by the time I finished the last stack of resumes Diana had instructed me to review for the resort’s hospitality staff. I liked that their requirements seemed lenient — no college degree required for management as long as the candidates had the kind of experience that would allow them to do the job, plus plenty of entry-level jobs that would provide opportunities for advancement.

I’d suggested we list the jobs not just on the main job-candidate site but also on the online job board for the local community college, and we’d gotten tons of good applicants. There had even been a few names I’d recognized — former classmates at Blackwell High or their siblings.

I logged out of my computer and stretched in my desk chair with a sigh. I had four days off, and I was looking forward to getting a lot of work done on the house, not to mention hanging out with the Beasts. I’d thought a lot about my conversation with Willa (can you live with it?) since the cookout at the Kings’ over the weekend, but I was no closer to an answer.

What I did know was that I wanted to be with the Beasts now. The house at the top of the falls was a world of our own making. There, no one questioned how I could fuck (love? no, I wouldn’t think about that) the three men who’d murdered my bother and there was no one to look horrified by the fact that I didn’t want it to end because there was no one to tell.

In town I was sure people were talking. The Beasts had stopped following me when I was at work and the gym (we’d agreed I’d turn the tracking app on my phone back on when I’d returned to the house), but I’d been to the home store with Wolf and Otis, had been grocery shopping with all three of the Beasts at one time or another.

Word had to be out, but right now, I didn’t care. Once we got enough proof about the trafficking ring to take it to the police — enough proof that even my dad couldn’t buy his way out of it — I’d have to figure out the future.

But not today.

I picked my empty coffee cup off my desk and carried it to the kitchen.

“You heading out?” Natalie asked. Hold music played from the phone, on speakerphone, on her desk.

“Just about,” I said. “You?”

She rolled her eyes. “If I ever get an answer about this permit.”

“Ugh, good luck. I hope you actually get to enjoy your time off.”

She opened her mouth to answer when a voice sounded from the phone on her desk. “Natalie?”

“Yep, I’m here.”

“I’ve got that information for you,” the person said on the other end of the phone.

I gave Natalie a wave and continued to the kitchen. I was washing out my coffee cup and already thinking about my workout at the gym when I sensed a presence in the room.

I stopped cold, water still running from the sink, my cup still in my hand as Gray leaned against the counter just a couple of feet away. I’d avoided being in a room alone with him since the incident at the Mill, but now here he was, standing two feet away, hate burning in his eyes.

I squared my shoulders and hurried to rinse the soap off my cup. “Hey.”

I couldn’t manage friendly, but I’d tried to be civil during the rare occasions when we’d been forced to interact. I liked my job at Cantwell. I was learning a lot, the money came in handy, and now that the resort was under construction, the possibility of sitting in on meetings with the design team dangled like a juicy carrot in front of my nose.

“Crazy we’re officially under construction, right?” he asked.

His tone was friendly enough, so I played along. “Definitely. Do you think we’ll meet the date?”

Out of earshot of Piers, Natalie had grumbled about the proposed opening date, calling it aggressive when she was in a good mood and insane when she wasn’t.

“We’ll meet it,” Gray said. “We have a triple crew working almost around the clock.”

Of course they did. They had tons of money tied up in the property. I was sure they’d want to see it turn a profit sooner rather than later.

“It’s exciting to see it actually happening,” I said, turning off the water.

This was fine. Grayson Cantwell was a total douchebag, a sexual assaulter, but being at work would be a lot more pleasant if we could be civil, if my heart didn’t race (in a bad way) in his presence and I didn’t have to fight the rising tide of panic in my body every time he was in the room.

“It is,” he said. “Your sister seemed excited too.”

“My… sister?”

He nodded. “At the ground-breaking party. We talked for a long time. She’s really smart for her age.”

I caught a hint of something in the last part of his comment: for her age.

Excitement? Triumph? Like he knew she was just a kid, knew it would push my buttons to talk about her like she wasn’t.

I turned to face him, the dripping cup still in my hand. “Yeah well, she’s only fifteen. Sounds like you know that.”

He nodded. “Totally. But we like nurturing… young talent at Cantwell.”

“Young talent?”

“Yeah, we have all kinds of internships and stuff.” His words were light, his tone casual, but his eyes were cold. “I mean, look at you!”

“I’m twenty,” I said.

“Fifteen, twenty.” He shrugged. “Whatever.”

“No,” I said, matching the coldness in his voice. “It’s not whatever. Ruth is a kid.”

He held up his hands in a gesture of surrender. “I get you. It’s good that you’re protective of your little sister. I’ll be a perfect gentleman when I give her the tour.” He held up two fingers. “Scout’s honor.”

“What tour?”

“The tour of the construction site. She seems really interested in how the place is going to be laid out, especially how the private villas are being built in the woods around the main hotel and spa.” He shrugged. “I told her I’d give her a tour. Seems only right to… nurture her natural curiosity.”

Two months ago I might have slinked off in fear, lost sleep over what he was saying.

What he was threatening.

And okay, I was still going to lose sleep. But I wasn’t the same person I’d been two months ago. Maybe it was being kidnapped or finding out my dad was a piece-of-shit human trafficker. Maybe it was going to the gym and finally feeling comfortable in my body.

Whatever it was, I wasn’t going to stand here and listen to Gray Cantwell make suggestive comments about my fifteen-year-old sister without calling him out.

“Listen, you fucked with me and got away with it. I should have said yes when your dad asked if I wanted you reassigned. That’s on me. But if you come within ten feet of my sister, you’ll live to regret it.”

He smiled, but there was no warmth in it, just a dark glint of evil that made my blood run cold. “Do you think I’m scared of you?”

I held his gaze. “Maybe not, but you should be.”

There was a long pause where the silence in the kitchen felt thick as molasses.

Then Gray laughed. “You think you can hurt me? Why would I be scared of a sheltered princess like you, all alone and only here because Daddy got her the job?”

Once upon a time, the words would have stung because they’d been true.

But I wasn’t as sheltered as Gray thought.

Not anymore. I’d lost too much, and so had Ruth.

“I’m not the only one who’s here because Daddy got me the job,” I said, putting the cup in the drying rack and walking past him. “And I’m not alone.”