Pay the Price: A Dark New Adult Romance

53. Wolf

Iknew from Jace’s swagger that they’d fucked. I didn’t know whether to be annoyed or relieved, but mostly I was just glad they were both alive.

“Did you get a license plate?” I asked. “Could you see the driver?”

It was barely dawn, weak light leaking into the living room from the big windows at the front of the house. We’d moved into the room after making coffee, Daisy and Jace clearly exhausted now that their adrenaline was crashing.

“The windows were tinted,” Daisy said. “I only saw the shape of someone. A man, for sure, but that was all I could see.”

She sat between Otis and me on the couch while Jace took the chair he claimed when he wanted to be apart. If I knew Jace, he was already second-guessing the fact that he’d finally fucked Daisy, not because he regretted it but because he knew — like Otis and I had known after we’d fucked Daisy — that it changed everything.

“I was too busy trying not to end up at the bottom of the cliff to look for the license plate number,” Jace said.

“It has to be Calvin,” I said.

“Or someone sent by Calvin,” Otis said.

Jace leaned forward, elbows on knees. “I told you we should have killed him.”

“When was this?” Daisy asked.

“A few weeks back, when you first came home,” I said.

“We wouldn’t have gotten the info about the Velvet Rope if we’d killed him then,” Otis said. “Or any of the other shit Aloha found.”

“Wait… what did Aloha find?” Daisy asked.

“Don’t know yet,” Jace said. “We haven’t had time to go through it all, see if it matches up with anything.”

It was hard to look at her without being hit by a wash of fear. She could have died, could have ended up thrown from the bike and left to die on the road or broken at the bottom of the cliff.

I forced my voice steady, reminded myself that she hadn’t died, that she was right here, right now, and that was all that mattered. “Aloha told us about the Velvet Rope because it stood out. But there was other stuff, cryptic shit between Calvin and someone named Mr. X with a cloaked IP. They were careful. It’s going to take some time to sort through the data.”

“But we got it,” Otis said. “We have the data. We don’t need Calvin alive anymore.”

“Agreed,” Jace said, cracking his knuckles. “I say we pick him up and see if we can beat something else out of him. Either way, he’s dead.”

“Can’t we just take the stuff Aloha gave us and give it to the police?” Daisy asked. “Don’t they have… I don’t know, digital forensics people who can sort through it and look for proof that he and my dad are involved in the trafficking ring?”

“None of what we have is admissible in court,” I said. “It was a hack.”

“What about my dad?” Daisy asked.

I was almost relieved. No one else wanted to address the elephant in the room: Daisy’s dad, who was pulling Calvin’s strings.

“What do you want to do about him?” Otis asked her.

She looked at her hands. “I know I should want him dead. He’s not a good person…”

I took her hand, wrapped it up in mine the way I wished I could wrap her up, protect her from everything. “But…?”

She shrugged. “He’s my dad. And even more important, he’s Ruth’s dad too. I can’t… I can’t take him from her, not like that.”

“If we get the proof we need, he’ll go to prison,” Otis pointed out.

Daisy looked at him. “That’s different. That’s the legal system punishing him for what he’s done. That’s not me sanctioning his murder. Ruth would never forgive me.”

“She doesn’t need to know,” Otis, ever the pragmatist, said.

“I’d know,” Daisy said. And then, more softly, “I’d know.”

“Taking out Calvin and leaving your dad alive is like cutting off the tail of a lizard,” Jace said through his teeth. “The lizard will just grow a new tail, and in the meantime, it’s running around, eating everything in sight.”

Daisy pressed her lips together and nodded. “I know.”

She was asking us not to kill her dad. Asking us not to kill him even though he’d obviously sanctioned Blake’s plan to traffic Daisy. And the bastard hadn’t even done it for the money. He wasn’t doing any of this for the money.

He was just a fucking psychopath like his son.

“Fuck.” Jace stood and paced the floor, and I knew he was battling the same thing I was feeling but doing a better job of hiding it.

I wanted Hammond gone. Gone gone. Wiped-off-the-face-of-the-earth gone. The world would be better without him in it.

But Daisy couldn’t live with it. I already knew that, knew it would eat her alive, that she’d never have a moment’s peace again, and that was if Ruth didn’t find out Daisy had sanctioned a death squad — us — to kill him. If Ruth did find out, Daisy would lose Ruth too, just like she’d lost every other member of her family.

I waited for Jace to come around to it, hoping we wouldn’t have to come to blows over the issue.

“Fine,” Jace said, punching the air like a fucking maniac. “Fine. Hammond lives. For now.” He looked at Daisy. “But we get to give him a warning after we off Calvin.”

“What kind of warning?” Daisy asked.

They were negotiating now, and I sat back on the couch, my arm behind Daisy, and watched in fascination. Because Jace? Jace didn’t negotiate.

With anyone.

But he was negotiating with Daisy, and that meant Daisy had power over him, even if she didn’t know it.

“Just a not-so-friendly verbal warning,” Jace said. “If he keeps sending people after you — after us — he’ll end up like Calvin, who’ll be buried in a hundred pieces around Blackwell Falls by then.”

Daisy’s face was pale. It was hitting her that this was real, we were going to murder Calvin Conlan.

But she nodded. “Fine.”

Jace stared at her. “Fine.”

“Is that all?” Otis said. “Because I’m fucking exhausted.”

“There’s one more thing,” Daisy said. “At the compound tonight, some guy named Doc mentioned that my mom used to hang around there.”

It might have been the only time in my life I’d seen Jace surprised.

“At the compound?” he asked.

She nodded. “He said that my mom and Mac were always together and that she was always at the compound. Do you know anything about that?”

Jace shook his head. “When was this?”

“I’m not sure, but he mentioned that it was before I was born, so maybe twenty-five years-ish ago?”

My mind spun, trying to make sense of the fact that Eleanor Hammond, first daughter of Blackwell Falls, had been tight with Mac, now president of the Blackwell Blades.

Jace shook his head. “It’s the first I’ve heard of it.”

Daisy nodded, chewing her lower lip.

“Now are we done?” Otis looked at Daisy. “You’re welcome to join me if you’re not too tired from fucking Jace.”

Shock washed over her face, followed by the creep of a blush to her cheeks. “How do you know I fucked Jace?”

Otis shrugged. “I mean, it’s kind of obvious. But you’re still welcome to join me.”

“I think I want my own bed,” Daisy said.

I stood. “We can do your bed.”

“Same,” Jace said.

Otis shrugged. “That works. You have a King in there, right?”

Daisy looked from one to the other of us. “You’re all going to sleep in my bed?”

“Yes,” we said at the same time.

“I think what we’re saying is, we don’t want you out of our sight anytime soon,” I said. “Not after what happened tonight.”

“I’m not exactly thrilled at the idea of being alone anyway,” she admitted. “You can sleep with me, as long as it’s just sleeping. I’m beat.”

I was mildly disappointed as we trudged upstairs, but I understood.

Besides, maybe she’d change her mind. A man could dream.