Chapter Seventeen #3
Varrick laughs into a wider amused smile at some of our reactions, then grips his knees.
“You all could be wearing a wire, and I’d be screwed.
But trust does need to go both ways. You’re here, even though I could’ve rigged this entire room with surveillance equipment.
Though, given who raised you, I’m assuming you already checked. ”
I glance over at Rocky.
He scrutinizes Varrick. “Why kill them?”
“It was the best way to take their fortune. William was unscrupulous. His children, lazy and entitled.”
“That’s not what we do,” Rocky states plainly.
“Isn’t it though?” Varrick motions around the room. “Please, share with me how you all are so different? You’ve been eating through the Koning dynasty with the help of the thirdborn”—he gestures at Jake—“and you’ve killed to do it.”
No one admits to Claudia’s death out loud.
Trevor shifts uncomfortably.
Varrick notices, and Rocky shoves his little brother back into the seat, pressing a protective hand on his chest.
“Varrick,” Oliver muses, drawing his attention off Trevor. “The name. It’s fake. Old Germanic or Dutch.”
Our dad begins to smile. He likes Oliver. I can already tell how much.
I catch myself imprisoning a breath. Nova and I exchange a subtle look of concern. I knew Oliver longed for a father figure as a child, but I just don’t want him to desire our real one now.
“It’s either derived from Frederick,” Oliver continues, “which means peaceful ruler. Or…”
“Or…” Varrick grins.
“A location.”
“Van Rijk,” Hailey says in a daze. “Which means from the rich or from the powerful.”
Oliver props a hand on the wall. “Power.”
“Clever, you two.” Varrick scans us again. “The main manipulators.” He motions from Rocky to Oliver, then his finger aims at me. “A honeypot, like your mother.”
I take full offense that I’m not being considered as a main manipulator. Even if I shouldn’t want him to see us so fucking clearly.
He shifts direction to Nova. “A lookout.” Then Hailey. “A mini Addison. You puppeteer.” He lingers on Trevor. “You.” He wags a finger in thought. “You’re…”
“Your worst nightmare,” Trevor concludes.
God, I want that to be true.
Varrick laughs. “You’re the youngest. The baby.”
“I’m nineteen, fuck-face.”
My lips curve upward. You tell him, Trevor. Rocky is less enthused at his brother’s responses.
“Nineteen and desperately in need of more training,” Varrick notes.
“Back the fuck off,” Rocky warns him.
He raises his hands, says he meant no offense, then he finishes by nodding to Jake. “The new recruit.”
“Okay, you think you know us,” Rocky says. “We get the idea. What the fuck do you want?”
“To work with you. As you might know, Elizabeth tried to bribe me to leave town. I’d get a cut of the Koning job if I helped you finish it. In return, I’d flee Victoria. We don’t need her. You don’t need to work with the three of them ever again. I can help you take Trent out of the picture.”
Jake chimes in, “You’re not killing my brother.”
“I don’t plan to. We can get him to sign his assets over to you.”
His ploy.
The one with Hailey at the center. I didn’t think it was to help us complete the Koning job. The guys seem more tense than they were. I keep blinking. Probably too much.
“What do you want in exchange?” Hailey asks.
“A partnership. We pull jobs together wherever, whenever. It is my deepest pleasure to take from Elizabeth, Addison, and Everett what they took from me.” He spreads his hands out in a wide semicircle. “All of you.”
Revenge. I understand the desire well.
Rocky even more so.
He barely moves a muscle. I highly doubt he wants to replace the godmothers with Varrick. Not when he’s wished to get out from under their control his entire life.
Rocky arches his brows. “There’s a problem with your little job you already set up here at Stonehaven.”
“And what’s that?”
“It’s not fucking happening,” he finishes.
“You don’t want the details first?” He’s asking all of us.
“I’d like them,” Hailey says so softly. I hope his eardrums are crammed with wax and he can’t hear. I’m already tempted to know more, and I’d rather this be shut down before he dangles a carrot. Working with the devil to take down another devil—it’s not the most ludicrous thing ever.
Varrick focuses on Hailey. “Trent has to want to marry you. Make him think it’s his idea.” He explains the job in greater detail, including how we’ll pull the rope and Trent will end up giving Jake everything.
My head spins a hundred miles per hour. My pulse accelerates to faster speeds. On one hand, I’m enticed enough to admit it’s a well-constructed job. One I could see us taking under different circumstances.
On the other hand, I don’t want it to be her.
I don’t want Hailey in this position.
This is my role.
It always has been.
“The marriage has to be as real as it can be,” Hailey says, doesn’t ask, as she stares off in thought. “If he thinks it’s fake, it all blows up.”
“Everything hinges on the marriage being believable,” Varrick agrees.
“Hailey.” Rocky forces out her name.
I haven’t seen her blink in a solid five minutes. I’m gripping the armrests of my chair. Even Trevor has shifted forward, trying to catch his sister’s eyes, but she’s not here. She’s obsessing over this job in her head.
“We’re not entertaining this,” Jake states, looking at Rocky, then at Oliver.
Oliver hasn’t taken off his sunglasses. His hand, still planted on the wall, tenses more than it should. “This isn’t what Hailey does,” he explains to Varrick. “As you pointed out, she’s not a main manipulator. She’s rarely been a principal.”
“She’s been a shill, hasn’t she? Surely, they taught all of you how to be actors, even if only a little bit?”
That’s true.
Trevor whispers too loudly to Rocky, “If it’s a real marriage, doesn’t she have to consummate it?” She’s pregnant. She’s pregnant. It’s all I can think.
“Hailey,” Rocky sneers.
Jake runs a taut hand through his hair. Oliver just watches Hailey closely.
I cut in hotly. “She’s not having sex with Trent.”
Not only is he a disgusting piece of shit, she’s with my brother and my fake ex-boyfriend. Okay, she is taken. Doubly so.
Hailey thinks aloud, “He won’t want to have sex with me. He thinks I’m weird.”
Nova scrapes his hand back and forth over his buzz cut. He turns his back to us, his expression so tightly wound, I know he’s swallowing a furious scream.
“Don’t kid yourself,” Rocky tells her sharply. “He’ll want to fuck his wife.”
“Not me,” Hailey says.
“That’s a big if, Hailstorm,” Oliver says lightly.
Jake shakes his head repeatedly. “If you don’t put out, Hailey, he won’t want to marry you.”
“Maybe he still will.” Her glazed faraway eyes haven’t come into focus. “This will work.”
Varrick smiles.
No.
She’s pregnant.
“I’ll do it,” I interject as I spring onto my feet. I avoid Rocky, or else I might break down and cry.
“You can’t,” Hailey breathes.
“I’d rather you not, Phoebe,” Varrick suddenly says.
My face contorts. “So, you’d want Hailey to marry a sleazebag but not me?”
“You’re my daughter.”
Like that means something? My stomach somersaults. “This is what I was trained to do.” It hurts even saying it. “And doesn’t it make more sense to be me? Trent is already trying to get with me this summer.”
“To fuck you,” Rocky emphasizes so it drills into my head. The pain in his narrowed eyes is eviscerating. “There is no avenue where Trent marries you and won’t want to fuck you, Phoebe. Do you understand that?”
I understand helping my best friend.
I understand completing the job.
I’ve understood sacrificing my body time and time again to do it, and this town—this place was my fresh start.
My new start.
“You gave up this role for a reason,” Hailey says, her gray eyes lifting to mine. “You can’t go back.”
I know she’s right. I just don’t know how to help her if I’m not the one taking the stray bullets. “Hails…”
“I can do this,” she says to me. “You’ve all put yourselves at risk every time I’ve placed you on the board. I think it’s time I put myself in the game. It’s only fair.”
Not now.
“Inertia,” I tell her, my eyes welling with burning tears. “Inertia.” I’m invoking our childhood pact that sent me here to Victoria, that changed the course of our lives.
An object will continue at its current motion until some force causes a change in its speed or direction.
I’m that force this time.
Hailey rises from the couch and comes closer to where I stand. “It’s a piece of paper. A marriage certificate. It’s nothing.”
“It’s Trent.”
Hailey wraps her arms around me. I wrap mine around her in a tighter hug, and it feels like we’re alone in the parlor. Just the two of us with our lifelong friendship and love. She whispers against my ear, “I need to do this. Please, Phebs. Take it back.”
Take the inertia back.
I didn’t realize just how much guilt she’s felt over past jobs. Especially for the Fiddle Game, the con she constructed in Carlsbad. I want her to feel absolved, but I wish it weren’t in this way—putting herself at risk like she’s put us at risk over so many years.
“Now’s not the best time,” I whisper to her.
“It’s just a summer job.”
Her baby isn’t due until December.
Very quietly, she whispers to me, “Can you imagine if it all ends here? This could be it, Phoebe. I-I know I haven’t been well, but I need you to believe I can be. I need you to believe I am.”
I have the utmost faith in her. I really, really do.
“I need to do this,” she pleads. “Please.”
“I take it back.”