Chapter 7
OH, FUUUUUUUUUCCCCKKKKKK
Margot
I text Cyril before I start vacuuming because I want to know if Rhys’s story about his stepbrother and his ex is true, or if he’s figured out who I am and he’s using my own story to manipulate me into giving myself away.
What are the odds?
Very slim. That’s what the odds are.
Cyril’s deeper research this week into Rhys’s past revealed that his stepfather owns the security firm Technique Group, which was founded by Rhys’s mother and grandfather, and around the time Rhys quit, they each filed lawsuits against the other and have very different stories in their filings about the circumstances of Rhys leaving the company and what financial obligations Technique Group failed to meet.
Both suits were dropped, but that’s all Cyril has found.
So this new story about his stepbrother and ex?
That’s an avenue to explore.
With my request for more information sent to Cyril, I pop in earbuds and get to work vacuuming.
Once I get my father removed as CEO of Aurora Gardens and the dust has settled, assuming all goes well with every part of my plan, we should have our next corporate retreat out here.
I’d get to see the triplets, and the setting couldn’t be better.
Between the chalets and other lodging options, there’s room for around eighty guests, plus independent and group work spaces scattered through several various-sized buildings on the property.
The dining room, kitchen, and staff offices are in a single log building, and the mountain views are spectacular nearly everywhere.
Add in the hiking trails and the gondola that will take guests the rest of the way up the mountain to more work areas, a wine tasting room, and the spa, and it’s pure magic.
It’s not something I’d want to invest in—given the pricing sheets I’ve seen and what I know about real estate and wages in this area, I suspect this is a tax write-off venture, or even a passion project, rather than a profit-generating model, which is unsurprising considering what I know about the owners—but the center here is speaking to my soul.
Soothing the parts of me that I didn’t realize were agitated by city life.
Don’t get me wrong—I’m absolutely returning to New York in the next few weeks, once I’ve done what I need to do here—but I like this place as a getaway.
It reminds me of my house in the Sierra Nevada.
I always feel an extra bit of peace there too.
And then I happily return to the city when the quiet gets to be too much. Because the quiet sometimes is too much.
That’s what I’m contemplating—my own private vacation retreat in California and how it’s different from the constant hum of a busy city—when I realize I’m not alone as I vacuum the dining room.
Two men have entered as well, one of them with heavily tattooed arms who’s gently bouncing a tiny bundle of a baby against his shoulder.
Fine on its own, except I personally know the non-tatted of the two men, and what the actual fuck?
Why is Jonas Rutherford here?
Yes, he’s one-third owner of this place, but Cyril told me that he wouldn’t be here.
That Jonas was on a vacation with his family for a month. Something about a major anniversary or a retirement with not just his wife and kids, but also with his parents and his brother’s family.
I know his entire family.
They run the Razzle Dazzle movie and entertainment conglomerate, and while I’ve had more face-to-face time with Jonas’s older brother than I have with Jonas himself, we aren’t strangers.
My skin starts buzzing and my pulse shoots into the heavens and I reach up to double-check that I’m wearing my glasses.
He won’t recognize you, I tell myself, and I sincerely hope I can manifest that into reality. Considering he wouldn’t expect to see me here, I’ll have the advantage of being out of place while also being someone easily overlookable.
Just have to keep my head down and keep doing my job.
I haven’t met the other man, the tattooed one bouncing the baby, but I know who he is. Theo Monroe, former GrippaPeen star and one-third owner of the retreat center. Also someone who, according to Sabrina at the coffee shop, would have possibly jerked off in a box of cereal once upon a time.
One of the other housekeepers pointed him out to me yesterday, as if I wouldn’t have researched the hell out of anywhere I intended to work to be able to recognize the owners on sight, which clearly, she doesn’t know.
But I’m not worried Theo will recognize me.
Theo didn’t sit on the board of directors of one of the largest arts endowment charities in the Northeast with me for five years.
Jonas Rutherford, however—who’s starred in half the movies his family’s entertainment conglomerate makes, and who married Theo’s sister, Emma, last year—did.
I turn my back on the men, flip the vacuum off, and get busy winding up the cord.
I’m not done, but I’m done enough. Not getting fired if someone notices the back part of the carpet didn’t have a vacuum run over it today, even if it low-key annoys me to leave a job incomplete.
“This has clusterfuck written all over it,” Theo’s saying to Jonas, who laughs.
“It was your idea.”
“I didn’t think they’d go for it. I just wanted them to leave me alone.”
“Too late now.”
“It’s not too late. Cancel.”
Jonas cackles while I hustle through pulling the vacuum closer and closer to the plug in the wall so I can completely bolt out of here.
Later, I’ll wonder what Theo got into that has Jonas cackling—I’m not sure I’ve ever heard him cackle—but right now, I don’t care what’s prompted it.
Right now, I need to get out of here.
When the damn vacuum cord is plugged in three feet from where the men are standing.
Maybe I should ditch the vacuum and pretend I have a personal emergency and come back and get it later.
I can fake food poisoning.
From the lunch I brought from home. Definitely would have to clarify I didn’t get food poisoning from eating here at the retreat center.
“Excuse me, miss,” Jonas says.
Fuuuuuuck.
He’s not talking to me.
Please, please, please tell me he’s not talking to me.
“Miss?” he repeats.
Dammit.
A quick glance around confirms for me that no one else is in here.
By default, he has to be talking to me.
I angle more in his direction, not looking up, and make my voice higher-pitched than it normally is while I adjust my glasses. Like he makes me nervous.
Unfortunately, he really does right now.
“Me, sir?”
“Yes. Do you know how long it takes to break down the tables in this room after a meal?”
“I’m new, sir, but I can get someone who knows.”
“Too long,” Theo says. “Just tell the man it takes too long.”
The baby in his tattooed arms makes an adorable little cooing sound, like she has an opinion on table break down.
“I’m not in the business of moving tables, but I could do this myself in under an hour, which means a crew can undoubtedly clear it in fifteen minutes or less,” Jonas says. “Does that sound about right to you?”
Goddammit, he’s talking to me again. “I’m sure you’re right, sir.”
“No, he’s not right,” Theo says. “If we needed to flood this room to make it unusable, like with water, or maybe even soup or something, how long would that take?”
I yank the plug out of the wall, still not looking straight at either of them. “I’m afraid that’s not my area of expertise, sir.”
“You’re not flooding the dining room,” Jonas says to him.
“Watch me,” he replies.
“We’d have to shut down.”
“Worth it.”
“Again, you’re the one who invited them—”
“You sound like my high school principal.”
I need to text Cyril and have him get me out of here, but I can’t stand in front of my bosses and pull out my cell phone if I want to keep my job.
Were I in their shoes and a housekeeper wasn’t answering my questions and instead pulled out her phone—yeah, I know how that would end.
And while I don’t need this job, it’s such a convenient cover story, and I’d have no excuse for doing something stupid enough to get me fired on my third day.
“Miss, do you have a moment? I’d like to time something,” Jonas says to me. “I’m sorry. I missed your name.”
I glance up at him and instantly regret it, because the smiling, brown-haired, warm-eyed, friendly Jonas Rutherford goes from all is well and I’m enjoying my brother-in-law’s discomfort to that wrinkle-nosed, paused, do I know you from somewhere? expression.
Daammmmmiiiiittttttt.
I drop my gaze to the floor again. “Would you like me to operate the stopwatch or do the thing that needs timed, sir?”
“He doesn’t need any help,” Theo says. “Quit making the staff nervous, asshole. And read her name tag. Margie? Margie. You can go. Don’t mind him.”
“There’s nothing to be nervous about,” Jonas says, but he’s not as jovial as he was a minute ago.
“Dude,” Theo mutters.
“What?”
“How many times do you have to make the staff nervous before you remember you’re a fucking movie star?”
“Maybe she’s an old fan of yours from your own…glory days.”
“Which we also don’t talk about,” Theo mutters.
Jonas giggles.
Giggles.
Then he clears his throat and addresses me again. “Apologies for taking your time, Margie. It’s not often I get to turn the tables on my favorite brother-in-law and torture him instead of being the subject of his pranks. This is a fun twist.”
I nod at the floor and angle toward the vacuum again. “Not a problem, sir.”
“But—have we met somewhere before?”
This is it.
I’m busted.
Caught.
Made.
And I know my half brothers hang out with him, which means they’re going to hear about this from Jonas before I can explain myself, and before I know if I can trust them and if it’s worth asking for their help.
If I find out something I don’t like about the triplets, something that puts my plans—or them—in danger, I leave here, cut off all communications, and go back to my life.
Without the final bullet I need to blow up my father’s control of his personal and professional life.
When I’ve spent four years investing in understanding why I felt so personally betrayed by Daphne being disinherited, and then concocting a plan to pay him back for what he did to her, when he’s so very, very meticulous about everything that it’s taken this long to get so close.
I can’t lose it now.
I need to be in control here.
And I’m suddenly not.
I shake my head. Should’ve gone for bangs too. Maybe I’ll add them tonight. “No, sir.”
He’s squinting at me. I can feel it even as I’m not looking directly at him. “Are you—” he starts, only to be cut off by a rough voice.
“Johnson, what are you doing?” Rhys barks. He strides into the room like he—not the other two men in here—owns it. He nods to them before scowling at me again. “Cynthia’s looking for you. Coffee pot exploded in one of the chalets, and they want you on cleanup.”
“Yes, sir,” I say. I catch myself before I curtsy—fucking curtsy, what the fuck?—and lunge for the vacuum.
Cynthia’s head of operations here. Rhys’s boss, and my boss too. Likely reports directly to Jonas and Theo and the third owner, who’s married to the triplets’ cousin, Sabrina.
“Sorry to interrupt,” Rhys says to the two others. “Sounded important. Carpet stains and curtain damage or something.”
“Anyone hurt?” Theo asks.
“Chalet was empty. Window open. Bird turned it on or something.”
I rush through finishing wrapping the cord and lift the vacuum, murmuring a soft excuse me as I step around the men.
“You’re the triplets’ friend,” I hear Theo say to Rhys behind me.
“Knew Decker in the Marines.”
“You’re the one,” Jonas says. “The one Decker based Rip Tide off of.”
Rhys grunts. “Yeah. Excuse me. Need to take care of something.”
“I see it,” Jonas says.
“Unmistakable,” Theo agrees. He nods to Rhys. “Thanks, man. We’ll catch up later.”
Rhys didn’t say which cabin, but I’ve never been so glad for an incident with a bird and a coffee pot.
I hustle down the hallway and stash the vacuum in the housekeeping closet outside the kitchen. When I turn to dash to the lobby and the exterior door, Rhys is right behind me.
I stifle a shriek, my hand flying to my heart.
Fucker’s quiet.
And that’s not the worst of what he is.
Oh, no.
The worst of what he is?
Smart.
That’s the worst of what he is.
Because while I’m standing here catching my breath, he’s smirking.
He looks back at the dining room.
Then down at me.
His blue eyes twinkle.
His lips curve up higher.
The fading dye marks on his face taunt me. The not-fading purple streaks in his beard taunt me more.
And then the bastard drops the bomb.
“Almost got made, didn’t you, Margot?”