39. Lilah
39
LILAH
The word had been echoing in my mind since Nolan had handed me coffee, through the moment when Jude handed me an egg-and-cheese English muffin wrapped in foil. It had continued as we’d descended the stairs to the garage, piling into the Jeep, me in the back with Jude, Nolan up front with Rafe.
Fuck .
I’d resigned myself to the vulnerability of fucking Nolan. I’d wanted it, had wanted him. Still did, truth be told. He’d made me come with his mouth again after Jude had left the room, then fucked me in the shower, my hands braced against the tile wall while he’d pounded into me from behind, reaching around to stimulate my clit until my orgasm shattered me into a million pieces.
But that resignation had not extended to all of the Bastards knowing I was a virgin.
That part felt private, the only thing I had left of my sexuality that belonged to me alone.
Which was why I hadn’t told Nolan before we’d had sex. I didn’t want it to be about my virginity, didn’t want Nolan to think he had to be careful with me. Didn’t want him to pity me, a twenty-one-year-old virgin.
Who was a virgin at twenty-one?
Then I’d walked into the kitchen and blown the lid off my own secret like an idiot. I was glad to be sitting in the back where I could slump down and stare through the window.
My cheeks still burned with humiliation.
“She didn’t say what she’d found?” Nolan asked from the front seat.
I knew he was talking about Storm, about why we were driving to the beach to meet her at Breakers.
“No,” Rafe said.
He was obviously pissed about the fact that I’d slept with Nolan, probably because it fucked with whatever dynamic they had going on as business partners, roommates, and friends.
I didn’t see why it mattered. It wasn’t like I was going to be around long-term. I was just a house guest. And honestly? There had been something therapeutic about giving my virginity to Nolan, one of the three men who’d exposed me to the world in high school.
I’d rewritten the script, created a version of it where I was sober, where I chose what happened to me instead of being so drunk someone else got to make the decision.
I don’t know. It sounded fucked up when I thought about it that way, but it was the truth. I’d loved fucking Nolan. I’d had no idea sex could be so incredible, so consuming, the sensations flooding my body until they had bubbled out in a massive release that left me limp and gasping and still ready for more.
I stuffed down the fresh wave of lust that rose in my body and cursed my damp underwear.
Jesus.
It said a lot about my current situation — and none of it good — that it was safer to turn my thoughts to the meeting with Storm. What could she have discovered in the past couple of days? Would the information take us closer to discovering the identity of Mr. Suit? And most importantly, would it allow me to leave the mountain house — and the three men who’d taken up residence in my fantasies?
Case in point? Less than three hours after I’d been fucked by Nolan in the shower, I was hyper-aware of Jude’s thigh next to mine. I thought again about the conversation in the kitchen the night I’d kissed him, the offer of a threesome even more tempting now that I knew what sex actually felt like.
( Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love; according to your great compassion blot out my transgressions…)
My religious guilt, stifled by the pure pleasure Nolan had delivered with his hand, mouth, and dick, was apparently not as easily ignored when thinking about fucking not one but two of the Bastards.
Ugh.
It was after noon by the time we reached Breakers, the sky a moody gray overhead.
Rafe parked next to a motorcycle and peered at the sky through the windshield. “We should have brought our boards.”
“It’s going to rain,” Jude said, reaching for the door in the backseat. “And the wind is picking up.”
“Exactly,” Rafe said.
The temperatures was still cool, Nolan, Jude, and I wearing jackets, but Rafe stepped out of the car in nothing but a T-shirt. Sometimes I wondered if he liked pain, if he liked making himself suffer.
“Pass,” Nolan said.
Jude started for the door of the bar. “Same.”
Nolan tried to take my hand, but I pulled away before Rafe or Jude noticed. I liked Nolan — and I really liked having sex with Nolan — but he wasn’t my boyfriend. What we had was fun, an easy way to get my feet (and other parts of my body) wet in the sex department while I waited out my exile at the mountain house.
What it wasn’t was something serious, something that could last. I didn’t know jack about romantic relationships, but I knew they couldn’t be built on betrayal.
Breakers was even more crowded than it had been the last time we’d been there, probably because of the weather. Apparently the locals were no more into death by surf than Nolan and Jude.
An 80s song I only vaguely recognized blared from the jukebox on one wall and the same older guy as last time was manning the bar. And just like last time, a group of locals stood around the pool table in shorts and flip-flops, although I couldn’t tell if they were the same ones.
Apparently all surf boys looked the same to me.
The Bastards, on the other hand, stood out like sore thumbs. I walked behind Rafe and Jude and in front of Nolan, watching as all eyes in the bar turned to follow them, not just the handful of girls but the guys too. Their expressions ran the gamut from curiosity to fear and even loathing.
It was clear the locals knew Rafe, Nolan, and Jude and equally clear not everyone was a fan.
I was surprised to feel a surge of defensiveness. Who the fuck were these assholes — a bunch of people who seemed to spend all day surfing — to judge the Bastards, who’d served their country and actually worked for a living (the fact that their “work” involved committing crimes was an inconvenient truth I shelved for another time)?
Of course, their BDE didn’t hurt, because for all the shade Nolan and Jude threw Rafe’s way for his attitude, there was plenty to go around among the three of them.
This time there was no effort to hang out and be social. We walked right through the big main room to the back, where we’d talked to Storm the last time.
It was empty in spite of the crowd in the main room, like the smaller room was reserved for Storm, sitting at the same table in the back, this time with a big muscly guy with dark hair and a beard, a laptop open in front of him.
Jude slowed his footsteps when he saw the guy and I thought I noticed a tensing of Rafe’s jaw.
“What the fuck?” Rafe said.
“You’re not going to be mad when I show you what we found,” Storm said.
“We hired you ,” Nolan said.
“I know, but trust me on this,” she said.
“Who’s the girl?” the man next to Storm asked. Now that we were closer, I saw that he had the same gray eyes as Storm, the same mouth. I wondered if they were siblings.
“None of your fucking business,” Rafe said.
I was torn between being annoyed that Rafe was speaking for me and being weirdly flattered that he sounded almost protective.
I stuck out my hand just to annoy him. “Lilah.”
The guy looked me up and down but there was nothing sexual about it. His gray eyes catalogued my features like a chatbot scanning a passage of highlighted text. He nodded but didn’t offer his name.
Whatever, asshole.
Jude pulled out one of the chairs, gesturing for me to sit, while Nolan pulled over two more.
“This better be good,” Rafe said.
Storm started tapping at her laptop. “I had this feeling I was missing something, about the shell company. It sounded… I don’t know, weird. Most of the time these companies are so generic.”
“Generic how?” I asked, because the only thing I knew about shell companies were the things I’d learned in our last conversation with Storm.
“Like… ‘Consolidated Industries’ or ‘Smithfield LLC.' The ‘John Smith’ of corporations.”
I nodded. None of those sounded like “Imperium Fratrum.”
“So shell companies are named to be forgotten,” I said. “To be invisible.”
“Exactly,” Storm said. “Does Imperium Fratrum sound invisible?”
I shook my head, because no, it didn’t.
“Storm asked me about it,” the man sitting next to her said.
“Gage suggested the dark web,” Storm said, clearly referring to the guy sitting next to her.
“The dark web?” Anything I knew about the dark web I’d learned from bad thrillers watched on the one and only streaming service I paid for.
“It’s an online marketplace,” Storm said.
“And an online meeting place,” Gage added.
Nolan looked at Gage. “Did you find anything?”
“It’ll be easier to show you.” Storm moved her chair and turned her laptop around so we could see what she was doing.
She pulled up a black screen with a series of bold green titles: 5K VALID CREDIT CARD NUMBERS, PURE FENTANYL + TRANSPORT, RESISTANCE OF THE RED GUARD.
I didn’t understand the last one, but I definitely understood the first two.
And there were other things on offer too, things I wished I hadn’t seen, things I knew would haunt me when I tried to sleep that night. I felt gross, like I needed a shower, like I’d seen something perverse, which tracked I guess.
Storm scrolled down, talking as she worked. “Hang on, it’s farther down. At first I wasn’t sure it had anything to do with the job you gave me, but now… I don’t know. Let me just show you.”
She stopped at a green headline reading: IMPERIUM FRATRUM LOCATION OF NEXT EVENT.
I leaned in, thinking maybe I was missing something, but nope. That was all it said.
“I don’t get it,” Jude said.
“I didn’t either,” Storm said. “And I got even more confused after I clicked on it and ended up…” She clicked on the link and a new web page opened, the image so different from the black-and-green theme of the dark web that I blinked as my eyes adjusted. “… here.”
The screen was filled with lush furnishings and valuable art: tapestries and gilded furniture, portraits of people in elaborate costumes with white wigs and rouged cheeks, chandeliers dripping with crystals.
“Is that… Versailles?” Jude asked.
“Yep,” Storm said. “I didn’t know it, to be honest, but I was so stumped by the vibe shift that I showed it to Gage.”
Nolan’s gaze slid to Gage, like he understood now why Storm had brought him into the job.
“What is it?” Rafe asked.
Storm slid the computer over a few inches so Gage could reach it.
He used the trackpad to move the cursor to a portrait of Marie Antoinette. He hovered over her face and the cursor turned into a hand — a signal that a link was buried in the image.
He double-tapped and the screen changed again, the difference enough to give me whiplash. Now we were staring at a black screen with a deep pink door, the words Imperium Fratrum underneath it.
“What the actual fuck?” Nolan’s eyes were glued to the screen.
“My thoughts exactly,” Gage said.
“Click on it.” My breath had turned shallow, my pulse thudding in my ears.
“Can’t,” Gage said. “Well, we can, but then we get this.”
He clicked on the door and an empty bar appeared for a username. Below it was another empty space, this one for an invitation code.
“Invitation code?” Rafe muttered. “What the fuck is an invitation code?”
“We were hoping you might know,” Storm said.
“No, we weren’t,” Gage said. “This is some weird shit and we don’t want any part of it. We’re just passing along the info. What you do with it from here is up to you, but we’re out.”
Storm glared at him. “Speak for yourself.”
“I’m not,” he said, his voice steely. “I’m speaking for both of us. We’re out.”
“Just because you’re the oldest doesn’t mean?— ”
“I don’t blame you,” I told Gage. “It is some weird shit, and I can tell you for a fact that you don’t want your little sister anywhere near it. Is there anything we need to know to get to the page with the link to the image of Versailles?”
Gage shook his head. “It was right there. You should be able to find it using Tor just like we did, assuming it’s not set to expire.”
“What do you mean?” Nolan asked.
Gage shrugged. “The meeting place thing makes me wonder if it — whatever it is — is a limited-time deal.”
“Shit,” I said.
Rafe rubbed at the scruff on his jawline. “And you’re sure there’s nothing else on this Imperium Fratrum?”
“Not that we could find,” Storm said. “I looked for the organization plus invitation code. I looked for events, alumni, pretty much anything I could think of that might trigger a result. This was all I found.”
“All we found,” Gage said absentmindedly.
“Well, technically I found it,” Storm said. “I just didn’t realize Versailles had a link.”
I recognized the sibling bickering and felt a pang of loss for Matt. Would we ever be this easy around each other again? Would we ever be able to joke around or argue or text each other like normal siblings?
“Either way, we appreciate it,” Jude said. “It’s way more than we had before.”
“You can appreciate it by paying,” Gage said.
His surliness rivaled Rafe’s. No wonder they didn’t like each other. Then again, I wasn’t sure Rafe liked anyone.
“We always do,” Nolan said, standing.
It was a not-so-subtle cue, and the rest of us stood too, including Storm and Gage.
“Listen,” Gage said, “I know you’re a bunch of crazy assholes, but this feels shady as fuck.”
“Yeah, we kind of got that,” Jude said.
“I’m backing Storm out, erasing her digital footprint.” Gage’s brow was furrowed with concern. “I’d tell you to do the same, forget the whole thing, but I have a feeling you won’t listen.”
“Yeah, thanks for the warning,” Rafe said, turning to go. “But fuck that.”
I was so shaken by what Gage said that we were almost to the exit before I realized Jude had taken my hand. It shouldn’t have felt normal, but like all the weird stuff that had started happening in my life, it did.
And that meant I was in serious trouble.