44. Lilah
44
LILAH
They were nice. That was what surprised me the most.
I mean, I didn’t have any reason to think they wouldn’t be nice, but part of me had always assumed my peers at Blackwell High had been as villainous as the Bastards. They’d all morphed together into one mass, an amorphous enemy with two thousand heads, all of which had, in my mind at least, been trained on my nudes with a cruel brand of glee.
Daisy poured iced tea and we tried the brownies (which were delicious) while we waited for Jace. I could see why the media had dubbed them the Beasts. Sure, it was sensational enough to sell newspapers, and what else would you call it when three guys murdered their best friend?
But also, they looked scary. Jace was so big he almost didn’t look human — an inch taller than Rafe, who towered over me — and if there was such a thing as resting dick face, Jace definitely had it. His hair was shaved close to his head, like Jude’s, and it looked like his T-shirt was about to rip open from the strain of his biceps.
Wolf wasn’t quite as tall (maybe I was becoming desensitized to large men because I’d been living with them — was that a thing?), but he was big too, his forearms covered in leather bracelets, his dark hair long enough to brush his shoulders.
Even Otis — blond with the kind of open smile that held nothing back — was intimidating. He reminded me a little of Gage, the way he studied everything, took everything in.
Finally Jace returned from feeding the cat (named… Cat?). He sat next to Daisy on one side of an outdoor sofa while Otis took the other. Wolf sat in a chair next to them and I couldn’t help noticing that we were mirror images of each other: the Beasts and Daisy, the Bastards and me across from them, the brownies and iced tea between us.
“Let’s get this over with,” Jace said, reaching for a brownie.
Daisy sighed. “What Jace means to say is, how can we help you?”
“Some things have come up, weird things, and it occurred to us that we never really talked after that night,” Nolan said. “The night Piers?—”
“We know what night,” Otis said.
He was either super efficient or it was hard to talk about. Or maybe he was just trying to protect Daisy. I could see it: the way they watched her every move, Jace’s arm over the back of the wicker sofa like he was prepared to pull her against him if a threat emerged.
Also, I was pretty sure Daisy was pregnant. If she was, she wasn’t very far along, but I was almost positive she had a baby bump under her dress.
How did that work?
Because it was pretty clear Daisy wasn’t in a relationship with one of the Beasts — she was in a relationship with all of them.
“It was intense.” I wasn’t surprised when Nolan’s gaze cut to Jace. I’d read online that one of the men who’d been killed at the top of the falls was Jace’s father. “Did the police ever follow up with you about what Piers was up to?”
I was glad Nolan had kept Arlo’s name out of it. It had to be a sore subject for Jace.
“We knew what he was up to,” Wolf said.
“Did the police ever tie it to anything else?” I asked. “Or anyone else?”
Otis turned his brown eyes on me. “Like who?”
I told them about Vic and the Dive, about Mr. Suit and the girl I’d seen being taken behind the bar and how Vic and the other men had chased me through the woods on snowmobiles.
Then Nolan, Jude, and Rafe told them about the dark web, about what Storm found behind the link in the image of Versailles.
“Imperium Fratrum?” Jace muttered. “What in the fucking cult is that?”
“Don’t know,” Rafe said. “That’s why we’re here.”
“It never came up for us,” Wolf said. “Everything seemed to be centered around the resort Cantwell was building on the ridge. Construction was suspended after he died, although I heard there’s some kind of dispute with investors over the project.”
I looked at Daisy. “You worked for him right? Piers?”
She nodded. “Unfortunately.”
“Did you ever see anything, hear anything, that might connect to all of this?” I asked.
She shook her head. “Not that I can think of. I mean, I kind of guessed it had something to do with the VIP villas?— ”
“The VIP villas?” I asked, raising my eyebrows.
This was the first I was hearing about any VIP villas.
“The resort was a complex,” Daisy explained. “The main hotel, where spa treatments and stuff happened, and ten private villas, which were purchased outright by, well, rich people.”
The tiniest thread was loose in my brain now. I didn’t know what it meant, but I wanted to pick at it, see if I could pull it free. “What kind of rich people?”
“CEOs, tech bros, biotech families, old money, that kind of thing,” Daisy explained. “The villas weren’t cheap. They were custom decorated and furnished to the specification of the owners, so those were the only kinds of people who could afford them.”
“And you told the police all of this?” I was honestly surprised the Bastards were letting me ask questions without interrupting, but maybe they thought I was onto something.
“I was interviewed three different times by Detective Rodriguez.” I recognized the name as the detective who’d given all the press conferences. “I told them everything I knew.”
Jude took another brownie. “Did they ever come back to you with more information?”
“No,” Daisy said, “but to be fair, I wasn’t pushing them for more information. I just…” She took a deep breath. “I just wanted to put it all behind us.”
“That’s understandable,” I said.
“Yeah, exactly, which is why we’re done here,” Jace said. “It’s not good for Daisy to relive this.”
Daisy reached for his hand. “I’m fine.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “We’re just trying to put the pieces together.”
Wolf stood. “Those are all the pieces we have, and like Jace said, we have to protect Daisy now. She’s been through a lot.”
I stood, because I wasn’t about to bully Daisy Hammond into continuing to talk to us. And anyway, she’d told us what she knew. It hadn’t been an earth-shattering revelation, but it was something else to work with, another piece in the jumbled jigsaw puzzle on the table.
Jude grabbed another brownie as he stood. “These are really good,” he told Daisy.
She smiled. “Thanks. Family recipe.”
“Thanks for talking to us,” I said.
“Of course. I’ll let you know if I think of anything else. Just…” A haunted expression passed over her violet eyes. “Just be careful, Lilah. I want to believe this is over, that whatever you saw had nothing to do with what Piers and Arlo were doing…”
“I sense a but there,” Nolan said.
Daisy nodded. “Piers and Arlo, they were dangerous. My little sister even got mixed up in it and… well, it was a close call.”
“And if someone else is still trafficking girls, they’re probably even more powerful than that douchebag Piers and his inbred son.” Otis said it casually, like he was just making an observation as he headed back to the pool.
The words hung in my mind like smoke as Daisy walked us around the house to the front. Because who was more powerful than a billionaire like Piers Cantwell?
Not Vic Lombardi.
Mr. Suit.