Rachel
I frowned at Link. “You’re looking at me like the Ghost of Christmas Past just showed up on your doorstep.”
He grimaced. “Please tell me you’re not here for Lily.”
“No, I spoke to her earlier when I was here with the Posse.” My nose crinkled as I realized he was looking sweaty. “Ew, Link. Why did you answer the door if you were otherwise engaged?”
“Because you kept your finger on the goddamn buzzer and I dismissed the staff for the day.”
Lips curving, I retorted, “Those are words I never thought you’d say. ‘I dismissed the staff for the day.’”
“Same here,” he grumbled.
“You can carry on dining on Lily if you want. I’m here for Lodestar.”
He made a sign of the cross on his chest. “There is a God. She’s in her room.”
He loped off without waiting for me to reply, and I grinned as I closed the door behind me. Every time I’d visited this place, Lodestar had been in the kitchen, but I knew she had a room on the second floor somewhere. How hard could it be to find her?
I got my answer twenty minutes later when I found that there was a separate wing at the back of the house that I’d yet to explore. When I heard girlish giggles, I thought I might be in the right place.
I’d yet to meet Katina, Lodestar’s foster daughter and Alessa’s baby sister, but I’d definitely heard her.
“Lodestar?” I called out at the top of a landing. “It’s Rachel. Can I come and speak with you?”
A door opened at the end of the hall and a little girl smiled at me. “She said you can.”
When she skipped over to me, then tumbled into a few forward flips, I blinked as, blowing her curls off her face, she held out her hand and introduced herself. “I’m Katina. Who are you?”
“I’m Rachel Laker.”
“I know you.” She beamed a smile at me. “You’re Rain’s sister.”
“I am.” I frowned. “You know Rain?”
She grinned at me. “Cyan has a massive crush on him. When I say massive, I mean it’s the size of America.”
Amused, I asked, “That big, huh?”
“Maybe even bigger,” was her serious retort. “She didn’t want to leave him behind when her mom made them move to Ohio, but I think it’s romantic.”
“You do?”
Her head bobbed up and down, those golden curls dancing with the movement. “It will make it so much sweeter when they come together again.”
The words were oddly adult, as if she’d seen a movie she shouldn’t have watched and memorized the lines. Seeing as her foster mom was Lodestar, that wouldn’t come as a complete surprise.
With my hand tucked in her clammy one, she tugged me down the hall, chattering about how Cyan thought Rain had the nicest hair, giving me way too much information on the reasons why a pre-teen girl would consider Rain to be boyfriend material.
Grimacing, I was relieved when Lodestar barked, “Kat, are you running your mouth again? What will Cyan do when she finds out everyone in the MC knows she’s got a crush on Rain and it’s all because of you?”
Kat’s cheeks flushed. “She won’t know it’s me.”
“She will if I tell her,” Lodestar grumbled, her face hidden behind a screen.
I took in the layout of the space and had to wonder why she preferred to work downstairs. Not only was it much bigger, but she had more than one computer in here.
“You wouldn’t dare tell Cyan!” Kat shrieked.
“I would. Especially as you haven’t cleaned up your room even though this is the fourth time I’ve asked you.”
“If I clean it now, can we renegotiate the terms?”
My lips twitched.
“We can renegotiate the terms,” Lodestar agreed. “If you can convince me that you’ve put one-hundred-percent effort into the job.”
“What if I put in ninety-eight-percent effort?”
“I’ll know.” Her face loomed over a screen and the glow cast the gauntness in her cheeks and eyes into stark relief. “Remember, I know everything.”
“You don’t,” Kat cried.
“I do.” She smirked. “I know who your Rain is.”
A horrified gasp escaped the little girl. “You don’t!”
“I do. Haven’t we established this already?”
“One-hundred-percent effort and you won’t tell anyone?”
“I won’t say a word.”
Kat didn’t hang around. She got the hell out of there and raced off to, I assumed, her own room.
When I turned back to face Lodestar, I saw she was watching me.
“We all have our own style of parenting.”
“I see.” I half-smiled. “Yours is definitely unique.”
“What can I say? I’m creative.”
“‘Renegotiate the terms?’ How did you keep a straight face when she said that?”
“It is a mouthful for her, isn’t it?” She laughed. “But it’s the only way to get her to do anything.”
“Rain used to be like that. Had to lock him into a contract.”
Lodestar arched a brow. “I forget that you had more than a hand in raising him.”
“Axel died when he was still young.”
“Your mom?”
I hesitated. “She’s not been around for a long time.”
“Want me to find her?”
“No. I doubt she’s alive,” I dismissed as I walked into the chaotic tangle that was several computer desks, each with a screen atop it.
The very air was stuffy from all the processors running, and there was a TV blaring something in a language I couldn’t understand behind her. That oddly ozone-esque scent in the air reminded me of a lab.
In fact, with how Lodestar’s hair was all over the place, she might as well have been a mad scientist.
“Irish Gaelic,” she informed me when she saw where my attention had drifted. “I like to keep abreast of the news.”
“In Ireland?” I asked dubiously.
“In Ireland,” she confirmed.
“I didn’t even know they had TV channels in Gaelic.”
“That’s because you’re American. You expect everyone to speak English.”
“Hardly,” I argued.
“Why do you think she’s dead?”
I leaped with her into the conversational direction she was taking. “Because she was a bitch. It was a wonder she survived as long as she did.”
“Who do you think killed her?”
“Why do you care?”
“Says a lot about her if you don’t care who killed her.”
“It does.”
“You think Rex did it?”
My mouth tightened. “Why would you ask that?”
“Seemed obvious.”
I heaved a sigh. “I don’t want to know if he did.”
“Why? Would you blame him?”
“No, I might thank him. She left me in a lot of shitty situations, but I don’t think she deserved to die for it. If he did kill her, then there’s a reason for that, and I really don’t want to know that either.”
“Wouldn’t have thought you were the kind of person who buried her head in the sand.”
“After that first group session, you really don’t think I’m an ostrich in a suit?”
Her lips twitched. “I guess.”
“You should have come to today’s meeting.”
“Why?”
“It would help you.”
“I don’t need help.”
“I doubt that. Everyone needs help from time to time.”
She just grunted.
“I’m surprised you went at all.”
“Was curious. Heard a lot about you. Know a lot more about what you’re capable of.” A gleam snapped through her gaze at that. “Wanted to see what made you tick.”
“So, it was a fact-finding mission?” I queried, oddly disappointed.
“Maybe. Maybe I didn’t want to be alone either.”
I tilted my head to the side. “Is something wrong?”
“Nothing’s right,” she mocked, her attention drifting to her screen.
Unsure of how to answer that, I hovered in place until I blurted:
“I feel better, for what it’s worth. I’m not saying I’m a different person,” I added hastily, “but it feels less like a knot of heartburn and more like something I could vomit out.”
Her gaze darted to mine. “That’s better?”
Her suspicious tone made me smile. “It’s better. Heartburn you have to wait out. Vomit, once it’s in the toilet bowl, that’s usually it.”
“You’ve never had stomach flu, have you?”
I snorted. “I’ve had that and morning sickness. Trust me, heartburn can be so bad that it makes you vomit anyway.”
She sniffed. “Why are you here, Rachel?”
“Did Hunter Lachlan call you?” I queried, not for the first time wondering how the pair knew each other.
When she shook her head, I grunted under my breath in annoyance.
If you want something done properly, do it your-fucking-self.
Still, I had priorities so I dealt with the real reason I was here first: “Rex wants an update on the location of the Chairman’s boy.”
“You’re his messenger?”
“When required. It’s urgent. My…” I paused. “My daughter’s safety hinges on it.”
“First time you called her that?”
“To someone who wasn’t Rex, yes.”
“You know, the MC has an abundance of rape survivors and shitty mothers—”
I tensed, prepared for the incoming insult.
Only, it didn’t come.
“Amazing how you’ve dealt with both but you knew giving your kid up would be the better choice for her.”
“Rex had more of a say in it than I did.”
“I looked into you,” she mused. “You were suicidal and self-harming and they were scared you’d kill her—”
“I don’t want to talk about this. If you’re trying to distract me, it isn’t working.”
Lodestar shrugged. “I’m a cunt, but I’m not that big of a cunt.”
My lips twitched. “Good to know. Any updates?”
“Yes.”
“What’s the problem then?”
“No problem. I’ll be passing the appropriate details to the Valentinis tomorrow.”
“Why tomorrow? And why the Valentinis?”
“I’m still going through all the information, and because the Triads will investigate this. Let’s not come under their radar, hmm?”
“All the information?”
“What?”
“You said ‘all the information.’ What information?”
“Do you really want to know?”
“I think I should, don’t you?” I questioned.
Lodestar hitched a shoulder. “I already knew where the Triad boy was being held—”
Eyes flaring wide, I stormed over to her, demanding, “And you didn’t tell the cops?”
“Well, no, Rachel,” she sniped. “It’s almost like ninety-five percent of the things I do are illegal.”
I growled, “You could have told me. A kid’s been in captivity while you dick around—”
“Do not mistake my lack of anticipated action for inactivity,” she snarled, her jaw clenching as she glowered at me.
“The reason I knew his location was because of a laptop the Valentinis sent me. That laptop contained a lot of information. I wasn’t about to throw them the info and have them hold it against the Triad kid. ”
“The Valentinis aren’t like that. Luciu is honorable.”