Chapter 3
THREE
It’s chilly inside the base. Someone forgot to close all the windows, and Cove’s spent the past ten minutes going from room to room trying to close and lock them all up. Dad’s with Alexander, waiting for him to regain his consciousness.
With a deep breath, I sit on the couch, a bottle of whiskey in my hands. Lucas, Kaya, and Uncle Niko are all scattered around me. Niko has a defeated look on his face, while Lucas looks more determined than ever to figure this out.
“Is Aria asleep?”
Niko nods. “She went home. Noelle sent a couple of people to guard the house, just in case.’’
Cove returns, sitting in the armchair that’s furthest away. His expression is as passive as always, but I know that he’s listening. Cove Steele is always listening. His eyes flick briefly to Ekaterina, and I can tell he isn’t her biggest fan. Then again, who is?
“Anything on the connection between Hawke and and Adams?’’
“Nothing on our end,’’ Niko sighs, frustration visible on his exhausted features. Now that I think about it, all these people have been trying to help for the past four months. I don’t know when was the last time they got a proper night’s sleep. “But Kaya went out.’’
“And?” I turn to look at Kaya, and the smug smirk on her face makes me want to knock her teeth out.
“You won’t find any paper trail of them knowing each other.’’
“Digital footprint is real.’’
Kaya hums in agreement. “Yes, but it’s also possible to make it all disappear if you know the right people and have the right amount of money. Both of which Adams has.’’
“Are you going to tell me what you know or what?” I snap.
Kaya sighs, then pulls out a couple of images from the inside of her coat. She lays them neatly, one by one, on the table between us all, not taking her eyes off me. My main focus becomes the pictures, brows narrowing in confusion.
“Many years ago, while Hawke and the rest of them were in their late teens, they formed a club. It was mainly them going golfing, doing all the shit rich kids did at the time. It sounds way more dramatic than it actually is.’’
My eyes briefly flick up to Kaya. “And?”
“Alexander Hawke, Paul Simmons, Nelson Adams, and another two men were a part of the club.”
“Which men?” Lucas asks, and her attention shifts to him.
“Gabriel Woods and Edgar Flint.’’
“Gabriel Woods, as in GW Oils?”
Kaya nods.
“Jesus fucking Christ,’’ Cove breathes out, speaking for the first time since he’s arrived here.
“Of course it couldn’t have been some lowlife, street-corner drug dealer.
It just had to be a man worth several billion and one of the biggest oil moguls in the country.
This is just fantastic. And yes, we should’ve seen all this coming back when we found out about this club. ”
“And Flint has a chain of banks across all states,” I sigh.
“Correct. Now, what I was able to find out was that Woods, Flint, Simmons, Hawke, and Adams were the founders of that club. Rumor has it that it was just a cover for their illegal shit. Mainly prostitution, money laundering, and such. Which they were able to fund because of the wealth.’’
“And not a single person has heard about that,’’ a low scoff slips from me, my jaw clenching. “They bribed as they went. But this information isn’t new. We knew about Simmons and Adams’ involvement with the other two. We just didn’t know Blair’s father was a part of it, too.”
“That’s not relevant here,” Kaya says, then leans forward a little, her eyes drifting between all of us before they settle on me. “The juiciest rumor is that Hawke had a falling out with the rest of the crew years ago.’’
“Any reason why?”
“Blair.’’
For a moment, I freeze. “Excuse me?”
“Him knocking Blair’s mother up while being married might not have made the headlines, but it was a known secret. A scandal. Something the rest couldn’t afford to put up with, because it would cause people to turn their eyes to them.’’
“So, he was booted out.’’
“If you thought you’d get to Blair through him, I don’t think you will,’’ the blonde girl admits, something akin to sympathy in her voice. It’s gone before I can truly start to question it, the stoicism back on her face. “He doesn’t care about her. He sees her as a mistake, a liability.’’
Anger slowly resurfaces, and I feel a gentle hand on my shoulder. I don’t have to look up to know that it’s Mom. She squeezes my shoulder lightly, and I exhale a deep breath, trying to calm myself down.
“That doesn’t explain why he’d be back in business with the rest of them, though,’’ Mom says, her voice flat. Yet, despite that, the way her hand slightly trembles tells me everything I need to know. Mom grew to adore Blair, and she treated her as if she were her own. This is painful for her, too.
“No, it does explain it.” The words leave my mouth before I can stop them.
My mind’s been going into overdrive, and all of a sudden, it all started to make sense.
Ever since Dad and I spotted Alexander inside that casino, we’ve been keeping tabs on him.
His business has taken a massive hit, and he’s struggling to recover.
“His business is failing. He likely has evidence of what the rest have been doing, and is using it as blackmail for money.’’
“They wouldn’t just hand it over, though,’’ Lucas says. “That route would also expose Alexander. He was a part of it, too.’’
“Yes, but who would care? Another billionaire doing shady business is nothing new. But Simmons and Adams are politicians. High ones, too. They have a lot more to lose than he does.’’
“That’s not all I’ve been able to discover,’’ Kaya adds after a beat of silence.
All eyes turn to her, and I take in a deep breath, bracing myself. Kaya stands up, then walks toward a desk. I didn’t pay much attention to it while I was coming inside, but on top of it is her Birkin 25 — which I know only because I bought one for Blair for when she comes back home.
Kaya pulls out a thin, black leather file, then steps back toward us and puts it on the table. My hands are on it before anyone else could grab it, my eyes widening a fraction. The file drops from my hands, and Mom immediately picks it up.
“What the fuck is that?”
“Seems he has a hobby of creating illegitimate children,’’ Kaya sighs.
“His daughter. By an affair partner, of course. Her name is Theodosia. Her mother is of Greek descent, but from what I could find, she passed during childbirth. Theodosia was placed with her maternal grandparents afterward. She should be around fifteen years old now.’’
Quickly, I snatch the files back from Mom, eyes skimming through the image.
Her hair is a little more curled than Blair’s, and her skin is more tan.
But the rest? They could pass as twins, no questions asked.
The same nose shape, the same little freckles around it, and even the shape of their ears is the same.
“But Hawke has a son who’s also fifteen,’’ Lucas scoffs. “He’s been busy, huh?”
Kaya rolls his eyes. “I’m assuming the reason he hasn’t signed Blair or Theodosia’s birth certificates was because they were girls. He needed boys to succeed the line of business.’’
“What a load of bullshit,’’ Mom spits. “Bastard.’’
“Then,’’ I swallow thickly, lifting my eyes from the image, looking at Kaya. “What about what I asked you to look into?”
I did it on a whim. Somehow, it occurred to me to have Kaya look into Amy Marshall.
The reason I sent Blair to Long Grove and why I had her take on the Amy persona was because the two looked freakishly alike.
Now that there’s another affair child by Alexander, I won’t rule out the possibility that Amy is one of his children, too.
Kaya shakes her head. “Not related. I did DNA tests, nothing came up. Blair and Amy just happen to look alike, that’s all.”
A deep sigh of relief comes from me, and even Mom relaxes from next to me. Lucas is mulling all the information in his head, whereas Niko is just… shocked. He’s never been the one to hide his emotions well, and it doesn’t take a genius to see that all of this has left him gobsmacked.
“What now?” Cove asks, folding his arms in front of his chest.
“Now,’’ I take a deep breath. “You and I need to go and check something out.’’
He tilts his head to the side, silently urging me to go on.
“Inside Alexander’s pocket was an address. I need to check it out and see what’s there, because it’s written on a piece of a napkin messily.’’
“Alright,’’ he immediately stands up. “Let’s get it over with.’’
New York manages to piss me off, yet again.
Cove’s barely holding back his anger issues, his jaw ticking every other minute.
His hands are twitching by his sides, desperate to start knocking people out left and right.
At least three different people have bumped into his shoulder in the past twenty minutes, and he’s at his limit.
And I’ve almost been pickpocketed.
Almost.
It was an unfortunate discovery for the unsuspecting teenager to see three different guns where my wallet should’ve been. Suffice to say that he fled as fast as his legs carried him and hasn’t even glanced back.
“It’s down the street,’’ I say, and Cove visibly relaxes, though his demeanor doesn’t shift at all. “This is a residential street. It’s likely an apartment.’’
“If he’s supposed to meet someone there, wouldn’t it be in a better hidden place?”
“Hidden in plain sight,’’ I say, quickening my pace. “Not too stupid, if you ask me. Especially because sheer luck is the reason we found out.’’
Cove’s voice fills my ears, but I don’t hear him at all.
My movements come to a stop, and my body freezes for a moment. I can’t breathe, and I can barely comprehend what I’m seeing. The long, silken dark hair. The same build, the same type of clothes.
My heart skips a beat, and hope flutters in my chest. Something I never should’ve allowed myself to feel — happiness. My throat starts closing up, and against my better judgement, I start walking again.
I move as quickly as possible, brushing past the sea of people. The closer I’m getting to the big pedestrian crossing, all of me is hoping and praying the light doesn’t turn green just yet.
Everything else fades into the background, Blair being my main focus. She’s here. She’s walking amongst everyone, and for a moment, I’m too compelled, too absorbed in this fantasy that I’ve been hoping would come true, to realize how fucking impossible that is.
It’s only when I’m five feet away that I halt abruptly, my heart sinking to my feet.
She fucking smells wrong.
My butterfly smells like the softest grass, the simplest taste of vanilla, one that screams home. The smell that gives me peace, the smell that keeps my demons away. A knot forms in my throat, pure rage bursts through my veins, and I’m unable to hold myself back.
The light turns green, and people start crossing the road. My heart hammers against my chest, my arm reaching out. I manage to wrap my hand around her hair just in time to prevent her from crossing the road, tightly gripping and pulling her back.
A scream comes from the depth of her throat as I spin her around. I can’t find it in me to truly care about the fact that we’re in public and that everyone could see this. All I can focus on is that now things have somehow gotten at least twenty times more complicated.
Her eyes widen, and they’re the wrong shade of brown. Blair’s is a deep caramel shade, with a speck of wooden color close to her iris. This girl has the plainest, most common shade of eyes. And quite frankly, they’re ugly to look at.
She’s missing the freckles I came to adore on my butterfly, her lips aren’t as plump as hers, and she doesn’t have the soft arch of her brows like Blair. However, I’m not an idiot. In an instant, I realize who I’m looking at, and the fact knocks the wind out of my lungs.
She knows who I am, too.
The fear in her eyes is something I’ve only ever seen in people I’ve killed. The terror, the trembling of the body that tells me just how scared she is. The way her face pales a shade, her mouth parts, and she’s unable to speak.
“Amy Marshall,’’ I hiss, grip on her hair tightening.
The girl flinches, swallowing thickly. Her hand comes to clasp around my wrist, a trembling mess that doesn’t deter me in the slightest. If anything, it pisses me off more that she dared to touch me.
No one except Blair touches me.
“Arlo,’’ Cove’s voice doesn’t cut the tension — it makes the air around us thicken. Amy’s eyes dart between Cove and me, trying to find a way out. “We’re in public.’’
My jaw clenches, and I take a deep breath.
That’s all it takes.
“You caught me off guard once, boy. It won’t happen again.’’
Before I can understand what she means, my eyes close. Pain shoots through my body, my eyes watering immensely. My hold on her hair falters just enough for her to escape, darting into the crowded space.
The cunt pepper sprayed me.