11. Milo
11
Milo
T he search results on Thea were inconclusive. According to my software program, Thea Ricci was a 20-year-old student from a small town in rural Italy, the only daughter of a butcher and schoolteacher. She had an older brother called Elio, who worked as a car mechanic and boxed in his free time.
At first glance, the information looked legit, but the more I thought about it, the less it made sense.
Why would a girl from a small town choose to attend Abernethy College? The fees were astronomical, for starters, and even if she wanted to go to college in the UK, a small, exclusive college in Scotland would hardly be the first choice of a girl like Thea.
The deeper I dug, the less I believed Thea’s background information. Sure, there may well be a girl called Thea who lived in a small town in Umbria, but she wasn’t the girl who’d taken down four men in an underground fight club.
I had no clue who that girl was, or even whether her real name was Thea, but there was something off about her presence here.
The guys had asked for updates this morning. Landon seemed way more invested in Thea than normal, which was worrying, but he soon relaxed when I relayed what I’d discovered.
Maybe she’s a scholarship student,” he mused, knowing as well as I did how steep the fees were. Only the richest families could afford to send their kids to Abernethy. “Although the guy who dropped her off didn’t seem like a regular Joe.”
My ears pricked up. “What do you mean?”
“She called him papa, but he acted more like a bodyguard than a father. The guy gave off serial killer vibes.”
“Out of interest, exactly how many serial killers have you met?” Kyril interjected.
“Fuck off, mudak .” Oh great . Landon had been learning new Russian curse words on Google Translate. That was bound to end well. Kyril had a short fuse at the best of times. “I watched a documentary on Ted Bundy, OK? The guy had a similar vibe.”
“You should meet my otets. He’s a fucking real-life serial killer,” Kyril sneered. “With a much higher body count than Bundy.”
“Congrats, you’re related to an unhinged serial killer. You win, mudak .” Landon rolled his eyes.
“Call me mudak again, and I’ll show you all the tricks Otets taught me while you were still sucking on your mama’s tit.”
“Did this serial killer guy have a name?” I asked, growing tired of their stupid bickering.
Landon turned back to me. “No, she just called him papa, but he said something about how he’d take care of Verity. No clue who she is, a sister maybe?”
I made a note of the name and added it to the search parameters. Maybe there was another Thea out there. Either that or someone had created a fake persona in case anyone dug into Thea’s identity.
Thea’s non-existent online footprint was suspicious. Even I, the most private person I knew, had a carefully curated Instagram. Sure, I only ever posted photos of coffee cups or random shit like rainwater puddles, but it was there.
It showed I was alive, existing in the world.
Landon was always on social media. He lived for TikTok and posted daily. Kyril wasn’t a fan, but he had a TikTok account, where he followed a few popular MMA fighters. Cassian rarely posted anything on his official Instagram or TikTok, but he used Snapchat.
That was the one platform we all used. Most recently, Landon had taken to sending us all photos of his cock, which was fucking annoying. The last time he shared a video of himself jacking off, Kyril threatened to cut his balls off.
Thea had no social media presence whatsoever. Nor did anyone called Verity Ricci. The only Verity Ricci I could find was a 67-year-old woman who posted a ridiculous number of cat photos on Instagram.
She didn’t live anywhere near Thea, and there appeared to be no obvious links between the two.
Was Thea a fake identity? Or did someone scrub her online footprint?
According to her college application, she’d completed high school in the town listed on the data profile I’d uncovered. She was an average student. Not especially academic, but good enough to get into Abernethy. This was followed by a year at a local college.
Her high school record was exemplary. No non-attendance citations. No detentions. Absolutely nothing to suggest Thea had a worryingly violent streak. There was no record of a sister or otherwise called Verity. So if Verity existed, she didn’t appear to be Thea’s sister.
It was a mystery.
“Have you been up all night?” Cassian narrowed his eyes, taking in the empty coffee mugs and energy drinks. He was well aware of my obsessive tendencies.
I ignored him while tweaking my code.
“Milo, take a chill pill. The girl’s not important. I have bigger fish to fry.”
That caught my attention. “Oh?”
He dropped onto my bed with a heavy sigh and I scanned his face. He looked exhausted. Worse than me. Judging by the purple shadows beneath his eyes, he’d had very little sleep either.
“My father wants me home next weekend,” he said, scrubbing his jaw. “He’s invited Camilla and her family for dinner.”
That wasn’t good. “Is he still pushing for the engagement?”
I watched my friend as he slumped forward like he wore the weight of the world on his shoulders. I suppose in a way he did. To most people, being born the son of Lucian Forsyth was like being gifted a golden chalice.
The Forsyths were wealthy and influential. Lucian owned controlling shares in several high-profile companies and had the ear of the Prime Minister all matters security related, plus the Forsyths were from Old Money and enjoyed significant generational wealth.
To Lucian Forsyth, power was far more important than his son’s happiness.
My father would never win a Parent of the Year award, but at least he left me to my own devices, which suited me just fine. Lucian, on the other hand, was in Cassian’s face constantly. And it had got a whole lot worse since the scandal when we were 17.
“Yeah. The world can expect an engagement announcement imminently.”
“Jesus.” Camilla Bale-Lyon was a vacuous blond troll. I’d seen her at various events over the years. One gust of wind and she’d fall over. She seemed to subsist on lemon water and lettuce, just like her mother, but her mother’s family had close links to the king and her father owned a multi-national business Lucian had had his eye on for years.
“In return for selling off his son, Dad gets a seat on the board of Bale Industries, plus access to the Royal Family. He couldn’t be more happy.” The smile he threw me was more of a rictus. “He doesn’t even care about grandkids, not that Camilla could have kids, anyway. The bitch doesn’t eat enough to sustain a pregnancy.”
“So you wouldn’t have to fuck her? It would be a marriage in name only?”
Cassian collapsed backward on my rumpled bed and closed his eyes.
“I should be so lucky. We both know Camilla wants me. She’s been stalking me for years. If I don’t play the role of a loving husband, she’ll kick off, her father will be pissed, and then my father will punish me.”
He had a point. Camilla had followed him around at every event they both attended, mooning after him like a cat in heat. She was always there, rubbing her emaciated body all over Cassian, staking her claim.
Before his father made it clear Camilla was in Cassian’s future, Cass had treated Camilla like a nasty case of herpes, even going so far as to make out with other girls in front of her. Nothing worked. She’d screamed, cried, and still come back for more humiliation.
I suspected it was because she knew Cassian was her end game, even if he chose to stick his head in the sand and his dick in every other woman he could find.
“What are you going to do?”
“What can I do? Dad has this all sewn up. He may even have signed a contract with Camilla’s father. I certainly wouldn’t put it past the old bastard.” He sounded utterly defeated. My heart sank. He was my best friend. The last thing I wanted was to see him forced into a marriage of convenience to suit his evil father.
“Jesus, who died?” Landon stood in my doorway guzzling down a protein shake. As usual, he wore nothing but a pair of athletic shorts. From the light sheen of sweat coating his golden skin, he’d been out for a run.
“Me.” Cassian sat up and rubbed his eyes. “Anyway, enough of my troubles. I have a lecture to go to and you need some sleep.” He fixed me with a hard stare. “The girl from last night is irrelevant. I don’t care who she is and why she’s here, so don’t go falling down a rabbit hole.”
“Sure,” I lied. It was too late. I was already obsessed, but he didn’t need to know that. Not with all the Camilla shit hanging over him.
Cassian walked out with Landon trailing after him, asking a million questions. I heard him utter some choice curse words about Camilla before my bedroom door closed, sealing me away from the rest of the apartment.
On-screen, my program continued spitting out small nuggets of information, but none of it was relevant. I needed to get closer to my target. It was the only way to figure out who she was and why she’d come here.