Chapter Twenty-Nine
TWENTY-NINE
Rocky
“You’re not talking to him,” I reinforce to my brother, who’s currently putting on the immaculate green of a members-only golf course. Without loaded pockets, you can’t step a pinky toe here—can’t even bring a friend, so yeah, I had to cough up Trevor’s country-club membership dues.
Thankfully Jake did pay me back for the most senseless purchase I’ve ever made. Kate has Bowie the horse. I have my money. Jake has his heart. Everyone is happy.
Speaking of the third-born heir, Jake is a few feet away, possibly in earshot, while he switches to a putter at the golf cart.
My brother wears all white. Can’t remember the last time I saw him in a fucking Ralph Lauren polo. But I’m trying here, I’m really trying to be a better mentor than the two he had. Our “father” never taught Trevor some of the most basic skills to infiltrate high society…like golf . My kid brother didn’t even know the correct form to swing a club.
“Talking to who?” Jake asks, returning with his putter.
“Varrick Wolfe,” Trevor says casually. It’s only us three out on the green. The sun is rising above the hills, casting an orange glow over the course.
It’s been three days since Varrick stalked my girlfriend and my sister. I don’t know what else to call it, because he had to have been casing the Honda. Why else was he out there past ten fucking p.m.?
“He could hire me as his assistant,” Trevor continues. “I could tell him I worked for the Prince of Wales. I literally studied everything about the British monarchy when I was ten. He’ll be begging to employ someone who’s been in royal circles.” He taps his ball, and it misses the hole by a foot, sliding down a slope and into a sandpit. “Shit.”
Jake grips his putter with a gloved hand. “Why would you need to know about the British monarchy at ten?” He rethinks immediately and holds up his hand. “Wait—I don’t want to know.”
I square up next to my ball. “How could you have worked for the Prince of Wales, Trev? You’re a nineteen-year-old in your third year at Caufield.” It was already a point of contention which grade we were enrolling him in. He wanted to be a fourth-year senior, citing the fact that he’s literally been taking college courses since he was fourteen. But there’s only so many grades we can say he’s skipped before people start poking into Boy Genius’s backstory.
“It could’ve been an internship,” Trevor grumbles as he walks down the hill for his ball.
With little effort, I hit my ball, and it slides across the green and into the hole.
Jake politely pats his hand in a subdued clap. He’s the one who asked me to a five a.m. tee time. As if I haven’t had enough crack-of-dawn golf games with his brother. But that was the reason he invited me here. I’d mentioned how I hated golf, and Jake asked, “Did you hate it before you started hanging out with my brother or after?”
I was quietly reflecting on that question when he said, “He has a habit of making you hate the things you like. Come play a round with me tomorrow morning.”
He didn’t hesitate when I asked if I could bring Trevor.
This morning on the course, I realize that I don’t really hate golf. Trent was starting to make me think I despised it.
Besides Phoebe, I’ve never had someone like Jake in my life. I hate so much about everything—and to be reminded that there are things still left to enjoy…
Maybe I like hanging out with him.
In moderation.
Jake taps his ball into the hole. “I can alert my security personnel about Varrick being a potential threat to our girlfriend.”
I make an annoyed face. Our girlfriend. It’s grated less and less on me the more he says it—because one alternative is Jake saying, My girlfriend .
And she’s not his.
It also reminds me that he’s looking out for Phebs during this con. Protecting her when I’m stuck with his fucking dickbag brother.
“I don’t trust your security,” I say. “No offense, but they’re more your mother’s people than yours.” Everett is managing the staff at the Koning estate, but he’s cautioned us that he has little control over their private security, who are usually only posted at the front gate unless told otherwise. “The best thing is to keep your security lax. They need to think there’s no threats around. Let them kick their feet up and snore.”
Trevor hits his ball back onto the green. “You know, I might not even be nineteen. I could be your age, Rocky.”
“I’m older than you, shithead.”
His lip slightly lifts.
Jake turns his back to the sun. “I asked Hailey if there was a blood test that could determine age.”
I already know the answer because I asked her, too. “Nothing that’d be accurate enough,” I say. “It can only estimate age within two to three years. But I remember this one when he was a baby.” I point my putter at Trevor. “My eyes didn’t deceive me when I had to change your diapers or when you hit a growth spurt at fourteen.” I’d been twenty. Or I was told I was twenty.
Trevor’s gaze relaxes on me with fondness. “?‘Believe nothing you hear, and only half of what you see.’?”
“I’ve seen you,” I remind him. “Throughout your whole life. I’ve seen you scrape your knees trying to ride a bike. I’ve seen you learn how to swim, then master the perfect dive. I’ve seen you tinker with toys, instruments, machinery, and computers, and rely way too heavily on your good looks to pick up people.”
“It didn’t take a pretty face to pick up Sidney.” He rests the golf club on his shoulder.
“How’s that going?” I ask him, since he’s still been spending more time with Sidney ever since The Hunt. He barely talked about that afternoon bopping around town to solve riddles with her. The way he shrugged about it, I thought she bored him.
But not enough if he’s been actively spotted at the ice cream parlor and coffee shop with her.
“It’s going,” Trevor says vaguely, nothing on his face to read.
Jake and I visibly tense, but he asks first, “She hasn’t been inappropriate with you, has she?”
“What he’s trying to say is, she hasn’t groped your dick without consent?”
Jake side-eyes me like I’m corrupting the youth.
“He’s nineteen ,” I retort.
Trevor looks between us with a slanted smile. “No unconsented passes.” He clutches the golf club like a barbell over his deltoids. “She’s a virgin.”
I didn’t want to know that.
Jake scrapes a hand through his thick hair but freezes when Trevor adds, “Or she was one, before me.”
Great.
Fucking rigor mortis is setting in. Bury me.
“Are you playing her?” Jake asks cautiously.
“No…I think Sidney is using me to piss off her father.” At least he sees that. He drops the club off his shoulder. “Her life is sad.” He stares out at the green manicured valleys, a look in his eyes he’s wrestling. “I’m not trying to make it sadder.”
He’s struggled with empathy.
“Did you wear a condom?” I ask him.
“No, I raw-dogged her.”
“Wow.” Jake nods a lot with flattened lips, looking like a disappointed dad. I half expect him to go into a lecture on safe sex.
“He’s lying,” I tell him.
Trevor raises his brows in confirmation to Jake, then says to me, “ Yes , I wore a condom.” He leans on his club. “What am I, twelve?”
“Just checking in, knucklehead.” I swipe his club, and he trips.
He catches his balance and straightens up with a laugh. “You wear a condom when you stick it in Phoebe? Just checking in.”
Jake’s head spins like The Exorcist to me.
I’m glaring. “We need boundaries,” I tell my brother.
“You started it.”
“Eh, I’m older, and I get to ask if you’re being safe. You don’t get to talk about Phoebe like that. Ever. ”
“Like what? It’s anatomical. Your dick. Your cum. Her cunt—”
“Kill me.” I turn to Jake. “Just do it. Off me now so I don’t strangle him.”
Jake laughs hard, and the fact that he sees the humor in this weird back-and-forth is making me like him a little more. “You brought him here,” he reminds me.
“Regrettably.”
I don’t regret it, which is why Trevor smiles more, too. It’s hard to set boundaries when he knows I’d forgive him for a lot. But it’s going to drive me out of my fucking mind every time he brings up Phoebe.
Trevor reclaims his putter from me.
And I’m caught on his features.
His eyes.
I stare deeper into them. Gray. One of the rarest colors, and yet, we’re not related. Not even to Hailey, who has the same shade.
My face hardens in an instant.
“What is it?” Trevor frowns.
“Our eyes,” I tell him in a haunted thought. “They picked you for your eye color. So it’d be the same as Hailey’s and mine. So we wouldn’t question that we were related.”
Trevor leans on his putter with two hands again. “So I was stolen or adopted into a life of crime because of my fucking eyes?”
“Yeah. I think so.”
He glares at the rising sun, then faces me. “Should I be mad? Because I like my life, Rock. I like being your brother. I like traveling around the country. I liked learning about the British monarchy and getting to sit in at an Ivy League lecture hall when I was seventeen. I like what we do. No, I love it. I won the motherfucking lottery!” He shouts loud enough that birds fly out of the nearby trees.
“Jesus Christ,” I say with an eye roll.
“I’m not you and Hailey—I don’t care where I came from. All that matters to me is where I’m going.”
“Okay,” I breathe out, trying to shove off the weight that’s compressed on my chest. But it’s difficult when I feel an intense responsibility toward doing right by him. Ever since we learned he’s not Addison and Everett’s…he’s felt like mine. Maybe he was always mine in a strange way.
“Where are you going, if that’s all that matters to you?” Jake asks him.
Trevor lines up in front of his ball and takes a long moment to study the shot before he sinks it with one smooth hit. He smiles. “Wherever he’s going.” He tilts his head toward me. “I’m there.”
This kid.
I shake my head, but there’s an immense amount of love for him that I can’t shake off. Not even as we hop on the golf cart and head toward the next hole.
Sitting in the back, Trevor leans forward to stick his head between Jake and me. “New plan. I did a summer abroad and a three-week internship with the Earl of Wessex. I’ll ask Varrick for an internship and tell him I need to pad my résumé before graduation.”
Jake grips the steering wheel tighter. “Wouldn’t Varrick call your royal references?”
“He would,” I say and glance to Trevor. “How do you know Varrick cares about hiring someone with a royal résumé?”
“Everyone cares about status here.”
“Not everyone,” I shoot back. “You can’t assume everyone is the same. People have different motivations, different reasons for why they drop a grand like it’s a five-dollar bill. And I’ve said this a thousand times, there are some people you do not fuck with.”
“Stay away from anyone who’s in the dark triad,” Trevor says, “I heard you a thousand and one times.”
Jake frowns. “The dark triad?”
Trevor grins and places his chin on his fist, looking to me like he’s enjoying this crash course in the art of confidence games.
I push his head back. “The dark triad of traits. It’s a psychological theory of personality. But for us, anyone with all three traits can be harder to manipulate.”
“What are the three?”
“Narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism. They lack empathy, among other things. And they’re likely already running Ponzi schemes or committing crimes.”
Until Trevor can tell who those people are, I worry about him choosing a mark of his own, but I also don’t want to control him like our parents did.
“You think Varrick is in the dark triad?” Jake asks.
“I don’t know,” I sigh. “We’ve only interacted once.” And that was a month ago at The Hunt. I don’t have any other evidence besides the way he looked at me—and that instinct, that gut feeling, it means something but it’s not enough. Still, when I learned about his family’s tragic backstory and Varrick being the last Wolfe standing—that only intensified those same feelings. I tell them, “Varrick showing up outside the grocery store and scaring Phoebe and Hailey can’t be a coincidence. He’s up to something.”
“Maybe he just has the hots for Phoebe,” Trevor says, coming forward again.
“Sit down,” I snap and push my brother back down into his seat.
Jake is glaring out the windshield. “He’s in his forties.”
“Older men have hit on PG before,” Trevor says. “It’s literally her role to entice them. Spread her—”
I grab the collar of his polo. “One more word and you’re eating grass.”
He looks at me like I’m the problem. “It’s legitimately the fucking truth, Rock. Be mad at the person who assigned her the role, not me.”
“I’m mad at everyone, how’s that?” I let go of his shirt.
“Who assigned her the role?” Jake wonders.
“That’s hard to say,” I breathe out. “Maybe her mom. Maybe mine. Maybe my dad. Maybe all three of them.”
“Her own mom?” Jake grimaces.
“You do know Elizabeth is also in the same role, right?” Trevor asks Jake. “She’s the OG seductress.”
Jake parks the golf cart at the next hole. “I didn’t know that. Actually.” He catches my gaze. “Phoebe said she loved her mom.”
“You’ve never met Elizabeth,” I tell him. “But there’s a natural warmth to her that’s hard to manufacture, and I do believe, in her own warped mind, she really loves her kids. There were times she chose positions in a job that Phoebe might have taken. Positions with older men that were far worse than anything Phoebe has done. So yeah, Phoebe loved her…loves her…maybe there will always be something there. I don’t know.”
Trevor jumps out of the golf cart, and I hang back with Jake. My phone buzzes in my pocket, and I groan when Trent’s name is on the screen. For a second, I was actually enjoying my morning—even if it consisted of deep diving into our twisted histories.
Jake sees my screen. “Don’t answer it.”
“I can’t let him go to my voicemail.” I answer on the third ring.
“Grey!” Trent’s hysterical voice is new to me. “I need you now. Shit, fuck, shit .” He sounds like he’s about to have a panic attack. “Something horrible just happened.”
I smile.