6. Mallory #2
Paisley shrugged, unwrapping the paper from her straw. “No one knows.”
Atlas leaned forward, a piece of his auburn hair falling into his eyes. “And now she’s dating their older brother, Kreed.”
I blinked. “They’re dating?”
Atlas nodded, reaching to take a sip of his drink. “Kreed and Kaylor graduated last year, but their relationship was the hottest topic at Public—the girl who finally captured Kreed Corvo’s dark heart.”
My breadstick paused halfway to my mouth. “And you think the Corvos might be involved with these missing girls?”
Atlas’s expression lost all traces of the lightness he’d carried earlier. “I think they know more than they are revealing. Six girls gone in the last year that we know of.”
That we know of.
The phrase echoed in my head. My appetite dulled, replaced by a familiar, crawling unease that settled low in my gut.
“Most of them went to Elmwood Public,” Paisley continued. “There were rumors at school that Kaylor had been taken, but if that’s true, and she returned…”
I set the last bite of my breadstick down on my plate. “Have you talked to her?”
Atlas shook his head. “We tried, but the Corvos are protective as fuck, especially with her. No one could get near to her when she suddenly came back. And then they graduated.”
Taking my napkin, I dabbed at the corner of my mouth just as the server came to take our order.
I quickly picked up the menu and rattled off the first thing my eyes landed on.
This conversation was too good to get distracted by food.
“What about Mason and Maddox?” I asked when the server left to put in our orders.
Atlas was working on his second breadstick. “They won’t talk to us.”
Was Atlas and Paisley probing part of the reason for the tension I sensed between Paisley and Mason? I wanted to ask, but I could tell Paisley didn’t want to talk about it.
“We don’t have proof, not yet, but we think the girls might have been human trafficked and sold on the black market,” Paisley said. “It’s the theory that makes the most sense when you put all the pieces together.”
“Jesus,” I whispered, my heartbeat in my throat now, steady and too loud.
Paisley leaned forward, her elbows on the table, hands clasped together. “We’ve been following it for a while. Nothing official. Just gathering facts, tracking timelines, and trying to connect dots. There has to be something everyone is missing.”
My potential new friends were amateur investigators.
That was the first reason fear prickled under my skin.
The second reason was my mother.
If she caught even a whiff of something like this happening in Elmwood, girls disappearing, whispers of sex trafficking, she wouldn’t call the police. She wouldn’t wait for justice to work its slow, bureaucratic way through a system she didn’t trust.
She’d hunt. Methodically. Efficiently. Especially when this would hit too damn close to home.
Revenge wasn’t an emotion to her, not something hot and impulsive.
It was a solution. A mathematical equation that always ended the same way.
And Elmwood would run red before anyone knew what was happening.
“Isn’t what you’re doing dangerous?” I pressed, needing to understand what they knew, what they’d pieced together, whether it was solid enough to—
To what? To tell my mom? To not tell her?
“Sometimes it feels like it’s more dangerous to sit and do nothing.
I don’t want to be one of those girls who vanish without a trace,” Paisley said, her voice steady but quiet.
“Someone had to see something, know something, and because every single time someone starts asking real questions, parents, friends, a teacher who gave a shit, they either get shut down hard or scared off.”
“Or paid,” Atlas added, his fingers now still on the table, pressed flat against the surface. “Silence is expensive, and someone in this town has money to burn. Someone like Mason and Maddox’s father.”
My fingers tightened around my glass, the condensation cold and slick against my palm. The ice inside clinked softly as I lifted it to my mouth. “Have you asked them?”
Before either could answer, our food arrived, platters high with pasta set on the table. Paisley smiled at the server and thanked her before turning back to me. “We don’t have a death wish.”
Atlas picked up his fork. “You need to be careful who you trust.”
Steam rolled off the marinara sauce in front of me. Classic spaghetti. “This doesn’t frighten you?”
“Fuck yeah, it does, but not as much as the alternative. We all have something to lose.” Paisley stabbed a meatball.
Atlas tilted his head, studying me. “You okay?”
“Yeah.” I took a bite of pasta I didn’t taste, chewing mechanically. “It’s just…a lot to process.”
“Sorry,” Paisley apologized. “I didn’t mean to dump all this on you at once. I tend to jump into things feetfirst without thinking. I know it’s heavy, but I also think it’s important you know to be careful.”
Lifting his fork in the air with pasta twirled around it, sauce dripping on the table, Atlas gave a mock salute. “Welcome to fucking Elmwood.”
I wasn’t scared for myself. Not really. Not in the way normal people got scared. I’d grown up around monsters. Real ones.
But I was terrified of what would happen if my mom found out about this.
Frightened of how quickly Elmwood’s quaint charm would turn into a crime scene if Mara Hales decided justice needed her personal touch. How many bodies would stack up?
Because if Mom found out about the missing girls, she wouldn’t stop until every single person involved was dead. And I wasn’t sure if that scared me because it was wrong.
Or because part of me thought they deserved it.