Chapter 56
Chapter Fifty-Six
Poppy
The grannies held martini glasses but didn’t bother with sipping from them.
They seemed more for show than anything else.
Men gyrated and paraded themselves around with thongs that barely concealed anything.
It was an odd place for them to invite me for dinner, and I didn’t know how I felt about it, but at least I was away from the chaos of wedding planning that I hardly had anything to do with.
At least I was away from Donovan. I thought for sure these women knew how to get rid of a body, but I didn’t know how to go about asking.
They seemed to be dangerous, but maybe I was wrong.
A part of me wanted to be wrong and right. I needed them.
“Your father,” Grandmother’s—as she insisted she be called— eyes skipped over the men milling about. “Was not a good man.”
This was a very odd place to have this conversation.
Chips and salsa were placed between us by a very tan, oiled-up man.
I didn’t know if it was appropriate to look at his body or the barely there thong.
I didn’t know where to put my eyes. I wanted to be anywhere else.
We could have done this at a coffee shop.
Nana—who would also not disclose her real name—pinched her bright red lips together before setting her martini on the table. “We need you to understand that your father had planned to sell you to the Maddens and not for marriage. Your brothers made the agreement… not so barbaric.”
I reared back. “Excuse me?”
“We not only have the correspondence between them, but we also have the documents. You were to be sold off to the highest bidder.” Grandmother leaned back in her chair and watched me with careful eyes.
“Your virginity, of course,” Nana clarified.
I blinked. My virginity?
“Your OBGYN has been giving classified documentation to your father for years about your lack of sex life.”
They both smiled slowly. “That was until you met our boy Ivan in the mountains. He didn’t know you had given it up then and was signing papers as you were hitting the slopes.”
“And our grandson.”
Oh my gosh. This… “How did you know about that?”
“We knew you were at the Lodge when we were visiting Ivan. We hoped it was you; it wasn’t until we combed the security footage that we saw you two leave together.”
They… they combed the security footage? A part of me was regretting almost calling them.
I’d wanted to. I’d stood outside of the Cristof’s building and stared down at my phone, but no matter how long I stared at one of the granny’s number…
I couldn’t do it. But instead, they called just as I was about to enter the building.
They wanted to meet with me about something, but it could only be done in person.
Emeline’s men wouldn’t let me leave without one of them and talking to their boss, of course.
So I currently have two very scary older women staring me down with a shadow hanging out against the wall.
Nothing made sense. “How do you know these things?”
They looked at each other and made faces. “About the security or?”
“My father.” It was all I cared about—all I wanted to know about right now.
Grandmother let out a deep sigh and somewhat sagged in her chair.
“My son got caught up in sex trafficking.” She coughed.
“Caught up, like it was an accident. He was the leader, and he did some horrific things. We started doing some digging after all of this was uncovered and found others involved. Others were making their own branches. Your father worked closely with my son, but your brothers and others had been making moves for a while. Girls have been going missing in the city. It’s no longer girls from other countries. It’s closer to home.”
I’d always known my father was a bad man. I’d seen the callousness in his eyes, but this… this was actually knowing. Ivan was right; there was no going back.
I took a deep breath. “Did you know my mother wasn’t really my mother?”
They nodded in unison. “We found out a lot about your family when we began digging.”
It was all so trippy. Being in a strip club for men while discovering all of this… I let out a breath and shook my head. How did I move forward?
“Did Ivan kill my brothers?”
They shook their heads again. “No, that was low-level business.”
“I still have to marry Donovan.”
“We know,” Nana leaned forward and pinched her lips together. “We are making a plan for you to get out.”
“Why?” That was probably the biggest question of it all. Why did they care about me? Why did they care about Jane? Why not my mother and Jade?
“You’re innocent in all of this.” Nana’s eyes softened, and she reached across the table to pat my hand. “So is Jane. Neither one of you deserves the hands you’ve been dealt. Though your parents were callous and cruel, you both ended up kind and compassionate. That rarely happens.”
I’d managed to stay as far away from my parents for as long as I could.
“Kindness,” Grandmother said, swirling her untouched martini, “isn’t something you inherit. It’s something you choose. And you, dear, have chosen it again and again. Even when the world kept trying to harden you.”
“Shame you’re going to have to un-choose it now,” Nana added with a bright, almost cheerful smile. “Murder changes a woman.”
I inhaled sharply. “I never said I was murdering anyone.”
“Sweetheart,” Grandmother said gently, “you walked into this club wearing that—after your own engagement party—and a soul full of vengeance. You’re murdering someone.”
The oiled-up man returned with a basket of chips and knelt beside the table to refresh the salsa, his thong glittering under the neon lights. I stared at his bronzed thigh because looking either granny in the eye right now was impossible.
“Donovan has already shown you what he is,” Nana continued. “He won’t stop after marriage. He won’t stop after Jane turns eighteen. He won’t stop until he owns everything. Including your future children.”
My throat closed. “I know.”
“And Ivan?” Grandmother pressed, tilting her head. “He is the one thing Donovan will never allow you to keep. That man nearly beat our boy to death because he couldn’t stand the thought of you choosing someone else.”
Her voice cracked a fraction on boy. It gutted me.
Nana snapped her fingers at the shadow looming in the corner—the guard I’d brought along with me. “You see Gino over there? He once removed a man’s spleen with a steak knife.”
Gino lifted his hand in a polite half-wave. I blinked.
Grandmother leaned forward. “We are offering you an out. Not because you asked for one. Not because we want anything from you. But because you are family now. Whether you marry Ivan or run off into the sunset with a goat farmer is irrelevant to us.”
“A goat farmer?” I whispered.
“Well,” Nana shrugged, “the quiet ones are always the freaks.”
A hysterical laugh burst out of me before I could stop it. Tears gathered in the corners of my eyes—not from sadness but from the sheer absurdity of sitting between two elderly women in a male strip club while discussing sex trafficking, murder contracts, and goat farmers.
Grandmother reached into her purse—an elegant white clutch that didn’t match the neon hellscape around us—and slid a small envelope across the table.
“This,” she said, tapping it once, “is everything we have on Donovan, your brothers, your father, and the Maddens’ trafficking enterprises. Documentation. Account numbers. Correspondence. Contracts.”
My fingers trembled as I stared at it.
“Why give this to me?” I asked again, voice barely a whisper.
Grandmother’s smile softened into something devastatingly maternal. “Because truth is power, darling. And right now, you’re walking into war without armor.”
“And because,” Nana added, “Ivan loves you. My God, the amount of brooding that boy does—honestly, I could slap him.”
I pressed my lips together, my heart squeezing so hard it felt bruised.
“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with all this,” I choked out.
Grandmother’s expression turned steel. “You survive. You take your sister. You get through this wedding. And when the moment is right—when Donovan believes he has won—you kill the king.”
Nana lifted her martini glass like we were making a toast. “And we will handle disposing of the body.”
My breath stuttered.
“You’d help me kill him?” I whispered.
“No,” Nana corrected firmly. “We would help you make sure he never hurts another girl.”
Grandmother’s fingers wrapped gently around mine.
“Sweetheart… sometimes good women have to do terrible things. Your mother and brothers were born cruel. You were not. That is precisely why Donovan fears you. That is why the Maddens wanted to buy you. And that,” she squeezed my hand, “is why you will win.”
Something in my chest broke open—fear and fury and grief and purpose all merging into one violent, electric pulse.
I stared at the envelope.
At the truth.
“I’ll do it,” I whispered.
Both women smiled like they had been waiting for that answer all night.
“Oh, darling,” Nana purred, reaching for her martini. “We knew you would.”
***
I stumbled into Emeline Cristof’s penthouse drunk as a skunk and tripping over my own feet. The grannies insisted I cut loose for once, that I needed it, and that they would look over me while I finally took the edge off. It felt good.
A giggle escaped my lips as I fought with my heels. Gino had tried to help me out of the elevator, but I waved him off. I didn’t want anyone to think I’d taken him home with me. All of the men in the lobby knew who Gino was, but I wasn’t so sure Jane or Emeline knew him or his face.
“Wow,” A voice I didn’t recognize said from the couch and I stopped hopping around like an idiot. “I never thought I’d see your love’s vagina, but I guess there’s a first for everything.”
I blinked and frowned as I looked around.
Sitting on the couch was Ivan’s sister-in-law, Carina, nursing a baby.
Or I thought that was what she was doing since there was a cover-up over her, and I could hear the grunting noises of a baby.
Across from her was Ivan, who definitely looked better, but not good.
He was still pale, and there were still dark bruises marring most of his exposed skin.
That was enough to stop me in my tracks.
Jane was practically curled up at Carina’s side, and Emeline was sipping from a glass of wine.
“Hi,” I squeaked.
“You are so gorgeous, even more so in person,” Carina beamed.
I blinked again—slowly—because my brain was lagging behind my eyeballs.
“Thank you,” I mumbled, then hiccupped. Loudly.
Emeline giggled behind her wine glass.
Ivan didn’t.
He stood—or tried to. His good hand gripped the back of the chair like he was physically stopping himself from coming toward me.
His jaw tightened. His eyes dragged over me, taking in my slightly askew blazer dress, the cape half falling off my shoulder, my hair that had once been sleek but now looked like I’d escaped a wind tunnel, and—
Oh God.
Carina’s intro.
Your love’s vagina.
I slapped my legs together instinctively. “I wasn’t—It’s not—You didn’t see anything!”
Carina shook her head as her lips stretched even further with amusement. “Don’t worry, honey. It was just while you were jumping around like a flamingo trying to get your shoes off.”
Jane chewed on her bottom lip. “The rest of us didn’t see anything. Especially him.” She pointed at Ivan, and my cheeks flamed.
“Good,” I blurted, voice an octave too high. “Because he doesn’t get to see anything. No one gets to see anything. Ever. Especially not when I’m—” I staggered slightly, catching myself on the back of a chair. “—compromised.”
Carina snorted. “Sweetheart, you’re more than compromised. You’re drunk and shiny.”
“I am not shiny,” I protested.
“You’re shiny,” Jane whispered.
Emeline gave an elegant nod. “Very shiny.”
I slapped my hands over my face and groaned. “This is humiliating.”
Ivan kept his eyes on me as I continued to try to walk down the hallway—or rather, I was trying to escape with some of my dignity intact. “Do you need some help?”
“Not from you!” I blurted and then smacked my palm to my forehead. “I mean, you’re still injured.”
The door down the hallway opened to Ivan’s bedroom, and my heart bottomed out. He had someone here already? Someone in his bed?
The last person I’d expected to come out of his room was Ace. Which made it hilarious for some reason, and before I knew it, I was in a fit of giggles, trying to get down the hall again. I’d been so worried about someone else warming his bed, and it was just his brother.
Everyone watched me with wide eyes and worried expressions as I somehow made it into my room and closed the door behind me.
I sagged against it and slowly sunk to the floor.
With a defeated sigh, I clenched my thighs together.
All I wanted was a good toy or maybe even the real thing from Ivan…
but even if he wasn’t injured, he was off limits.
It didn’t matter how drunk I got; that was crystal clear.
At least not until I killed Donovan, and I wasn’t so sure Ivan would want me anymore once I did that.
Who would want a woman who killed? Especially a woman who killed her husband.