“So give them to one of your friends.” I fake a gasp. “Oh, wait, aren’t they all in jail?”
The corners of her eyes tighten. “You can look after the papers, or I will find someone else to do so.” She lifts one hand and studies her long, cream-painted fingernails. “Though I’m not sure if little Charlotte?—”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” I snap. “Give them to me.”
I don’t bother appealing to her motherly instincts. I’d be wasting my time. Holding a sick girl hostage takes a certain kind of person. My mom wants what she wants, and damn anyone who gets in her way.
She sets her glass down on the coffee table and picks up a medium-sized archive box from the floor beside her. She offers it to me. “Here. Bring it back when strangers have stopped invading my privacy.”
“Your husband went to prison for buying and selling omegas. They won’t stop until they get everyone responsible.” I give her a knowing look. “Even their complicit wives.”
Her eyes are flints of ice. “You think I don’t know who was responsible for putting him there? I don’t know how you did it, but I know it was you, and you will suffer right alongside him. Until my dying day, youwillsuffer, Torin.”
“So point the finger, Mother,” I taunt. “Go to the cops and tell them I was involved.”
Her lips flatten.
I widen my eyes. “Oh, wait, you need evidence.” Because I know the games she likes to play, I fish my cell phone out of my pocket and flip it so she can see the screen. “It’s been recording since before I walked in here. So if you’re thinking about telling the cops that all this incriminating evidence is mine…”
She shoves the box at me, snarling, “Get out of my house.”
And I know I’ve won, this round at least.
I take the box from her and walk away. I’ve nearly reached the entryway when she calls out, “If you take those papers to the police, the first person who will pay for it is?—”
“Yes,” I cut in, voice hard. “Please threaten to harm your deathly sick next-door neighbor. That never gets old,” I say sarcastically.
The servants are nowhere to be seen as I walk through the entryway and outside the house.
My phone rings as I slide behind the wheel of my BMW. I dump the box on the passenger seat, scrubbing my hands on the front of my jeans to wipe away the memory of having touched the disgusting thing. Mom could have burned it, but whatever nastiness that box contains probably belongs to my dad.
Slamming my door shut, I answer the call after glancing at the caller ID. “Yeah?”
“Just checking you’re still alive,” Archer says.
He always calls after I have a ‘request’ to visit my family. The first time was a joke. It stopped being a joke a long time ago.
I put my phone on the hands-free mount in my car and, with a sigh, study the house I just walked out of. It’s one of the most beautiful homes in the city. Twelve bedrooms. Nearly twenty acres. Upward of ten million dollars if Mom ever decided she wanted to sell it. The Pearson Mansion is another in a long line of mansions in an exclusive, gated community that overlooks the city.
And a cage.
“She wants me to hold something for her. The police must think she’s involved for them to be sniffing so long.” I don’t bother looking through the box. I know what my parents are capable of, and I feel dirty having touched the thing.
“Give whatever it is to the cops,” is his response. From the frustration in his voice, he knows that dealing with my mom isn’t as easy as just going to the cops.
I snap on my seatbelt and turn away from the house, relieved to be away from it—and her. “She’s a gin-soaked black widow, Archer. It’s why the servants hide from her. Whatever we do, we have to get Lottie free first.”
And not just Lottie. Enough medication that she won’t die within days of us freeing her.
Once, we nearly got away. Now my mom and her friends use Lottie to control us. None of us wanted anything to do with Asylum, and because we know all their secrets, they can never let us go for fear of what we’ll say.
“I’m going out again,” he says.
I start the engine and pull away from the mansion. “You won’t find her.”
Juniper Harrington has disappeared.
The first place we went looking for her after security threw us out of the hospital when we tried to visit her was her parents' house.
