“If you wanted someone to track where Avion was, you could have just asked, you know?” he said. “I don’t get emotional about things like this. I actually would have just asked and come back by now.”
“Don’t be childish,” I barked. “Kelly knows this stuff. She knows…mystuff. She was the best one to discuss it with Avion.”
Milli let out an irritated sigh. “Well I have actual things to do today. Do you want to hear about what I’ve learned, or do you want me to go?”
“No, no,” I said, running my hands through my hair and taking a big, deep breath. “I’m okay. I need the distraction. Tell me.”
“The Narzands have taken a sort of divide-and-conquer approach,” he said. “While Vincent is schmoozing as his father’s lieutenant, Anton appears to be handling more of the things under the surface. You may be thinking that this sounds pretty par for the course, and it is, but something doesn’t feel right to me.”
“What?” I asked.
“Anton is not the killer. From everything I’ve seen, he’s much more passive than his brother and is probably most likely just a victim of Vincent’s massive ego and starvation for power like the rest of us. I’ve had a few conversations with Avion about them, and she’s told me that Anton has always felt more like a brother compared to Vincent who has always been cold and unfeeling. Things like the raid at the hospital or the attack on your father, those things don’t match Anton’s type. He’d go much more subdued, or try and take us down by other means. The psychological torment feels much more Vincent than Anton.”
“So maybe it’s Vincent working through Anton?” I said. “That’s possible.”
“It is, but have you ever seen a replica of a painting? Even if they’re doing their best to match the original artist’s rendition, stroke for stroke, the end result willalwaysshow signs of the replicating artist. There are things that exist in a person’s brain that just can’t be duplicated no matter how hard you try. If this were Anton trying to replicate Vincent, we’d be able to tell I think. I tried a little experiment of my own last week. Iletthe Narzand brothers see me following them, and then after a few days, I stopped. I fully expected to see something from them, but nothing happened.”
“But that raid on my father’s house with the police was the kind of thing that could only be pulled off by someone with power in the judicial system.”
“The police raid, I think, was the Narzands. I think they heard that there had been trouble there, and then potentially saw or realized that we took Avion out of the house, and they tried to make use of it. The brothers are nothing if not opportunists.”
I sat back in my chair, flabbergasted. “Youdon’tthink all of this was the Narzand brothers?”
“You said that there was a mole in our ranks, right?” he said. “I think this might be closer to home.”
That thought chilled me down to the bone. My mind went flying back to the last person I killed in my kill room at my old estate. It was someone who had clearly taken orders from someone other than me, and they were so terrified about them that they were willing to die just to hide their identity. After everything that had been happening with the Narzands, I just automatically assumed it was them. They were the only ones that made sense.
“Who do you think it could be?” I asked. “Not my parents. Not Avion.”
“No and no,” Milli said.
I lowered my gaze. “Punk or Kelly?”
“I know you care about them, but we should keep a close eye on them while they’re here,” he said. “Weeks of silence after you holed us all up in here. If things suddenly change now that they’re here, we’ll know who to suspect.”
I couldn’t think of any reason why my best friends would want to hurt me. They helped me buildbothof my empires from the ground up, and had been paid handsomely to do it. They had never betrayed me once in my life. I truly didn’t think they’d do something like that to me.
But keeping an extra eye on them wouldn’t hurt.
“I’m not saying it’s for sure them,” Milli said. “They’re just the only ones close enough that I can think of. It’s still suspicious that this work feels more vicious than Anton, but doesn’t seem like it could be Vincent. I’ve never seen Kelly or Punk behave with a penchant for that sort of chaos, so they don’t make much more sense than Anton, but I’m not quite sure who else to suspect. All we know is that, though it’s not Vincent…”
“It’s someone a lot like him,” I said. “Curtis?”
Milli nodded his head a few times. “I thought about Curtis, but that man cowers when I speak. Thinking it’s him makes even less sense than thinking it could be Punk or Kelly.”
“They don’t work closely with anyone else?” I asked. “No hidden, Vincent proteges we’re not considering?”
“Great minds think alike, and that has been my current course. I’d much prefer to think there’s a hidden suspect somewhere than think it’s someone in our home.”
“Yeah, me too. Keep me posted, and in the meantime, I’ll keep my eyes and ears extra open around here. The staff are all new and from out of state, so there’s a pretty slim chance there’s another mole. If there’s someone working against us in this house, it’s one of us seven.” A knock on my door brought the tense conversation to an end as I called out, “Come in!”
The door opened just enough for Kelly to slide in and close it behind her. She sauntered her way across the room and sat down in the opposite chair to Milli’s and crossed her legs. “Your offices always look the same, Gio. You need to be more creative.”
I hated the way I was already scrutinizing her like she was up to no good. She was my best friend. She wouldn’t hurt me. “Yeah, well, why fix what ain’t broken?”
“I suppose.”
“Did you talk to Avion?” I asked.
