Because of those two points, Angelo and I had reached a temporary truce, an unspoken agreement to worktogetherfor the safety of those we loved. It helped that we were both particularly trigger happy, him even more so than me since I was eight years out of practice.
“What’s the deal with you and Brenda?” The question that had been bouncing around in my brain all day. “You seem close.”
Angelo just shot me a sideways look. “And?”
“Closer than I’d expect. You met her when she first negotiated the Big Noise contract, yes?” I was well aware that Angelo had been part of the original Bellerose before things fell apart with Jace and Billie.
Angelo nodded. “She picked us up at an open mic night in Siena. Jace thought she was totally full of shit, so he wouldn’t hire her as a manager until she could get us a meeting with some labels. Stubborn prick.”
“Uh-huh,” I agreed. “But you seem more familiar than that.”
He arched a brow. “How would you know? You haven’t seen us interact in person.”
I grunted. “Call it intuition.”
He was silent a long time. Long enough that I thought he wasn’t going to answer my question. Then as we turned into the parking lot beside the park, he sighed.
“We stayed in touch,” he admitted grudgingly. “Jace would fire her if he knew, so I trust you won’t tell him.”
Dammit. I should have known what I was getting into there, and now I had a secret to keep from my brother.
“You stayed in touchbecause…?” I prompted, wanting to know the whole story if I was already neck deep in secrets.
Angelo chuckled, turning off the car and getting out. “None of your fucking business, Taylor. Hurry up.”
He set a brisk pace across the snow-dusted park, pulling his coat closed, and I followed a little slower, taking my time to assess all our surroundings. I’d gotten so used to keeping an eye out for paparazzi since Bellerose hit the big time, but now I wasn’t totally sure what I was looking for. Paps? Shooters? Cops? All of the above.
“You’re late,” Brenda announced when we reached her beside the frozen duck pond. She was bundled up warm, and her baby was sleeping soundly in a winter warm buggy. Cutie.
“Lovely to see you too,” Angelo replied sarcastically, dipping to kiss her cheek.
Brenda blushed slightly and shot him a smile. Were they sleeping together? I kind of hoped they were… it’d mean he wasn’t such a threat against Billie’s heart.
“I had a call from Rhett this morning,” she told us without any other small talk. “For some fucking reason, Jace ventured back to the farmhouse and found cops all over the place. They panicked and left the house they were at.”
My brow dipped with irritation. “Dumb fuck. What part of ‘lay low’ was hard to understand?”
Angelo sighed. “Probably not the dumbest decision. Cops would likely visit neighbors to ask if they heard or saw anything suspicious. They might have been found there, and that’d seem even shadier.”
Okay, good point. “Where are they now?”
“I gave them directions to an Airstream parked in the forest behind that property. They took some horses and should already be there by now. Rhett grabbed food on my credit card, too, so they’re fine for now.” Brenda sniffed, her nose red from the cold. She paused, her lips tight, then looked up at me. “What did you do with Flo?”
Christ.
“Dealt with,” Angelo answered for me. “She’ll be found soon, if she hasn’t already.”
We’d made the joint decision to move Flo’s body from the farm to her apartment where Angelo’s people had staged it to look like a home invasion. It sucked, I hated it, but we also couldn’t go implicating ourselves, Jace, and Rhett for all the various hitman deaths at the farm. So we’d cleaned things up to a degree and changed the narrative of Flo’s death.
As easy as it would’ve been to make her disappear—like all the other bodies—she deserved better. She deserved a funeral and to be mourned by those who loved her. She deserved her death to be recognized.
Brenda gave a long exhale, looking for a moment like she was about to start crying. But she pulled herself back together with a tight nod and professional smile. “Good. You two are the best people for the job here.” Little James stirred in his sleep, whimpering, and Brenda rocked the buggy back and forth to send him back to sleep. “Okay. Good. It seems that the cops went to check out the farmhouse, thanks to that fucking gossip blog. They posted a story about acrimeoccurring that involved Bellerose, and enough people blew it up that the cops had to do due diligence.”
“The Dirty Truthsagain?” Angelo scowled. “They seem to have a lot of inside access for Bellerose in particular. Any ideas who’s behind it?”
Brenda shook her head. “None.”
I couldn’t say the same. Ever since reading all the blog posts about us, and Billie, and comparing them to older posts about other celebrities, I was pretty confident the blog had changed hands some time in the past months. Or maybe there were several contributors. Either way, Tom Tucker was my number one suspect for those leaks.
