“No. Definitely not. Otherwise, Brett wouldn’t have demanded the diamond be passed to him in the will.” Savilla caught herself as if she’d misspoken but then her shoulders relaxed as she realized something. “I guess it’s not a secret anymore.”
“What do you mean?”
Savilla hovered over her steaming cup, warming her hands. “At first I thought Daddy was weirdly fixated on helping Brett, specifically by starting a production company that first recorded his song and later funded theSmall Town, Big Romanceshow.”
My eyes widened. “So your father was a producer on the show?”
“Yep.Theproducer. I mean, he hired professionals who knew what they were doing, but yeah, from day one. I think he liked the control, especially after he started losing so much money in other investments. Daddy was a bit of a… a narcissist.” Savilla’s brow furrowed as if she hated to admit the fact – one that didn’t surprise me in the least. Anyone who’d spent five minutes with the man could assume as much. He could be charming and charismatic, but he also wanted to control any narrative. He wanted to preserve his family’s image. He wanted power, and he would do almost anything to be the one calling the shots. “At first, I thought Daddy was being helpful to Brett because he saw him as a kind of son he never had, but that never sat quite right.”
The image of Brett walking side by side in the gardens with Mr. Finch came to mind. Mr. Finch’s smile was there, but it had seemed forced, their conversation staged. I’d figured that was because of the numerous cameras on them, but Savilla seemed to be suggesting something else.
“Then I found out…” Savilla’s expression almost exactly mirrored the one I’d seen on Lacy’s face last night, when she’d told me how Brett had threatened her.
I waited a few beats as Savilla put both hands on the table in front of her as if to steady herself. She closed her eyes briefly before opening them and looking straight at me.
“I found out that he blackmailed Daddy with footage… of me and Brett. Together.”
My heart stuttered. “This may be a strange question, but do you know how Brett threatened your dad?”
“He said he would send out the footage via email,” she said, making the same exasperated face that Lacy had made.
My mouth went dry. Brett was a predictable scumbag, using the same methods on more than one victim. It was sickening. “Did it come from an account with the name [email protected]?”
“Yes, how did you…?” Savilla’s voice lowered to a whisper as she read me.
I shook my head—I couldn’t even begin to answer that question right now. “Did you and Brett… Were you together at some point?”
“For, like, half a second.” Savilla waved a hand, tossing aside this part of the past. “It was a fling about a year or two after I graduated from college, and I was in between relationships. Brett was in New York for a week, and I showed him the sites and we just, I don’t know, clicked. It was nothing, more than nothing, but apparently, he’d filmed thatmore than nothingand held on to it in order to squeeze money out of my father.”
Understanding dawned. “That’s why Mr. Finch—your, our…” I was struggling to find what to call Mr. Finch. “That’s why he started the production company?”
“And why he made an entire production company to launch Brett’s music career, which actually made money at first. The problem is that the TV show siphoned off all the profits and then some. I had no idea until after the show aired when I found Daddy’s email open and saw a message from Brett, reminding him of what he had on me. I’m not saying that Daddy had ever been great with money, having had his entire inheritance handed to him, but he got so much worse after that. Eventually he lost so much that by summer he’d started making deals with museums to sell off a bunch of our gems.”
That would explain the empty cases in the Color Gallery at The Rose.
“Why wouldn’t Brett just ask for the diamond then and there? Why have it written into Mr. Finch’s will?”
“He was getting what he wanted from Daddy with the production company, and he didn’t want to have to pay a dime on it. If it came as property in part of an inheritance, he could find a way to work around paying taxes, but if it was given to him as a gift… well, someone would have to pay, and Daddy was running out of money too fast. Brett didn’t want to totally bankrupt him. He just wanted the diamond. Putting it in the will was a kind of insurance against Brett leaking the video of the two of us.” Savilla let out a heavy breath. “Daddy was of the mind that it’s good to keep your friends close and enemies closer.”
In this case, the old adage hadn’t served Mr. Finch well. Any friends he’d had seemed to turn to enemies, and keeping them close had gotten him killed.
I took another sip of my drink, considering the most significant things I’d learned in the past two hours, besides the fact that I might or might not be very rich.
Brett had blackmailed Mr. Finch in almost the very same way that he’d threatened Lacy, who only had until midnight to stop his awful email from making their way into the world.
Mr. Finch’s most precious gem, the Rose Diamond, had disappeared after the 2023 pageant and shortly before Brett’s homestay visit onSmall Town, Big Romance.
Brett was somehow even more of an asshole than I’d imagined.
