“Someone grabbed her,” Parker says as if it’s obvious.
“If someone grabbed her,” Hadrian starts, “that means they’re watching us.”
That pulls me up short. “Who’s they?”
“I don’t know for sure. I can only guess,” Soren replies, but we are cut short when Parker laughs.
“Come on, both of you?” He looks from Soren to Hadrian. “You are the paranoid ones. Tell me, who are the people who have access to Bellthorn, want to control us, and have no regard for rules inside or out?”
None of them replies, but I already know the answer.
“The founding families.”
CHAPTER 57
HADRIAN
I scowl at Parker,trying to figure out where his sudden sense of assuredness comes from. “Why would they care enough to be watching, especially enough to respond that quickly?”
No one will ever hate them as much as I do. Every single thing they tried to use on me to make me love the family backfired. I’m suspicious of them more than ever, and I believe they can use everything in their arsenal to push their control over us, but they are important businessmen who own this town. Not one of them is on standby to pick our whores up off the floor. They’ve never been before, and they certainly aren’t now.
“Hadrian is right,” Lex agrees. “It doesn’t make sense that they would be waiting to pick her up. That was minutes.”
“Maybe they have someone on call to clean up our fuckups. The more they fix, the more they can hold over us,” Soren suggests. He would know all about fuckups.
“That was my doing,” Sable says, pointing at the hall. “So I don’t know what they would hold overyourheads.”
“If anyone is paying attention, they know we love you,” Soren says softly. “Whatever happens to you, happens to us. That makes you excellent leverage to be used against us.”
She smiles at him like he hung the fucking moon, and while I couldn’t agree more, I’m not sure how we arrived here—with Soren.
Parker seems to have many questions about it all too. His eyes cut to them, caught up in the interaction with furrowed brows. “We’ll get into our families watching us in a second.” He decides to step in. “Let’s start from the beginning.”
Which beginning is he talking about? I think he’s going to interrogate her about Soren, but instead, he looks around, moving his arms as he goes. “Where are we?”
Sable swallows and doesn’t say anything as she makes her way to an ancient-looking chair. The apartment is a mirror of ours, though hers looks frozen in time. It obviously belongs to a fifth family, but as far as I know, no one has ever mentioned them. It’s like they were scratched out of our history, just as their name was scratched off the door. How does Sable have access to this?
“This is the fifth’s family room,” she finally says, and I see that she’s choosing her words carefully.
I cross my arms over my chest, waiting for what else she has to give me. Sable told us multiple times she craves freedom, and I want to give it to her, but it’s difficult to hold myself back from asking everything I’m burning to know.
“This is where I slept the night before last,” she adds, as if we didn’t assume that part.
When silence follows that statement, and I realize she won’t give us anything else, I shift on my feet. “And how did you get the key?”
“A friend.” She clears her throat.
“A friend?” Lex’s eyebrows soar. “A friend in Bellthorn?”
Sable shrugs. “Maybe you guys aren’t the only social circle I have.”
The realization is a thousand-pound weight. There’s only one friend Sable haseverhad at Bellthorn, but just like this is her secret, we haven’t told Lex, Parker, or Orion about Nina’s involvement. I shoot her a look, knowing exactly what she’s been getting up to. She has the grace to give me an apologetic little pout.
“Soren knew first?” Parker voices what’s really bothering me. “Why would you tell him of all people and not the rest of us?” He sounds hurt, and frankly, I am too.
Why would she trust him with this and not us? How can he be the reason she left, and now her confidant? It doesn’t make sense. I shake my head, trying to make it fit, and find the same confusion in everyone’s eyes but Soren’s.
“I’m sorry…” Sable starts, but then she doesn’t go anywhere, and I’m feeling profoundly let down. Yes, I brought Soren with me to find her, but he wasn’t such an amazing help as to make her forget everything. He was dead weight. Though I have to admit, seeing him now, I don’t think he’s high. He just looks like shit.
