“Who fucked them over?” Lex asks, his entire posture hardening. “What are you doing back here, Liliana?” There’s venom dripping from his voice, and I realize then, that while this was a tough one to explain, we probably should have done it sooner. Nina looks at him for the first time, as if she’s surprised they followed us. I wouldn’t be able to shake them off, even if I wanted to. They are glued to my side now. There’s no escaping.
“Ask your dad, Morwen.” She smiles at him, and I see a glimpse of the bitch I know.
“Nina, go back to the beginning?—”
“Nina?” Orion blurts. “Who the fuck is Nina?”
There’s too much. I shake my head because I don’t even know how to start this. I tried my best not to share much about her. I have no idea why I insist on being loyal to a fucking bitch like her, but yeah, that’s me, I guess.
“Nina is her real name,” Hadrian explains. “I know that. I just don’t understand why we trust a con artist.”
She laughs, throwing her head back. “Don’t trust me. I don’t give a damn.” She turns back to me, and I know she’s serious just by the way the sarcasm seeps from her expression.
“How is she involved in all of this?” Lex asks.
She laughs. “I’m the only damn reason you’ve got your girl back, Doctor. Don’t believe me? Ask the Musician and the one who likes drugs.” She gives them all a nasty look, leaving them in silence to ponder their many grudges against each other. This is going to be a damn complicated mess to unwind.
She turns back to me and grabs my hands to force me to pay attention to her and not the guys. “I don’t have time to start at the beginning because I am getting the fuck out of here. Remember that they thought they buried the Briarwicks, and then you swam out of that river. Then they brought you here as an Offering to demean you, and you got the five heirs to fall in love with you.”
“So?” I ask. I know I’ve done all that, but frankly, all the trauma in between has clouded whatever larger picture she’s alluding to.
“Damn, Sable, do you have any idea how angry they are?” she asks, and there’s so much fear in her face that I nearly shake along with her.
“Who. Are. They?” Soren says slowly, eyes pinned on Nina.
“Pull your head out of your ass,” she says to him with absolutely no patience in her tone, and I realize she’s been being nice to me. “Did you check the journalism department like I told you to?”
I shake my head. “A lot of shit is happening. I didn’t have time.”
“I told you to keep asking questions!” She’s exasperated. “Did you think it was a fucking suggestion and you could take your sweet-ass time?”
“Who the actual fuck are you to speak to her that way?” Parker asks.
Nina ignores them all as if they are nothing but part of the Bellthorn decoration. She looks at me and only me, and I feel a weird kinship with her, like maybe there was something real in those years of friendship after all. I want her to trust me, yet I wonder if she can. I won’t go out of my way to fuck her over, but I have too many loyalties that stand ahead of her. I get why she never would completely. I think deep down she knows that,and that’s why it is so easy to help me and so hard to let me in. Frankly, I don’t blame her for it.
“Your… dad didn’t do what they told you he did,” she says, refusing to meet my eyes now.
“What?” I ask, feeling like she’s kicked me in the stomach.
I take my hands from hers and step away. My back hits a chest, and an arm closes over me, giving me comfort. I know by the scent alone it’s Orion. I take a deep breath, trying to center myself. I never wanted to talk about this with anyone, and I especially wasn’t looking to pick that wound open now. Discovering that my dad was involved in sex trafficking ended me. The full investigation shows things he did to teenagers, his laptop, his accounts, everything was compromised. I puked up the contents of my stomach for weeks just thinking about it.
“What do you mean?” My voice shakes when I ask. There couldn’t be a crueler torture than raising my hopes about this to let me down.
“How is that possible?” Soren asks.
Nina looks at him, wagging her finger. “How? The people who pull the strings believe they’re more powerful than God for a reason. You should be asking why. Why did they want to destroy the Briarwicks?”
The question sits in my stomach like a stone, and because I haven’t done the research she asked me to, I don’t have a hope of guessing specifics.
“Who did this?” Parker asks.
While I don’t know their individual names, I know the answer. It’s always the same fucking answer.
CHAPTER 62
SABLE
I step away from Orion,turning my back on Nina instead. I look at all of them, the people I trust the most in the world, and everything starts making sense. “The four families destroyed my family, and when I didn’t die at the bottom of that river, they brought me here to serve as a whore to their sons.”
