Someone nearby let out a dreamy little sigh, clearly watching this display.
Theo dropped his voice into something sinful. “Unlike you, I have no doubt that I can play my part.”
I jerked out of his grip, hating the way my nipples had pebbled and heat had pooled in my core, my body falling for his lies even as my mind rebelled.
“Anything else?” I asked.
He rattled off several more rules, all of them placing restrictions on my behavior. Finally, he relented. “I think that’s it for now. We can figure the rest out as we go.”
“Wonderful. Can’t wait.” My tone was laced with sarcasm.
“After the first party, we’ll attend a slightly larger one,” Theo said. “Your choice. And that’s where you’ll start pointing people out.”
My eyebrows crept upward. “You trust me to pick?”
“I trust you to remember it’s in your best interest to choose wisely.” This time, his smile was more a baring of teeth. “You have far more at stake than I do. If you really think threatening to go to your parents is enough to keep me from doing my worst, it only shows that you’re just as naïve and sheltered as your brother.” His voice dropped into a bass growl. “You don’t want to get on my bad side, Stella. You don’t want to make me hurt you.”
He opened his wallet, tossed three hundred-dollar bills on the table, and left. I stared after him, struck silent by his last, deeply fucked-up declaration. His face had been void of all emotion, like the choice of getting hurt or not was entirely up to me, and it didn’t matter to him one way or another.
With shaking hands, I pulled my phone from my purse and hit stop on my voice recording app. Thank god I at least had this if I did end up going to the police. I watched it save to my files, and then got up and left the restaurant, popping in an earbud as I waited for my Uber to arrive, because there was no way in hell I was walking all the way back to the subway in these heels.
The recording sounded fine at first (I’d hit start right before walking into the restaurant), but only a few seconds in, something went wrong. Weird, distorted noises started playing, and then soon, all I heard was a continuous low, vibrating tone that shook my eardrum. I pulled the earbud out, wondering if that was the problem, but when I played the recording over my phone’s speaker (much to the annoyance of people passing on the sidewalk) the same thing happened.
Panicking, I skipped forward in the file, but the entire thing seemed corrupted.
No.No.I had been relying on having this evidence to prove that I was being blackmailed. Without it, I had nothing but my word, which didn’t mean shit in this city.
I turned to stare back at the restaurant. Had Theo...done somethingto cause this?
Unease crept up my spine.
Who the hell was he?
And what the fuck had I gotten myself into?
9
Tyler
Iknew Stella had comefrom money. I knew she’d grown up in the nicest neighborhood in the vicinity, went to the best academies money could pay for, and spent her school holidays jet-setting all over the world. I’d even seen the latest net worth reports for the company my father and her parents co-owned. But seeing numbers on paper was one thing; it was something else entirely to witness that wealth with my own eyes.
Stella’s parents lived just outside the city, in the same zip code as high-ranking politicians, famous musicians, and billionaires. The roads were wide and well-maintained, lined with large, century-old oaks. Women in overpriced leggings walked tiny dogs on the manicured sidewalks. Gardeners pruned hedges and tended flower beds. The houses sat proud and imposing on expansive lots with luxury vehicles in their driveways.
Stella’s parents lived at the very end of the neighborhood, on a five-acre lot that was heavily wooded. My research revealed that the woods were actually a planned forest, something called an arboretum. It was a kind of garden for rare trees that had been shipped in from all over the world by the original owner back in the 1800s, and now the property was home to some of the largest specimens in the country.
My car passed through the front gates, tires rolling over the brick-lined driveway. The trees closed in on either side of me, trunks as wide as my S-Class, the canopy so high above it created an artificial twilight. Around a slight curve, the forest opened, and dead ahead sat a manor house that looked like it had been plucked out of the English countryside and dropped into a clearing, gardens and all. The stone façade was sand-colored, accented by white window casements. No fewer than six chimney stacks rose from the slate roof, and my head spun at the thought of how much it must cost to heat this bastard in the winter.
More than a dozen cars were lined up out front, ranging from a limited-edition Maserati with a quarter-million-dollar price tag to an older model Range Rover, which looked like it had recently gone off-roading. Not for the first time, I was glad I’d spent some of my hard-earned money on my vehicle, because the fancy European emblem on the hood would help me blend in with these assholes.
I parked at the end of the row and cut the engine. Adrenaline flooded through my veins. This was it, all the years I’d spent planning were about to pay off. Inside this house lay the key to my revenge. The McCormicks’ inner circle was my father’s inner circle, and the closer I tied myself to them all, the more ammunition I could gather. I might act like a douchebag most of the time, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t be charming, and between that charm, my good looks, and how well I could read people, secrets didn’t stay buried for long. I had a talent for drawing them out, or, at the very least, being able to detect their existence, which was all I needed before digging for more dirt.
This part of the plan was simple enough: ingratiate myself with as many of these fuckers as possible. The hard part would come later, beginning with the next party we attended. I’d told Stella I was after more clients and money, that I was going to target people from her parents’ socioeconomic class, but that was a lie.
My true focus was on the people who surrounded them. Their staff, their accountants, and all the other hired help who might have secrets to share. The more disgruntled, the better. The shadier, the better. Because those kinds of people were exploitable, either through bribery or blackmail, and they were how I planned to bring my father down. Not with some over-the-top plan of vengeance. No, his death would be by a thousand paper cuts, bleeding out slowly, excruciatingly, forced to watch as his empire crumbled around him one brick at a time.
I’m here,I texted Stella.
We’re out back,she responded.
