Chapter Forty-two
As Marissa talked to Peyton about who his cousin had been associating with, Paradise borrowed the female’s phone and went through the whole place taking photographs. With every shot she captured, she thought of what she knew about the dead girl. Technically, Allishon was her cousin, too, and though it was a more distant connection than Peyton’s, the loss was still acute.
Especially because she’d seen that bed.
Good … God. Such violence.
In about fifteen minutes, she had covered the bedroom, the bathroom, the hall, and the living room—and she was turning around to do the kitchen when she saw something down on the floor.
As the place was white all over, the flash of color by the edge of the sofa really caught her eye.
Sinking onto her haunches, she pulled out … an old-fashioned Polaroid snapshot.
With a frown, she realized it was … red and pink. Just like the one that she’d found on the bus.
The one she’d put in her satchel after Peyton had said it wasn’t his.
“What is that?” Peyton asked. “Paradise? You gonna be sick?”
She stood up and went across to him.
“It’s a picture…” As she showed the thing to him, she wondered if maybe she were jumping to conclusions. Maybe there was another explanation. “Ah, it’s like the one I found, you know, on the bus.”
“Whatever. Are you finished with the pictures? We have to go talk to Allie’s parents now. I need to get this over with before I lose my fucking mind.”
“Two secs.” She put the photo in her jacket without thinking about it and started snapping images of the kitchen. “I’m almost done.”
“She has the ashes,” Peyton murmured in a voice that cracked. “Marissa has them.”
Paradise lowered the phone. “Oh … God.”
“She just left to go change and pick them up before you and I head over there. I wish I had a joint with me. I didn’t think…” He began opening cupboards. “Oh, thank fuck.”
As he took out a bottle of vodka and slipped it into his coat, she wanted to remind him they weren’t supposed to disturb anything, but come on. Like she was going to bust his balls for not following the rules on a night like tonight?
“Peyton, what else can I do?”
His eyes drifted back to hers. “It is what it is. Thank you for coming with me, though.”
With a grim nod, she took one last snapshot of the empty sink and bare counters. “Here. Um, where’s Craeg?”
“He’s in the bedroom still.”
“Peyton … I’m so sorry.”
They met in the middle and held each other tightly. She wanted to tell him that it was going to be okay, but that was already not true.
“I love you,” he said.
“I love you, too.”
Stepping away from him, she went to the apartment’s front door, locked things up with her mind and then proceeded with him back down to the bedroom.
Craeg was where he’d been standing for the longest time, and as she went to him, she put her hand on his arm. “You all right?”
“Yeah.” He turned to Peyton, breaking the contact. “Hey, man, you need anything … I’m here for you.”
Peyton went over to the male and they exchanged a hard embrace, and then all of them were out on the terrace in the stiff wind coming off the river.
Peyton left first. And then Craeg pivoted to her.
“Long night—I’d better go back. Peyton hit the training center up for me on his phone and I need to meet the bus ASAP.”
“Oh … okay.” But come on, what did she expect? There had been a tragedy. Now was not the time for a long, romantic good-bye for godsakes. “So … anyway, I guess I’ll see you tomorrow night? Will you call me this morning, though? I’m going to change, then help Peyton tell the family.”
“Good thing you got hold of your father.”
“Yes, he’s always helpful.”
“I’ll bet.”
“It’s just so … awful.” As she blinked, she saw that bed inside. “So very, very ugly. I wonder who did it?”
“Butch will find them.”
“I hope so. I truly do.”
“I got to go.”
“Oh … okay.” Wait, she’d already said that. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine. Don’t worry about me. You’d better go, too.”
For some reason, she had the strangest urge to tell him that she missed him—but that was absurd. He was standing two feet away from her. They were going to talk in a couple of hours. She was going to see him tomorrow night.
“Good day,” she said.
When he nodded, she closed her eyes … calmed herself … and spirited away.
For so many reasons, the awkward parting had not been how she’d seen the evening ending. Not even close.
Craeg didn’t wait long. As soon as Paradise got ahead of him, he dematerialized himself behind her, traveling on the wind, using his blood in her veins as a tracker.
When she stopped moving through the night air, he re-formed a good hundred yards away from her on the edge of a lawn that was …
The house before him at the top of the rise was the size of a college dorm, the kind of massive, grand structure that would be featured on television as being on some fancy university’s campus or God, maybe … maybe it was more like a royal residence with its peaked roofs and its diamond-pane windows and all the clipped and manicured everything on its lawn.
It was easily twice the size of the mansion where his and Axe’s fathers had been slaughtered, for example.
And as Paradise approached the front door, it was without apology—not as a staffer or a servant would. And a moment later, she was inside without ringing a doorbell or anything. In fact, as he moved to the left, he saw through leaded glass windows a uniformed butler taking her coat and bowing in deference to her.
Her father is First Adviser to the King.
Closing the distance with long strides, he watched from the cold outside as she went up the grand staircase and disappeared into what was undoubtedly an equally sumptuous second floor. Or maybe third. Or twelfth.
Even after he could no longer see her, he stayed where he was, staring through old-fashioned panes at the oil paintings, the fancy rugs, the silk on the walls—it must be silk, right?
What the fuck did he know.
Turning away, he looked out over the rolling lawn, and the bushes, and the beds of what were no doubt specimen flowers in the warm months. He wondered what the backyard was like. Probably had a pool. An enclosure for exotic fucking animals. A goddamn bird sanctuary.
She had lied.
And not in a small way.
This … this was a big fucking deal: He’d just taken the virginity of what certainly appeared to be one of a Founding Family’s daughters.
According to the Old Laws, as a commoner?
He could be put to death for that.
As anger swelled, it was less about Paradise and what she’d kept from him, and more because he had consistently overridden himself. All those internal stops he’d put up? All those resolutions he’d had? Before he’d fucked her in the bathroom at a human fucking club, for fuck’s sake? He’d blown right through each and every one of them. And to top that off, he’d lost his focus with the training. Gotten sidetracked from his purpose. Wasted days when he should have been sleeping, classes when he should have been thinking, workouts when he should have been training his body with total focus.
And all for a female who cared so little for him, who was so selfish and conceited, that she had been unwilling to share some very pertinent, relevant information about herself.
Information that she had to know would have been a game changer for him.
It was a perfect storm of manipulation, that had spun him a hundred and eighty degrees away from what he’d actually wanted: Between her being a liar and his libido being out of control, he hadn’t stood a chance.
Such a fool—he was such a goddamn fool.
And fools got what they deserved.
Didn’t they.