VIOLA
After the meeting is over, we’re excused, and Adrien retires to his quarters. Dino doesn’t leave my side the rest of the night. He won’t even let me go to my room.
“You don’t think that’s the first place Kristian will try it on?”
He’s convinced Kristian is going to kidnap me. I have my doubts. Kristian isn’t stupid and also, I’ve never needed Dino to stay safe. All I’ve needed is myself.
And my cunning.
In my bra are the keys I snatched off Gigi when she was wrestling me. I swiped them while I stabbed her. She’ll notice soon that they’re missing, so we don’t have much time. We’re in his room, or the room one of the staff led Dino to after he convinced Finn to stay. Finn is most likely in a room not too dissimilar to this one. Lorcan, I’ve no idea. No one has seen him since he left the dining room a second time.
I refuse to find him and check on him. He can do drugs and drive, or what the fuck he likes. I’m done being his babysitter.
He’s probably gone to fuck Harmonica or whatever her name is.
Not that I care.
“Come on, let’s go,” I say, taking Dino by the hand.
“Why? Where are we going?”
“To fulfill a promise,” I say. I look back at him. “It’s time to fuck the empire.”
My father’s office is in a separate part of the estate. It’s a library slash office in that his desk is at the far end and around it is shelves and shelves of books. Walnut paneling, huge leather seats, and bookcases adorning every wall. There are also filing cabinets filled with untraceable paper. My father’s whole life is in here.
I point Dino at one of the cabinets and toss him the key.
“What are we looking for again?”
“Evidence of where Rebecca might be. Kato thinks she’s in one of the halfway houses my father owns. He just doesn’t know which one.” On the way up here, I explained to Dino why I needed to stay. Keeping him in the dark would just make him harder to control, and since he’s not going to leave my side all night, I may as well use him.
Adrien funds a charity for runaways, giving girls who have no place to go a home. It makes him appear to be a caring benefactor when the opposite is true. I know for a fact that those homes are rife with sex predators, because that’s how I started out—carving up the fuckers who preyed on the vulnerable girls in those homes by pretending to be a runaway myself.
Ironically, I was a runaway. Only, I had money and contacts. And Dante.
“And we can’t just check all of them?”
“That’s what Dante is doing,” I say.
Dino frowns as he rifles through a stack of papers. “I don’t understand how he’s on our side now.”
“He’s not. Dante is on his own side.” Usually the one that pays him the most money but after recent events, I’m not so sure. I close one drawer after finding fuck all, and then open the one below it.
“And you trust him?”
“No, but my mother did.” And I did once too. All this questioning is making my head hurt. Why the hell did I involve Dino again?
“I still don’t fucking understand,” Dino says shaking his head.
Inside the drawer I’m looking in are some interesting files. One of them has my name on it, the other has Dante’s. Heart erratic in my fucking chest, I take out Dante’s and start to read. After a few seconds I stop trying to understand what I’m reading, close the file and look up. Dino is quiet over his side of the office. Maybe he found something too. “Did you find something?” I say.
“I think so. What’s this? Didn’t you say your mother was at Beckbridge House before your father found her?
He yanks out an official looking set of papers and hands it to me. I skim them quickly, while Dino looks over my shoulder with his hands around my waist. “It’s a transfer request from a few months back. It says it was requested that she was moved to a place closer to home.”
Who would have the authority to move her? The moment the request came through, I should’ve been alerted.
I drop my gaze to the requestor and their signature. “Fuck.”