Page 46 of Merciless Prince
“Think about it for five fucking seconds,” I said, narrowing my eyes. “What did I tell you all those weeks ago about how I thought we should deal with the Shay situation?”
His thick brows dipped in a frown. “You said we needed to mess with her. Scare her.”
“Yeah.Scareher,” I said through gritted teeth. “We were meant to convince her that she can’t trust her own eyes or memories. Make her think she’s completely lost her mind. That way she wouldn’t bother saying a word about what she saw in the grotto that night, because she’d think it was probably just another one of her so-called hallucinations. Also, everyone around her would think she was crazy after seeing the way she was behaving, so they wouldn’t listen even if shedidsay anything about it.”
“Gaslight, gatekeep, girlboss,” Derrick muttered, rolling his eyes upward.
I shoved him in the chest. “You need to shut the fuck up and start taking this shit seriously. You know what’s at stake here, don’t you?”
He sighed and sagged on the bed again. “Okay. Sorry,” he muttered, scrubbing a hand over his face. “Look, with the SNS thing, I was just trying to step up and help. I actually thought it was a good idea.”
“Why?”
A guilty expression flitted over his face. “Because I thought your whole ‘scare her and drive her crazy’ thing wasn’t hardcore enough.”
“But it was working, wasn’t it? She wasn’t talking about what she saw that night or digging into it. She was just whining all the time and convincing herself that she was losing her mind.”
“I know. But I thought the SNS thing would humiliate her enough to make her leave, and if she’s in another state or country, she’s less likely to think about shit from back here, right? Ergo, less likely to think about that night and start digging.”
I set my jaw in a hard line as I mulled over his explanation. “I can see the logic there. But here’s the issue,” I replied. “Trying to scare her and gaslight her into thinking she’s crazy is one thing. But ruining her career? That’s specific, targeted shit. Shit that only certain people can be responsible for. People likeme, or at least people close to me. So… she figures that out. Then she wonders what she possibly could’ve done to get on my bad side.”
Derrick nodded slowly as comprehension dawned on his face. “Then she thinks of that night and what she saw, and she realizes we must be spooked because what she saw wasreal. Not just a movie or a hallucination.”
“Exactly.”
He groaned. “So I drove her to start digging by setting up the SNS thing?”
“Looks like it, yeah,” I replied. “It pushed her over the edge, and not in the way we wanted.”
“What if we call Lachlan and get him to reverse the blacklisting shit?”
“Already done,” I said. “But I’m not sure if it’ll be enough to make her stop now that she’s started.”
“Fuck!” Derrick stood and started pacing the room. “Why can’t we just snatch the bitch off the street and throw her in a hole somewhere?” he said, throwing his hands up. “That’ll solve all our problems. She won’t be able to say shit to anyone if she’s locked up.”
“And then what would we do with her? Kill her?” I said, raising a scornful brow. “You know she’s not our type.”
He rubbed his jaw. “Well, no, we wouldn’t kill her. We’d just keep her hidden away somewhere, I guess.”
“I’ve already thought of that,” I said. “I’ve even got a plan for it, if it ever comes to that point. But we’d have to keep her forever, which isn’t ideal. So I don’t want to take her unless we absolutely have to.”
Derrick exhaled deeply and stepped over to the fridge. “I’m sorry, man. You’re right about everything,” he muttered. “I really fucked this up.”
My lips flattened as I watched him grab another beer. He wasn’t coping well with this shit at all. That meant it was up to me to take charge—as usual—and plot another way out of this mess.
“Look, we haven’t reached the worst case scenario just yet,” I said. “I know people like Shay. If she really suspected something and wanted to go to the cops, she would’ve done it by now. But like I said before, she’s on the fence.”
Derrick sniffed. “Hardly. You just said she’s been looking into it. Looking for answers.”
I held up a palm to signal him to be patient. “I know, but let me finish. If she keeps digging, then sure, she’ll probably get suspicious enough to go to the cops in the end. But like I was saying, for now she’s still a fence-sitter. Still not sure. So I think we could distract her from it all. Distract her with somethingbig.”
“Big enough to make her forget this shit?” he said, forehead wrinkling.
My lips turned upward in a smirk as a new plan percolated in my brain. “Not exactly,” I said slowly.
Derrick lifted his palms. “You’ve officially lost me.”
“Think about it this way,” I said. “All we need to do is get something on her and make sure she knows we have it. Something bad. She won’t be able to turn us in then, because if she does…” I mimed a knife slashing across my throat. “Mutually-assured destruction.”
