Page 108 of Pay the Price

“Clearly,” I said, pushing the box filled with makeup and jewelry — and the bra — aside.

I stood and walked to the wall lined with boxes. Some of them had names scrawled in Sharpie, but most of them were blank, forcing us to go through every one.

I searched the boxes, hoping for some kind of gut feeling about which ones might be worth looking through. I was shuffling them around, checking out the ones on the bottom, when I saw Mac’s name on a box tucked into the corner.

“Fuck.”

“What’s up?” Jace said.

I pulled out the box and brought it to the center of the room where we’d all been working in the beam of light. Then I set it on the floor where they both could see it, Mac’s name scrawled in black Sharpie across the box over two strips of duct tape.

“Holy shit,” Otis said.

One of Jace’s eye twitched as he stared at it.

“We can put it back,” I said. Mac was like a second dad to Jace. I got it if he didn’t want to violate Mac’s privacy, especially since the box was taped shut. Mac might as well have slapped aKeep Outsign on it.

I waited, letting Jace work it through.

“No,” he finally said. “Open it.”

Chapter 65

Daisy

It was hard to concentrate knowing the Beasts were at the compound looking for information on my mom. It didn’t help that Diana had handed me a stack of paperwork six inches high, all related to the deed filings for the first of the sold villas.

Now that work had begun on the resort, we were getting press. Piers Cantwell was front and center with his plans for the Cantwell Ridge Resort and Spa, on the cover ofForbesandFortune,and he even had a big piece inTimemagazine.

Cantwell had been flooded with offers on the exclusive villas, offers that Piers personally vetted, wanting to make sure the owners shared a certain profile: rich, famous, used to discretion and NDAs.

And did I mention rich?

Now I had to go through the deed paperwork, double-checking to make sure everything was complete before we filed it with the county. Not exactly exciting.

I thought about the Beasts as I worked, replaying our bloody group orgy. It looked even more twisted in hindsight, but thatdidn’t stop me from getting hot and bothered at the memory of the three naked Beasts fucking me like monstrous gods.

Shit. I felt flushed. Wet.

Would I ever not want them? And where did we go from here? It wasn’t like I could live forever with three men in the old house at the top of the falls.

Could I?

I checked my phone for a text from one of them, but I only had one from Sarai, asking where I’d been and when we were meeting up. I needed to get back to her, stop avoiding her because I didn’t know what to say about my new life, how to integrate it with the old one I’d shared with Cassie and Sarai.

That version of myself felt so young. So naive. But it was still part of me, and I loved Cassie and Sarai and didn’t want to lose them.

I looked up as Piers stopped in my doorway.

“Come to the conference room. And bring your iPad.”

It took me a second to register the words. He was already gone when I hopped to it, grabbing the iPad I’d been given to take notes in meetings.

I had no idea what was going on, but whatever it was, it had to be better than the boring paperwork Diana had given me.

I entered the conference room to find five people around the big table, plus Piers.

A blonde woman in pink dress pants and a black blouse stood at the front of the room where the wordsDesign Concepts for the Cantwell Ridge Resort and Spawere projected onto a large screen from a laptop.

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