Page 18 of Provocation
Mav stands up. ‘So, we do what Daisy was going to do. We make money. As much as we can. And then we run. Together. We get new names and new lives far away from the Novelles and the Bandervilles. I don’t care about my future. We’ll work in some shitty little lab somewhere if we have to.’
I nod. I don’t care either. I used to, but so long as we’re far from my father, I don’t care at all. I don’t need prestige or kudos. I just need Daisy.
Blake goes to his computer, nodding absently.
‘What are you doing?’ I ask.
‘I’m going to find out everything there is to know about Joseph Banderville and his sons. Anything we can use to gain leverage. Make them back off. Crush them.’ He glances back. ‘But motherfuckers like these are like roaches. They always are. They’ll keep coming back. I think we put things in place to leave if we have to.’
Mav turns back. ‘Can’t you…’
Blake’s eyes narrow. ‘Can’t I what?’
‘Do…what you do?’
‘What do you want me to do, Mav? Put a bullet in each one of their heads? Maybe go to their house and pop the mom and sister too?’ he sneers. ‘They aren’t low life bottom feeders who no one will miss. Even I can’t kill a whole family of rich assholes. Also, fuck you. I’m not just some guy who does all the wet work.’
Mav puts his hands up. ‘Okay, okay. I get it. You focus on your clever cyber villainy. I’m going to bed.’
He gives Blake a narrow-eyed look. ‘And no sneaking into her bed tonight. She needs sleep and she hates it when she’s squished.’
‘Fine,’ he mutters, ‘but it’s my turn tomorrow.’
Mav grunts a response and leaves Blake and I alone. Blake gives his computer monitor his full attention, so I grab the empty pizza boxes and get up.
‘I’m taking her to the club early. You coming?’
He nods. ‘Wouldn’t miss it. I can’t wait to see what she thinks of the Dark Lounge.’
I shake my head at him a little.
‘What did you do in there to make her scream like that?’ I ask again.
He glances over his shoulder at me and grins, tapping the side of his nose. ‘Maybe next time I’ll let you watch.’
My groan is low. ‘You’re an asshole.’
He snorts.
I leave him to it, taking the pizza boxes downstairs and putting them with the recycling. I go out to my car while I remember and grab the cardboard box of April’s stuff from my trunk that Stevens put there. I take it back upstairs and put it next to my desk, staring at it for a moment. But I don’t open it. I want to do that with Daisy.
I sit at my desk, trying to crunch some numbers from the club invoices because I know I won’t be able to sleep, but I can’t stop staring at the box. There’s something that’s been niggling at me, something about Daisy, about the afternoon that Larson died and the aftermath of his murder.
I can’t get what she said the other day out of my head. She doesn’t remember killing him. I mean maybe it was the trauma, but the fact that she was picked up by the cops and my father didn’t even get her a lawyer. Daisy was a minor with no one bar some half-assed social worker to advocate for her. There’s no way April knew about that. And Daisy said she was left alone with the file of the murder which she read and used the information in it to tell them what they wanted to hear to stop the interrogation.
All of this was rolling around and around while I was sitting with my father and Joseph in the study while they were droning on about some business opportunity, and it’s rolling around and around again now.
Frowning, I pull out my phone and I message Daisy’s friend, Lu Garrett.
I need something.
The reply is swift.
Who this?
Shade. Can you help?
I don’t do shit 4 free
