Page 113 of Heartless Lord
My lips thinned, and I had to fight the urge to punch a dozen holes in the walls. This was all Lexi’s fault. Everything was fine until she came to Stonewall University. Sure, I was living a lie every day, keeping this mask of perfection in place to hide all my darkness and demons, but at least my life had a clear path.
With a sigh, I dropped onto my bed, my shoulders slumping. I couldn’t blame Lexi for this. I was the one who insisted on fucking with her, and I was the one who refused to let her go. She pleaded with me to back off, which only made me want her more.
She wasmine. All mine. And I’d slaughter anyone who tried to take her from me.
After we returned to Copper Cove, I reluctantly dropped her off at her dorm and instructed a pledge to stand guard outside her building. He was to call me if my brother visited, or got anywhere near Davenport Dormitory.
Bass could still be suspicious that Lexi was the girl who overheard us discussing hisincidentat the masquerade party. He could also simply want to screw with her to piss me off.
I snatched the envelope off the bed as my heart crashed against my ribs. This could hold information that might shed some light on Stan. Or maybe I just wanted to know what was so important that he might have manipulated me into staying at Casa de Campo, so close to Gregory Banks’ private villa.
Fuck it.
My fingers trembled as I flicked the metal prongs up and lifted the flap. I dumped the flash drive onto the covers and then pulled out the documents, my pulse hammering a frantic beat.The first page listed several large money transfers from one of Stan’s accounts to someone named Margaritte Douglass, dating back three years.
My blood iced over at the next page: a picture of Stan with a beautiful young woman outside his vacation home in the Hamptons. She couldn’t have been much older than eighteen, and his hand grazed her ass as he escorted her through the back door.
This hadn’t been a favor for just any powerful Ascended. It was for Stan himself. When was this taken? Had he cheated on my mom with some teenager?
That son of a bitch.
The following page was a newspaper article with a headshot of the same girl and the headlineCollege freshman at Penn State goes missing. Her name was Jocelyn Douglass, daughter of Margaritte Douglass.
All the warmth drained from my body, a ringing filling my ears as the pieces of a horrifying puzzle slowly fit itself together. My stepfather had a relationship with this woman—this girl—who was probably dead now.
Did she goFatal Attractionand develop an obsession for him, one so intense he had no choice but to eliminate her? Were these payouts to her family compensation for her death?
Or had something even worse happened?
Maybe Bass was more like his father than I knew. Did he inherit his appetite for women and his uncontrollable sexual urges from Stanford?
Sickness crashed through my stomach, shooting acid up my esophagus. If Stan was capable of sleeping with a barely legal teenager and killing her...
No. It couldn’t be.
He wasn’t really capable of sexually assaulting Lexi, was he?
The dark voices in my head screamed that my best friend had been telling the truth, and that I’d turned my back on her for a monster. I’d traded our friendship and love for money, power, and my mother’s happiness.
Was my mother totally clueless, or was she only pretending to be happy?
I dropped the papers before I crushed them as my hands curled into tight fists. I couldn’t jump to conclusions and ruin my entire life without being a hundred percent sure. The flash drive had to contain more information, probably the linchpin in this conspiracy. Arcane was known to be thorough in their blackmail assignments.
But if Stanford Davenport turned out to be the evil son of a bitch Lexi always claimed, what could I do? He was probably the most powerful man in our organization. He was the Grand Domnus for shit’s sake. The man could have me killed with the snap of his fingers.
He would definitely have me punished for reading this damning evidence. Of course, Stan didn’t think I would disobey a direct order from him. I was probably the last person who would. That was why I’d been the perfect person to retrieve this damning information.
He didn’t bet on Lexi Vega getting to me, though.
A knock at the door had my heart leaping into my throat, and I shoved the documents behind me just as Slate poked his head into my room.
“Bass called an emergency meeting,” he said. “I was told to grab you.”
My brow arched. “For Sigma Delta?”
“Nope.” He flashed the serpent and dagger tattoo on his forearm. “The other thing.”
Only high-ranking Lords—seniors and some legacies like us—were invited to the emergency meeting in the catacombs beneath the frat house. I shifted from foot to foot as I stood next to my friends, eager to return to my room to search through that blackmail information.
