Sinful Palace: Ruthless Rulers Book 2

by Hart, Stella

  “Known what?”

  “When we talked about the Order the other day… remember how my parents brought us coffee afterwards?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “My dad practically had his ear pressed up against the door when I left the room. I asked him if he was eavesdropping, and he said no, but I could tell he was lying. He must’ve overheard our whole conversation and reported it to the rest of the Order council.”

  My jaw dropped. “What? Why didn’t you tell me you caught him spying?”

  “Because I knew he overheard something, but I figured he would’ve only heard the last minute or so, when we were talking about coffee and breakfast. I didn’t think he was standing out there in the hall for twenty minutes, listening to every word of our conversation.”

  “Well, it looks like he was.”

  “Yeah.” Logan glanced down at the broken bug on the floor and kicked a piece away. “He must’ve put this in our room afterwards to see if we’d ever talk about it again.”

  “Unless someone else from the Order planted the bug,” I said, tilting my head to one side. “How do we know it wasn’t in here the whole time?”

  “The maids sweep the rooms for stuff like this once a week. Last time they did it was five days ago, which means the bug has only been in here for the last few days. That lines up with the time Dad overheard us talking.”

  “Ah.”

  “So it had to be him.” Logan scrubbed a hand over his forehead. “And now the council is warning you about what he overheard. Making sure you stop digging.”

  “That’s what I figured when I saw the note.”

  “Did anyone else see it?”

  I shook my head. “It was in the corpse’s mouth, and it landed right next to me. Only my dad was near me when I crouched down and grabbed it, and he didn’t say or do anything. So I’m pretty sure no one noticed.”

  “Okay.” He balled his hands into fists and paced over to the window. “Fuck...”

  “What are you thinking?” I asked, shuffling closer to him.

  He turned back to face me. “I’m thinking I need to do more to protect you,” he said, jaw clenching. “We had one fucking conversation about the Order, and then suddenly a body gets dropped on you just to scare you. Plus it was my own dad who turned you in for asking me to look into it all. He’s the main reason this shit happened. That’s fucked up.”

  I shrugged. “It doesn’t really surprise me, to be honest. I mean, I know he’s your dad, so you probably don’t want to hear this, but he’s kind of a dick most of the time. Of course he’d sell me out to the rest of the Order. Probably wants to bank favors with Q; make himself look good. Selling out his future daughter-in-law proves his loyalty pretty well. Hell, maybe he’s even gunning to be the next supreme leader when Q retires.”

  “I don’t know. Right now I’m sort of wondering if you were actually right about him the other day,” Logan said slowly. “Seems like you’ve been right about everything else so far.”

  I lifted my brows. “You mean you think he could be Q?”

  “Yeah, maybe,” he said in a reluctant tone, rubbing his jaw. He shook his head and let out a short, shallow puff of air. “Fuck, I really don’t know.”

  A sudden shiver hit me right between the shoulder blades, and I hugged my arms around myself. “What made you change your mind?” I asked. “You literally laughed in my face when I suggested it the other day.”

  “I know. When you first brought it up, it seemed ridiculous to me,” he replied. “I’ve always known he’s heavily involved with the Order, but he never hid that from me, and there’s also the fact that he’s my father. I thought I would’ve noticed if there was something off about him. If he was hiding a huge secret like that. Now I’m not so sure.”

  “Why?”

  He hesitated and wrinkled his nose. “He keeps acting shady and lying to me about shit, and now he’s obviously fucking spying on us. Makes me wonder what else I’ve missed about him. Like sure, maybe he’s just in the Order council, but maybe not. Maybe he’s been leading the society all along, and I’ve just been blind to all the signs. On the other hand, if that’s the case, how the hell could I be that fucking ignorant?”

  I gritted my teeth. “Family members can easily hide big secrets, no matter how well you think you know them,” I said. “Trust me, I know that all too well after what my dad did to me. Sometimes there aren’t any signs at all.”

  “Yeah, I suppose so. But I don’t know. I’m just not sure if I can fully picture him being Q.”

  “Why?”

  “He’s a pretty shitty liar, and I assume the big supreme leader needs to be amazing at that sort of stuff, so no one ever suspects who he is.”

  “What else has he lied about lately?” I asked. “Apart from eavesdropping outside our room, I mean.”

  “I asked him about the Order leak a few weeks ago, and he lied to me then. I don’t know what he was lying about, exactly, but I could tell he was doing it. I figured he was just protecting himself and the rest of the council because they suspected it could be an inside job and they didn’t want to admit it yet. Now I’m wondering if he knew exactly what was going on, and if he was just covering his own ass because he’s secretly in charge of it all.”

  I chewed on my bottom lip, mulling it over. “Are you sure he was lying?”

  “Trust me, he was definitely hiding something. It was written all over his face.” He paused and frowned. “That’s the biggest thing that doesn’t make sense to me if he’s actually Q. Like I said before, Q has to be a really good liar, right?”

  I frowned. “Maybe your dad only pretends to be a bad liar to throw you off.”

  “Yeah, maybe.” Logan scratched his jaw again, frown deepening. “I’m still not sure. He’s always been a fucking weird guy, but I would’ve never suspected him until this shit started happening.”

  “What sort of weird stuff has he done in the past?”

  He waved a hand. “It doesn’t matter. It’s not relevant.”

  “It might be.”

  “How?”

  I lifted one shoulder. “You’re so used to him and all his crap that you might think it’s not relevant to him possibly being Q, but if you see it from another perspective, you might change your mind and realize there’s more to it.”

  “I doubt it.”

  “Try me,” I insisted. “Tell me every weird thing you can think of.”

  “I honestly don’t see how it’ll help.”

  I sighed. “Logan, I really want to find out what we’re dealing with here, and if your dad is Q, we won’t be going into it totally blind. We’ll know at least one thing. That could make a huge difference.”

  “All right. Fine,” he said grudgingly. He sat down and rubbed the top of his brows. “He’s always had this obsession with trying to make me just like him, even though we’ve never been all that close. That’s the main weird thing, I guess.”

  Slowly grooming him to be the next Order leader, perhaps, I thought with a frown.

  Logan continued before I could say anything. “He was always much closer to my sister, which was strange in itself, because he doesn’t seem to like most women,” he said. “He barely tolerates my mom, and he’s pretty abusive to the girls he has affairs with. In a sexual way, I mean.”

  “How do you know that?” I asked, knitting my brows. I wouldn’t have a clue what either of my parents preferred to do in bed, and I intended on keeping it that way forever.

  “He brought me here when I was fourteen,” he said. “Told me I had to learn how to treat women before they figured out how to manipulate me.”

  “What happened then?”

  He looked away. “He wanted me to fuck one of the girls. I couldn’t, so he slapped me and shoved me aside so he could show me how it’s done. Then he brought me back the next year to make me prove that I’d learned.”

  My eyes went wide with shock, and a pang of sympathy mixed with horror bit at my guts. That story explained a lot abo
ut him and the way he’d turned out.

  “Logan, that’s not just weird,” I said, reaching one hand out to touch his arm. “It’s really fucked up.”

  He shrugged. “I guess,” he muttered. “But don’t worry, I’m fine. I don’t need to sit around talking about it with some kind of therapist.”

  I hesitated and swallowed nervously. “Okay, but if you ever decide you want to talk about it with someone, I—”

  He held up a palm to cut me off. “You’re here. I know.”

  “Yeah. I’m here.” I gave him a faint encouraging smile and drew my hand back.

  He looked down at the floor. “Anyway, that’s messed up and all, but it isn’t helpful to us in figuring out whether he’s Q or not, is it?”

  “I guess not,” I said softly. “Can you think of anything else he’s said or done that could give him away?”

  “No. He acts shady sometimes, but there’s nothing I can really put my finger on, apart from the times he’s obviously lied to my face, and the way he’s started spying on us. Although I suppose that doesn’t prove he’s Q. It just proves he’s a loyal Order member, like you said earlier.”

  “Yeah.” I sighed and sat down next to him, shoulders slumping.

  After a moment of glum silence, he cocked his head to the side. “Wait… I actually just thought of something else he lied about. It might not be relevant to anything, but it was weird as hell.”

  “What is it?”

  “A few weeks before you came to Thorne House, I went to talk to him. Before I got to his study, I ran into a pregnant woman in the hall outside. She was acting a bit weird, so I asked her if I could help. She told me she was a new maid and hurried away. That obviously wasn’t true, because I never saw her again.”

  “What does that have to do with your dad?”

  “When I went to see him after running into her, I asked him about her out of curiosity. He acted like he had no idea what I was talking about, but I’m pretty sure he was lying. When he opened the door, it seemed like he was actually expecting her. Not me. I didn’t think much of it at the time, because I was so caught up with other shit, but the whole thing was definitely strange.”

  “Yeah, sounds like it.” I nodded slowly. Then I cocked my head to one side. “Hold on… did you say she was pregnant?”

  “Yup. About to pop.”

  My heart began to pound, and my mouth dried up. Something was coming back to me; an old fractured memory. “Oh my god.”

  “What?”

  I jumped up. “Do you remember back in May, when you chased me through the White House tunnels in that skull mask?”

  Logan’s lips twitched in a brief smirk. “Yes.”

  “I got lost after you let me go, and I wound up finding the Order Hall purely by accident.”

  He raised his brows. “Really?”

  “Yes. I got inside using the tunnel keycard I stole from my dad. I didn’t realize it at the time, but obviously the card worked in the door because he’s a member.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Anyway, I realized right away that I wasn’t supposed to be in there, but I needed to clean myself up because my arm was bleeding from when I tripped in the tunnels. I couldn’t ask where the bathrooms were, though.”

  “Because that would’ve given you away as an intruder,” Logan interjected, nodding slowly.

  “Exactly. So I started wandering around to look for them, and I went into one of the smaller halls. I wouldn’t have a clue which one it was now.” I frowned and shook my head slightly. “Anyway, I wound up trying a bunch of doors. I found one that was obviously supposed to be locked, but someone must’ve screwed up and left it open.”

  “What happened?”

  “Some woman came over and told me to leave when she saw me hanging out there. She seemed really pissed that I was sneaking around and found the room, but I think she confused me with someone else, so she didn’t know I wasn’t actually a member.”

  “That was lucky.”

  “Yeah. Anyway, I saw a pregnant woman in the room. Your dad was there too.”

  Logan’s brows shot up again. “You think it was the same woman I saw?”

  “No, this one was giving birth,” I said. “The woman you saw had to be a different one, because it was months later.”

  “Jesus.”

  “That’s really weird, right? Two pregnant women associated with your dad?”

  “Yeah. It’s beyond fucking weird,” he said, rubbing his forehead. “So this woman you saw… she was actually having a baby right then and there?”

  “Yes. The place was set up like a luxury hospital room.”

  “Why haven’t you told me about this before?” he asked. “I’ve been an Order member for four years, and I’ve never heard of a room like that, let alone anyone giving birth down there.”

  “I honestly didn’t even remember until you mentioned the other pregnant woman just now,” I said. “I drank something weird that night when I was trying to fit in, so when I woke up the next morning, I felt really groggy and barely remembered anything. The memories just float back to me sometimes. Like when I visit the Order Hall, or when someone brings up something related to what I saw there.”

  “Are you sure you saw my dad there?”

  “Pretty damn sure. It’s foggy, though.” I rubbed the side of my head, as if that would coax more memories out of hiding. It actually seemed to work, because something else popped into my mind a second later. “I think he was talking to her.”

  “About what?”

  “I can’t remember exactly what he said, but I think it was about some sort of contract.” I squinted as I tried to remember everything, feeling as if I were straining my brain. “God, it’s all so hazy.”

  “A contract?” Logan frowned again. “Like… to take the baby?”

  “Yes, I think so.”

  “Do you know why?”

  “No. But I do know your dad has no problem buying babies from desperate people,” I said, gesturing to myself with both hands. “So I don’t think I imagined the whole thing.”

  “Yeah, that’s fair.” He nodded and rubbed his chin. “What do you think it all means?”

  “I think it means he probably is Q,” I said, excitement rising in my belly. “Maybe he and his upper-level cronies are operating some sort of baby farm out of the Order Hall. That could be why they keep it from the rest of us. They know most members won’t approve, but they still need their connections and resources. Like what you said the other day—a secret society within a secret society.”

  “If that’s true….” He trailed off and shook his head.

  “It means there’s a hell of a lot more going on in the upper echelons of the Order than we originally thought.”

  “No shit,” he said. He scraped a hand through his hair. “Christ, we sound like a couple of conspiracy nuts.”

  My shoulders sagged. “Well… maybe this is nothing, and we’re just trying to find connections because we’re desperate to know everything. Maybe your dad just impregnates his mistresses all the time, and he makes them sign agreements to hide it from your family.”

  Logan shook his head. “No way. He might be a pretty shitty parent, but he’s always wanted more kids anyway. If he knocked someone up, he’d want to raise the baby, and he’d easily be able to rope my mom into the whole thing. She basically does whatever he says. Besides, she knows he has affairs all the time, so it wouldn’t be a huge shock to her.”

  “So you think he’s definitely up to something weird with this baby stuff?”

  He pressed his lips into a thin line. “Yeah. For sure. But does that mean he’s actually Q? I still don’t know if I can picture it.”

  I could picture it easily enough. Chuck Thorne regularly terrorized his wife and left her covered in bruises, and he was more than happy to let his son keep a girl in a torture dungeon. He also took that same son to a brothel at the tender age of fourteen, tried to force him to screw a sex worker, and slapped him when he couldn
’t.

  He hid all of those things from the rest of the world. Easily.

  Based on that, it seemed clear to me that he was also capable of leading a corrupt secret society while pretending to everyone else that he was just a normal rich douchebag. He probably only pretended to be an Order council member so he could always be at parties and meetings to keep an eye on everything that went on. Hidden in plain sight.

  “I really think it could be him,” I said softly. “Like I said the other day, he fits the profile. Mostly, anyway.”

  Logan rubbed his hands up the side of his jaw and clasped them behind his head. “Shit,” he muttered.

  “So… what are we going to do about this?” I asked in a tentative tone.

  He stood up. “Well, first off, I’m going to take some vacation time from work. I’m keeping you as close as possible from now on. Unless I absolutely need to go out or talk to someone, I’m going to be right here with you.”

  I looked down at my feet, unsure if that was a good or bad thing. “Okay.”

  “I’m also going to speak to my father about this Order shit first thing tomorrow morning.”

  My eyes widened. “Logan, you can’t be serious!”

  “I am.”

  “You can’t just go and confront him. You said yourself that Q and the Order can be dangerous, and you were right. Look what happened to me. I asked a few questions and they hijacked my mom’s parade to drop a corpse as a warning. Imagine what else they’ll do if they start to see you as a liability.”

  He lifted one brow. “So what do you want to do? Forget it all and start acting like a normal, obedient member again? Let them walk all over us?”

  “No, of course not. I want to know what the hell is going on. I just think we need to be careful. Actively confronting your dad could get you in serious trouble.”

  He shook his head, lips set in a grim line. “Dad already knows we—or you, at least—want to ask questions, so I think we’re past the point of sneaking around and trying to pretend we don’t know he’s up to something,” he said. “I’m not going to go in with guns blazing; I’ll be careful with what I say and how I word it all. But I am going to talk to him.”