The Lost of New Bristol (Lila Randolph Book 2)

by Wren Weston

  She turned toward the door and heard the clack of high heels dashing forward.

  “Ms. Wilson, stand at your place,” her mother snapped as Lila retreated from the room.

  Chapter 18

  Lila’s stomach growled as she drove her roadster through downtown New Bristol, its street lamps bright, its lowborn crowd well dressed in tailored suits and tailored dresses, its storefronts clean and inviting. After her mother’s lecture, she’d gone back to her room in an attempt to quell her rumbling belly, inhaling a few of Chef’s cookies and a chunk of fudge.

  Obviously, it hadn’t been enough.

  Her stomach protested again.

  “Shut up,” she grumbled, tapping on the roadster’s steering wheel as she stopped at a light, eyeing a burger joint on the corner with a silly, fries-shaped neon sign and feasting patrons. She could have stopped at the militia cafeteria before she left, but she hated the idea of the chairwoman smirking at reports that she’d eaten somewhere else after storming out.

  She’d been right to leave. Her mother shouldn’t have attacked Alex, for her old friend had nothing to do with her family’s crimes, nor was it fair when the slave couldn’t defend herself without risking her master’s wrath. Besides, her mother had no idea what Lila had done to deserve Alex’s treatment. Regardless of whether Alex had been happy to help, it had been wrong to ask her friend to betray her family.

  She hadn’t been thinking. She’d merely wanted to solve the case.

  When the light changed, Lila breezed through the intersection and sped to Bullstow. She parked her roadster in her usual spot and padded through the back door of the High Council wing. No senators lingered, hoping to flirt their way into a season.

  What a shame. She’d spent practically the entire day with Tristan, and still he demanded more of her time. It didn’t matter that she wanted to return to the shop instead of going to Bullstow, to slip back into his bed, to call out his name while his tongue and cock worked at her for hours, while they curled up together and fell asleep, hot and sticky and spent.

  Lila shook her head. The entire situation was too much. She needed to take another lover or else her feelings for Tristan might spiral out of control.

  She had to pull her head out of her pants. Soon.

  Lila opened the door to the High Council chambers. The three women inside looked up, tilted their heads curiously, then checked their palms.

  “What happened?” Johanna asked, showing her device to Lila. Large digital numbers blinked back. Six thirty-five. “You’re never early. You’re rarely even on time. Did the empire’s hell freeze over?”

  Chairwoman Masson giggled, then cleared her throat. “Sorry, chief, she does have a point. Not that you’re late all the—”

  Lila rolled her eyes and turned around, leaving the building once again. Twenty-five minutes might not be enough time to beg dinner from her father at Falcon Home, but it was enough time to stop at a café for a bagel and hot chocolate.

  She’d probably be late, but apparently everyone expected it.

  Screw the council.

  Lila stumbled into Rosebuds, a café across the street filled with simple oak tables and benches under a hundred twinkling lights in the ceiling. They were set to simulate starlight, only bright enough to capture the text on a book or a palm or a laptop. She ordered a bagel and cream cheese and sipped at a mug of hot chocolate while groups of students studied. Their burgundy jackets had been embroidered with golden roses, their breeches slightly wrinkled from their day at school. Most had not a hair out of place, even so late in the afternoon, even as they puzzled over texts and papers.

  These students were serious. These students aimed for the Saxony Senate, for Unity, for the prime minister’s chair.

  These students aimed to partner with women like her.

  It didn’t take long for the bravest boy to wander toward her, a boy who couldn’t have been older than seventeen with his baby cheeks and smooth chin. She’d wanted a senator to take her mind off Tristan, not a boy who couldn’t shave yet.

  She shook her head and pointed back at his chair.

  The boy’s friends erupted into laughter, slapping him on the back when he returned, the reward for daring to approach Chief Randolph.

  Her palm vibrated in her pocket as she finished her bagel. Come see me after the High Council meeting, Max had written.

  Lila frowned. No time. What did you find?

  Her palm vibrated again. He’d called instead of writing another message. “Lila, why didn’t you tell me you were in trouble?” he said without his usual greeting. “What were you doing and where were you doing it when this asshole caught you?”

  “It’s none your concern. Just tell me what you found.”

  “This asshole is threatening my friend. It damn well is my concern.”

  “I’ll deal with it.”

  “Will you? It doesn’t seem like you are from my end. You didn’t even call to check on my progress this morning.”

  “I didn’t want to distract you,” she lied, knowing she’d been too busy to devote time or energy to her blackmailer. “I have a council meeting in ten minutes. I don’t have time to play twenty questions. Just tell me what you found.”

  “Blow it off and come over. We’ll spend all night finding this asshole.”

  “I don’t have time. Please, Max.”

  There was a long pause. Lila sipped her hot chocolate and checked her palm, wondering if he’d hung up on her, but the line remained open.

  “The message came from a boy named Xavier Masson.”

  “A Masson boy?” Lila asked, barely able to hold her surprise. “Why don’t I know that name?”

  “Because he died five years ago, just a few weeks before his sixteenth birthday. There was a car accident near his family’s compound in New Lisbon. Someone stole his ID and used it to contact you. I looked for other activity online. The thief has sent a few messages here and there in the last few years, all as cryptic as yours. Most receivers lived in New Bristol.”

  “That’s impossible. My snoops flagged it as a fake account.”

  “Yes, and Xavier is the one who comes up when you dig through the layers. Why do you think it took me so long to find him?”

  “Send me the information, would you?”

  “No. Come over after your meeting. We’ll figure this out together. I dug into the thief’s bank account number. It’s tied to a bank in Burgundy. The system isn’t that sophisticated. We’ll hack it. We’ll—”

  “I haven’t the time, Max. I have other things on my plate.”

  “Make time. This is more important.”

  “I have to go.”

  “If you don’t make time, Lila, what’s going to become of you? I’m worried. You should be worried as well.”

  “I’ll look into it more deeply after my meeting.”

  “If you don’t find him tonight, then pay.”

  “I can’t. I’m the damn chief of security. How can I—”

  “Damn your pride, woman. This isn’t a game. He’s threatening to expose you. You don’t have time to play the wounded heir. Where did you poke your nose?”

  “Thanks, Max. I’ll take it from here,” she said before disconnecting.

  Lila drained the rest of her chocolate and left the café.

  A Masson boy might mean a Masson blackmailer.

  When she returned to the High Council chamber and plopped into her crimson chair, Johanna held up her palm. Five minutes past seven flashed back at Lila.

  “Let’s begin,” Élise said. “We have a few items to discuss before we call Ms. Park.”

  The group waded through the several items of expected legislation and court cases, weighing convictions and judging laws as good or bad for business. The Low Council of Judges would do the same, one wing over. Whenever the two groups didn’t agree,
the highborn would look to the populace to make their decision. If polling indicated a high surge of lowborn and workborn support and it wasn’t too bad for business, the High Council often allowed themselves to be swayed. That was rare, though. Usually, they merely took the most prominent among the Low Council out for tea, offering gentle reminders about who allowed their businesses to run in the city unfettered.

  Usually that solved the problem.

  From time to time, though, a lowborn disobeyed the highborn and charged ahead on a piece of legislation. From time to time, that lowborn’s business went under.

  The matron who conquered the lowborn would win her in the auction house by default, for the other matrons wouldn’t bid. It was one of those unwritten rules of being a highborn. A rare instance of solidarity among rivals.

  But nothing tonight was that contentious. The High Council finished their last vote within an hour and sent a servant to fetch Ms. Park from a nearby waiting room.

  Lila checked her messages in the interlude, gratified to find Max’s information waiting, as promised. She’d also received a voice message from Captain Regina Randolph, most likely Natalie’s test results. Unfortunately, Lila had no clever excuse to sneak from the room.

  The three messages the captain left afterward piqued her curiosity, though.

  With effort, she put away her palm as Ms. Park entered, taking her place at the podium, ready to walk them through her proposal. Her silver hair had been tied into an elegant bun, and she wore a simple dress cut in silver. It was daring, very daring to wear silver on such an occasion, but the future chairwoman did not shrink under any displeased looks that came her way. Instead, she matched them, chastising anyone who gave her a critical stare.

  Finally, her gaze stopped on Lila’s blackcoat. It was the first time Ms. Park lost her composure, though only for a split-second. As far as she was concerned, Lila had taken down an entire family, a family her mother had already put in checkmate years before. That was what happened to families who angered the Randolphs.

  The blackcoat might be the most dangerous one of all.

  Lila wondered if Ms. Park knew she could crush her dreams in an instant. Her eldest son had made a mockery of Bullstow, and the woman likely knew everything he’d been up to. She had to suspect that Lila could have found out as well, that she could stop the entire meeting and have her son brought before the council to answer for every piece of circumstantial nonsense he’d done in his not-so illustrious career. If that didn’t work, she could always mention Bo Park, that distant cousin who had just been arrested in the same sting as Natalie Holguín. She too had been caught in Reaper’s web.

  After that, the council would balk at admitting her into the highborn.

  But Lila didn’t believe that Ms. Park should lose her shot due to an idiot son and a distant relation, though it did make for an awfully nice trump card until the Park family’s confirmation became official.

  Ms. Park cleared her throat and looked away, shuffling the papers on the podium.

  “The next item on the agenda,” Élise began, “is Ms. Suji Park’s request to join New Bristol’s highborn. Ms. Park, we have copies of your proposal. Begin when you are ready.”

  Lila flipped through the booklet, which described Ms. Park’s tenure on the Low Council of Judges, as well as the facts and figures of her family, outlining every company and holding, at least the ones she wanted the rest of the highborn to know about. Her R&D departments seemed much too small, but they all knew the bulk of it would be hidden to stave off corporate espionage. Lila skimmed the sections detailing how the Parks might partner with each family, expanding upon their business interests and increasing everyone’s revenue.

  As Ms. Park droned on about her proposed expansions, Lila put down the booklet and studied the woman, ignoring the whole load of fluff and twaddle coming from the potential matron’s mouth. Ms. Park would sit on the council in a few months. They’d throw her a party, and she’d be thrown into the viper pit.

  Gods help the woman.

  Lila’s mother had called them potential allies, which meant that Lila would be sent to meet with her and her eldest daughter, to explain in blunt detail how to navigate the new world they’d been thrust into, to give them the cards of a few tailors, not tailors that impressed the lowborn, but tailors who were only acceptable to the highborn and their spoiled children.

  Ms. Park had been ballsy to dress as she had, and she’d been ballsy to look the High Council in the eye and not flinch, except perhaps a bit with Lila. Ms. Park’s daughter was a copy of her mother. She’d make a strong prime and a strong matron. Neither understood the show of it, though. Neither understood how to play their parts.

  That was half the game.

  One thing was for sure: if Ms. Park grew annoyed at the appalling waste of time Lila often encountered during High Council meetings, then Lila might have found a friend.

  Well, not exactly a friend. Matrons and primes were never friends. Lila and Alex couldn’t have been, not if Alex had become the Wilson’s prime.

  But they could be friendly.

  “If you’ll look on page forty-two,” Ms. Park said, moving on to the most trivial bits of her proposal, “I have included the request for my family’s colors.”

  Lila sat up, mildly curious what color the new family would wear. But when she turned the page, she couldn’t help but laugh.

  Gold. Ms. Park would ask for the Wilson family color before their matron had even been executed. She either had moxie, or she was completely blind to the significance of her play.

  The rest of the council gasped, their gazes lifting to the potential matron. Though Ms. Park had schooled her expression, Lila could see that she’d expected the reaction. She knew exactly what she had done, and she stared back unflinchingly, showing the highborn that she’d take whatever she could get as soon as she could get it. She’d tossed out whatever girlish dreams she had in favor of what proved the most politically expedient, the most daring. The show of it didn’t elude her at all.

  Perhaps Ms. Park and her daughter wouldn’t need as much coaching as Lila had thought.

  Perhaps they wouldn’t be as friendly as Lila had hoped, either.

  The women in the room studied Lila. When a matron took down a house, the color belonged to the victor’s family, free to grant or deny to the next matron who might desire it. Ms. Park must have known about this unofficial rule. She looked toward Lila, a little twist at the corner of her mouth. This was her first deal as a new matron, Lila realized. An olive branch to the Randolph family, and a very public one. She was declaring early, attempting to align herself.

  Johanna and Élise seethed.

  Ms. Park had chosen well. Only three New Bristol families had seats on the Saxony High Council, and the Randolphs were first among them. They had the other New Bristol families in their pocket.

  At least most of the time.

  “I think it would be a shame to let such a prosperous color wait for another family,” Lila said, knowing her mother would approve. “I only ask that you endeavor to bring it more honor and integrity than its last owner.”

  “Certainly, Chief Randolph.” Ms. Park bowed her head. “My proposed coat of arms is on the next page.”

  Lila turned the page, curiosity revived. From what she’d seen on television, lowborn and workborn girls constantly doodled coats of arms in the margins of their economics notes, at the bottom of their math homework, and signed every art project with the symbol. Ms. Park had likely been drawing this coat of arms for her entire life.

  It was beautiful for something modified in a rush. A golden bear on a golden background, mouth open to rend and bite, paw lifted to punch and slice its opponent. Such a coat of arms would serve her and her family well.

  Underneath, Lila read their proposed motto. Loyalty preserved enriches.

  “A fair showing, Ms. Park,” Élise sa
id primly as the lowborn concluded her proposal. “You may now leave our chambers so that we may begin deliberations. Expect to hear back from us before the season ends.”

  Ms. Park bowed and left the council chambers.

  As soon as she was gone, Élise swiveled in her chair. “Now that we’ve heard from Ms. Park, I believe we should discuss alternative—”

  “Fine. Discuss them without me.” Lila stood up and shoved her chair under the table. She then leaned on its back, eyeing Élise and Johanna grumpily. “This woman has attended nearly every highborn party in the last two decades because she’s had enough money and favor to snake the invitations. She and her family conduct herself far better than the last family this council voted in, and she rakes in more money than some of the highborn families in this room. No other family in the city comes close to her qualifications. Let the record show that the House of the Crimson Wolves votes to include Ms. Suji Park among the highborn. I have better things to do than let you waste my time with candidates this council will ultimately reject.”

  “We might not reject—”

  “We will. Her proposal outstrips any others you could find in Saxony, which is why we invited her here in the first place. And regardless of how she stacks up against any other candidate you could drag into this council room, she’s the only potential matron in New Bristol who would have walked into this room and pulled the stunts she did. If nothing else, she should be admitted for brashness and style alone.”

  “This isn’t a fashion show,” Élise grumbled.

  “And be glad for that,” Johanna agreed, crinkling her nose at Lila’s blackcoat.

  “Call the vote, Élise,” Chairwoman Masson said. “Chief Randolph has a point. This is tedious, and I’m sure we all have work to finish at home.”

  “Fine. All in favor of seeking more families for inclusion?”

  Chairwoman Masson sighed heavily.

  Only Élise and Johanna raised their hands.

  Seeing little support, Élise didn’t even bother to finish the vote or make it official. “All in favor of the Park family joining the highborn?”