I thought Tess was going to give me the silent treatment again. She’d been doing a good job of deflecting my questions or just meeting them with silence all night, but every time she looked my way, alarm bells started going off for some reason I couldn’t explain.
Maybe it was because there was a wariness there beneath the surface, and I didn’t think it had much to do with me.
I got the feeling that there was something Tess wasn’t telling me. Something she wasn’t telling anyone…
“Tess,” I said. “I know you’re used to working alone. But…” Ah hell, I’d never been good at emotional crap. I shrugged. “You’re not on your own anymore.”
I could have sworn I saw a battle going on behind those dark eyes of her. Without the glasses and the dark hair falling in her face, she looked younger. More innocent.
And I realized now just how much she’d been on her own.
Up until recently she hadn’t even trusted her own sister to be on her side. And from what I’d seen of the Devereaux family and what I knew they’d done to Brandon and his parents…
“Hey,” I said, leaning forward until I was in her space. “You’re not on your own. You know that, right? Lila might be… well, Lila. But there’s no better person to have on your side.”
I hated the idea that I had to clue her in to the awesome woman who was my girlfriend.
Girlfriend.
The word alone made my lips twitch up with happiness.
“Look, I know Lila acts like a flake sometimes, but it’s just an act. And, trust me when I say that I know as well as anyone how she can come across as manipulative, but the more I’ve gotten to know her, the more I’ve realized how loyal she can be.” I swallowed when Tess’s gaze grew intense as I rattled on about Lila. “She’s a good person, just—”
“Raised by a monster,” Tess finished for me. She blew out a long breath. “I know all this, Jack. I really do. Lila and I might not have always gotten along…” She glanced around at the partygoers. “A lot of that was our father’s fault. We were never able to just be sisters. There was always something at stake. We were always competing.”
“That sucks,” I said. All my verbal skills had been used up in defending Lila’s honor.
Tess didn’t mock me, though. She just nodded in agreement. “It does suck. But even when we were at odds, I knew she wasn’t as wicked as she pretended to be. She wasn’t nearly as vain or selfish…” Tess shot me a funny little smirk. “She built an incredibly convincing mask for herself, and almost everybody fell for it.” She narrowed her eyes like she was trying to read me. “Everybody but you.”
She wasn’t saying it as some sort of compliment, she said it like a fact. But I still felt my chest swell with pride… and something else. I guess maybe I was humbled. I was insanely grateful. Because for whatever reason, I was the guy who got the girl. The girl. My girl.
My heart did a weird lurch, and I was suddenly desperate to see her. To hold her.
“She’s not perfect, of course,” Tess said, breaking the tension.
We both laughed at that. “Definitely not.”
“But I’m grateful that we went to Pinedale,” Tess said. “I’m glad that she met you.”
I smiled.
“And I’m hoping…” She turned to face me, that battle seemingly over and resignation written all over her face. “I’m hoping you’ll take her back with you.”
I jerked back in surprise at her sudden intensity. “You… what?”
She was one hundred percent serious when she continued, “For Thanksgiving break. Over the holidays. And when she’s done with school and you’re done filming, maybe…”
I drew my brows together in confusion, as much over the intensity in her tone as what she was saying. “You want Lila to go back to Pinedale? But… why?”
Tess looked pained. “She was happy there… toward the end, at least.” She bit her lip. “I think—I think she would be happy if you two went back there. Away from our dad. Away from her mom. Away from… all this.” She gestured to the party going on before us. The loud laughter, the non-stop gossip. She turned to me, and the plea in her eyes made my stomach churn.
Maybe it was instinct or foreboding, but those protective instincts were on high alert. “What aren’t you telling me, Tess? Did your father find out that you’re working against him? Does this have to do with Vivien or—”
She shook her head quickly. “No. The Vivien prenup is a dead-end, Jack. My father is a lot of things, but he’s not an idiot. He knows the loopholes, and he needs her money too badly to screw up.” She tilted her head to the side as she seemed to reconsider. “He needs her money too much to be caught, at least.”
“So… what? Is this about that mysterious payment?”
Her silence was my answer and pieces seemed to click into place.
“Her mother is getting the payments. But why? And what’s with all the secrecy around it?”
Tess licked her lips, and I could have sworn I caught a real wave of fear there in her eyes. “That’s the thing, Jack. I don’t know, but I can guess.”
“What does that mean?”
She shook her head quickly. “The timing of the payments, some comments he’s made in the past whenever he was angry.” She glanced around, and her face seemed to lose all color. “The way he gets angry with her. It’s so much more…”
“What?” I asked, my gut churning again as my blood pounded through my veins. “How does he get angry with her?”
She gave her head a shake. “I think we need to drop it, Jack. The payments, her mom. We need to drop it. Or else…”
I leaned in closer. “Or else what?”
“Or else…” She exhaled sharply. “I’m afraid it will be Lila who gets hurt.”
Something dark and toxic spewed from the most primal part of my brain and just like that, I was tensed for battle. “How?” My voice was sharper than intended. “Tess, how would she be hurt? How is Lila tied up in this?”
“I…” She cleared her throat. “I don’t know.”
I stared at her for a long moment. “I don’t believe you.”
She didn’t try to deny it.
I shoved away from the table and took in the crowd. “Where is she?” I muttered. I’d lost sight of her a little while ago, and now the fact that I didn’t have eyes on her felt like torture.
I had no idea what I was worried about. I mean, she was at her own home. Surrounded by family and friends.
Exactly. The sarcastic voice in the back of my head was not exactly reassuring. Even more disturbing, it sounded a lot like Lila’s voice.
I saw Brandon, but Lila wasn’t at his side as he talked to Siobhan and Evie and a few others. Amber was on the far edge of the pool—when she’d shown up, I had no idea. But Lila…
“Maybe she went inside,” Tess said beside me.
I wasn’t certain, but I was pretty sure she sounded just as worried as I felt.
We were being paranoid. I knew that. All this talk of secrets and spying, it was getting to my head. Making me see threats where there weren’t any.
Welcome to my life. There was Lila’s voice again. At what point had she’d gotten into my head as well as my heart? That was anyone’s guess. Sometime back in Pinedale, I supposed. Maybe that very first day I’d met her.
But right now, the meaning was clear. As I eyed her “friends” and discussed how she might inexplicably get hurt by her own family…
This was a whole new insight into Lila’s world. How she’d lived her entire life.
My chest was freakin’ aching with this need to pull her into my arms and hold her tight. Better yet, I wanted to take her away from all this. Maybe Tess was right, maybe I could take her home, at least for the holidays. If Brandon went too, it would even make sense that she’d go home for Thanksgiving with him and—
“Where do you think you’re going?” Tess was hopping beside me as she tried to keep up with me and put on her shoes at the same time.
; “I need to find her.” I was already heading toward the main house. I’d never been inside so I had no idea where I was going—a fact that Tess seemed to be aware of because she sighed beside me.
“I’ll go with you. If my father catches you and Lila together…” She sighed again. “Just don’t get caught, okay?”
I wasn’t nearly as worried about getting caught as I was finding Lila, but I didn’t respond. I let her take the lead, angling away from the main entrance where partygoers were going in and out to use the restrooms or just check out the ornate craziness that was this Hollywood mansion.
She led us down a path that wasn’t as well lit as the others. “Back entrance,” she whispered.
“Why are we whispering?” I asked.
She gave a little snort of amusement. “I don’t know.” She shook her head and turned back with a laugh. “I don’t know why I feel like I’m sneaking into my own house.”
It did feel like we were being extra sneaky, but at this point, I would break in through a window if it meant finding Lila.
“I rarely go in this way anymore,” Tess said as she opened a door to what seemed to be a servants’ entrance. “But if Lila wanted to get to her room…”
She shot me a meaningful look that had me smirking at her. Was Lila waiting for me in her room? God, I hoped so. But then, why hadn’t she just texted?
Tess rolled her eyes. “This way, Casanova.”
We didn’t get far before a voice stopped us.
“I had a feeling I’d see you here.” The deep voice coming from down the darkened hallway had Tess and me both freezing in our tracks.
“Now, now…” Their father’s form came into view. A shadowy profile in the doorway to a lit room. “Don’t go running off just yet. I was hoping to have a word with you tonight.” His voice hardened. “You too, Tess.”
Tess glanced up at me with wide, terrified eyes. I gave her a nod that I hoped was reassuring, and the two of us moved forward, into his office.
Maybe I should have been scared. I mean, this was one of the most powerful men in Hollywood. Hell, maybe even in all of America. But as far as I was concerned, he was a nasty old bully.
A muscle in my jaw twitched as my memory called up every terrible thing this man had done. Not just to Lila and Tess, but to Brandon and to Brandon’s family. This was a man who used and manipulated; he was a man who treated everyone around him like pawns in his own personal game of chess.
I had to blink to adjust my eyes to the light in his office. No glaring overhead light but every desk and end table light was turned on, and after the twinkling decorative lights outside and the glow of the pool, the light in here felt garish and harsh.
Or maybe that was the man standing before me.
His gray hair was slicked back, his clean-shaven jaw sharp, and his dark eyes were hard as they landed on me. “I was wondering how long it would take for you to come sniffing around for my daughter.”
I stiffened. He’d been waiting for me? I resisted the urge to look around. It wasn’t like Lila was hiding behind the planter in the corner.
But where was she?
I took a step toward him. “Where’s Lila?”
His cold, humorless laugh made my insides twist with revulsion. He reached for a glass of something amber and nearly empty. “In her room, I’d imagine.” He gestured toward me with a sneer that made me sick. “Waiting for you.” He cocked his head to the side. “Am I right?”
He knew he was.
I kept my mouth shut, but my hands clenched at my sides.
“Careful, son,” he said with a low chuckle. He was laughing at me. “You don’t want to do something you’d regret.”
“Don’t I?”
His brows arched as if I’d surprised him, and I felt Tess’s hand on my arm. “Come on, Jack. Let’s go find Lila.”
“Oh yes, go find your little sister.” Something in his tone had us both stopping. Freezing. “Tell her like how she’s just like her whore of a mother.”
I swung around ready to strike, but Tess lunged forward and clung to my arm.
“And while you’re at it,” he continued, his gaze fixed solely on Tess. “You might as well tell her that little secret you’re so proud you discovered.”
Tess paled beside me. I stared at her profile. What was it? What had she found?
And why the hell hadn’t she told me?
I felt like the earth was shifting beneath my feet. Like I couldn’t find stable ground. I had no idea what secrets they were talking about, and the fact that Lila was nowhere to be found… that her father knew we’d been messing around when she was supposed to be playing the role of Brandon’s girlfriend…
Adrenaline had my muscles braced for a fight, but Grayson Devereaux didn’t seem to be aware of my existence anymore. His cruel, hard gaze was fixed on Tess, and she was frozen at my side.
“But you won’t tell her, will you?” His tone was too gentle. Almost pitying. “Because while this big secret you’re so proud of might embarrass me… it would destroy our little princess.”
“What?” I turned to face Tess, waiting for her to tell me that he was wrong. Ready to watch her fight back. But the fierce, mildly terrifying spy I’d been getting to know these past few weeks had transformed back into the meek, shy girl I’d met back in Pinedale.
“What is he talking about?” I asked.
She seemed to shrink in front of me under her father’s withering stare. All her fight fading fast as she seemed to realize with a blow that he was onto her.
That maybe he’d been onto her all along.
Her father took a sip of the drink in his hand and then raised it in her direction. “Go on, Tess. Tell Jack the big news. He’ll likely be happy to hear it.” He arched his brows. “What is it, Tess? Cat got your tongue?”
He turned to me with a shark-like smile. “Tess has always been so tight-lipped with her secrets. But what she isn’t telling you is that my darling little Lila isn’t mine at all.” He sneered at Tess. “Isn’t that right, Tess?”
Thirteen
Lila
Isn’t that right, Tess?
The words were muffled, but they still rang inside my chest like a gunshot.
The air rushed from my lungs as I sank down to the hardwood floor outside my father’s office.
The silence somehow echoed louder than my father’s words.
It was the sound of voices down the hall that had broken through my self-pity sobfest. I’d exhausted myself with tears and had been lying there in silence for too long, unable to rouse myself to play the part I’d been given.
I couldn’t even bring myself to finish texting Jack or ask Maria for an ice pack to try and stop whatever bruise was surely forming on my cheekbone.
I’d just lain there. Miserable and lonely, until I’d heard voices.
I shouldn’t be out here. If Daddy found me…
I swallowed thickly. Daddy. He was Daddy. He was my daddy.
...my darling little Lila isn’t mine at all.
The sarcastic way he’d said ‘my darling little Lila.’ That had clawed at my insides first, and it took a full second for the rest to register.
Not his.
Not… his?
I could hear my own breathing and shut my mouth to quiet it. Closing my eyes, I counted, drawing in a slow breath and holding it before letting it out again. I did that until my head stopped spinning, but my blood seemed to be curdling in my veins, making my limbs tremble and my heart lurch at a bizarre tempo.
I waited… for what? I didn’t know. For something. For someone. I supposed I was waiting for Tess to speak, to tell him he was all wrong.
I was waiting for Jack to come bounding out here to find me.
But we all seemed to have frozen in the face of my father’s cold, emotionless voice.
“What is it, Tess?” His tone took on that taunting edge that I knew so well. The tone that I so rarely heard him use with Tess.
I used to hate Tess for the fact
that he never talked to her like this. And then, I’d pitied her for it because I’d thought it meant she was too meek. Too much of a brownnoser.
But now, our whole history shifted behind my closed eyelids. He rarely talked to her like this because she was his daughter. He loved her in a way he’d never loved me. And not because she was a kiss-up, not because she was the daughter of a wife he’d actually cared about…
But because she was his. She was of his blood, a part of his DNA.
And me?
Who the hell did I belong to?
“Don’t you want to tell your new friend how you learned of my little secret?” He tsked, and I tensed out in the hallway.
This tone. I knew it so well. Part of me wanted to leap in there and take the heat off Tess. She wasn’t used to it like I was.
She didn’t know how to back it down. How to de-escalate his rising anger.
Like you do? My throbbing cheek seemed to taunt me.
I couldn’t have moved if I tried. I wanted to protect Tess, but what he was saying, the meaning behind it…
She knew.
She’d known.
And she hadn’t told me.
“You went to so much trouble,” my father continued. No, Tess’s father. “And all to find out what I could have told you years ago if I’d known how much you cared.”
His amusement made me shudder. A chill crept through my bones.
“Of course Lila’s not mine. I would have thought it was obvious by now. She’s never had our smarts, now has she, Tess?”
Tess was silent. I wished I could see her face.
“Oh, she’s had her uses, but I’m afraid I’ve grown tired of her mistakes. She turned out to be too much like her mother after all.”
I had no doubt he was eyeing Jack with a sneer as he said that. I was a useless whore just like my mother. How many times had he told me that?
Useless. I squeezed my eyes tight against the word that had been scraping away at the back of my brain.
“She doesn’t know.” Jack’s voice was low and hard to decipher, but I knew him so well that I could perfectly imagine the set of his jaw, the way that muscle was twitching as he fought for control.
Princess of Hollywood (The Glitterati Files Book 2) Page 11
