The minute he saw my face, though, he knew something was desperately wrong. He didn’t even bother calling my pussycat. “CC, what’s wrong?”
I couldn’t stop the tears if I wanted to. Granted, I was probably a hormonal mess thanks to my latest nasty menstrual cycle. But all the reminders of what had gone were too much for me to bear. I was wrapped in Caz’s arms in a heartbeat, where I clung to him like a floating door in the middle of the freezing Atlantic. “What did he do?” Caz asked as he stroked my hair.
“He took it all away,” I wailed. My dreams, his love, our future… he had taken it all away. Worse, he had destroyed my trust, so that I couldn’t fully believe him, though I really wanted to, whenever he tried to offer these sacred gifts again. It wasn’t a matter of if the shoe would drop again, but when. I couldn’t trust, I couldn’t believe. I had to keep myself locked in a lonely emotional tower now, with no Prince Charming to rescue me.
It made me hold onto Caz even tighter.
Dinner forgotten, Caz cuddled with me on the sofa, stroking my hair as he held me, crooning to me softly until the waves of anguish passed. I thought I had cried all my tears over Devlin Masters, but it would appear that the wound had once again been ripped open.
“You can’t keep doing this to yourself, pussycat,” he said.
“How else am I going to answer all these questions, Caz?”
He pursed his lips as he studied my face. “There’s only one way I know of.” He stood up and held out a hand. “Come on.”
“Where are we going?” I said as I placed my hand in his.
“Where it all began.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
We landed in Las Vegas a few hours later. We didn’t even bother packing any clothes for the trip; we simply arrived at the airport and purchased tickets for the next available flight. We were on approach to the neon lights of Sin City just after we were served our in-flight cocktails and complimentary snacks. I had just enough time to text Oliver to tell him we’d be in Nevada for the rest of the week, using an impromptu (and bogus) meeting with Darcy as my excuse.
Oliver called me within a minute of receiving the text. “Darcy didn’t tell me about a meeting,” he said.
“She kind of doesn’t know,” I admitted.
“What’s this about, CC?” he asked softly.
“I’m tired of being used as a crutch, Oliver. YC is getting so much attention right now, and I can’t handle all the press on my own. I shouldn’t have to. She’s the genius behind the design. She deserves to be seen. To be known.”
“CC,” he said quietly, almost haltingly. “She’s not ready.”
“And I was?” I shot back. “I’ve been in the middle of a high-profile breakup for the past few months, and I’m supposed to show up, smile and look pretty on command. Why can’t she bend just a little bit? This is her baby, too. We’re not doing her any favors by sheltering her, Oliver.”
He sighed. “Fine. You can try, but I guarantee you that she’ll fight you every step of the way.” I supposed he should know, given he had been handling Darcy personally for months.
“I’m used to facing off against a Masters,” I remarked. “I gotta go. Caz is waiting.”
There was a quiet pause. “Caz is with you?”
“Of course,” I said. “Why wouldn’t he be? He is the companion on record these days, isn’t he?”
There was a hard edge to Oliver’s voice. “I don’t want Caz anywhere near Darcy.”
It was the most forceful I had ever heard him. “Why not?”
“Just… promise me that you won’t take him with you.”
I hesitated only a moment. “I promise.”
He breathed a sigh of relief. “Good. I’ll do my part and set up some promo work at our Vegas store this weekend. It’ll give you an excuse to be in town so you won’t spook her. If she feels cornered, she’ll never come around.”
My brow furrowed. I knew him well. “What are you not saying, Oliver?”
“I just need you to handle Darcy delicately, that’s all. Creative genius and all that,” he dismissed, but I knew instantly he wasn’t telling me everything. “We have a lot at stake to keep her happy. The new terms of the contract mean we can’t force her to face the public if she doesn’t want to. You signed up for that job, remember?”
“Yeah, I remember,” I said. “I’ve got it covered, okay?”
“Okay,” he said, but he didn’t sound convinced.
After our conversation, neither was I.
“He must know,” Caz deduced whenever I told him about the phone call.
“What? About you?”
He nodded. “She finally told someone, I guess. Probably as extra incentive to steer far clear from the press of YC.”
I nodded as well. That made sense.
It really didn’t even matter. Caz and I had no plans to ambush her. The reason he had come to Vegas had little to do with Darcy at all. It had everything to do with the ostentatious resort hotel that we were approaching in the rented limo.
The Harvey was a five-star resort hotel and casino right in the heart of the Las Vegas Strip, which towered more than thirty stories high and boasted over three thousand rooms. It had been constructed over the ashes of a smaller, less famous hotel that Harvey Everhart had imploded when he bought the property for a steal in the 1990s, thanks to the contributions of a generous donor who remained a silent partner in the casino throughout the decades.
Harvey was the true personality behind the brand, and he treated The Harvey like his own personal calling card. He erected the towering behemoth in black glass with gold trim, as a testament to his self-made fortune as one of Sin City’s greatest success stories. He had started out as a blackjack dealer, turned professional poker player, then climbed the ranks in the casino biz until he owned three properties in Las Vegas, one in Reno, one in Atlantic City and one in New Orleans, along the Mississippi River.
“Suzanne believes in world domination,” Caz told me as we rode to the hotel. “Which is why it surprised no one that Harvey’s political ambition didn’t end with winning a seat in congress.”
The décor of the Harvey was decadent, an ornate spectacle in purple, black, gold and red, a playground for the rich and famous who regularly passed through the revolving doors.
It didn’t escape my notice that every single male who worked there looked like they could have stepped off the cover of a magazine. “She still do the hiring, too?” I mused as we waited in line to check in.
He chuckled. “She’s a powerful woman with the means to feed her obsession. What do you think?”
I didn’t say anything as I watched the parade of gorgeous men filter through the hotel.
“Ever hear of Elizabeth Bathory?” he asked. I shook my head. “She was a countess in Hungary in the late 1500s, early 1600s. Known as The Blood Countess, she one of the most prolific female serial killers in history. She believed that the blood of virgins kept her young, and used her position of power and authority to feed her bloodlust.”
“Sounds like a vampire.”
“Good catch, pussycat. She is referred to as Countess Dracula, and has been compared to Vlad the Impaler. We’re talking hundreds of victims throughout her reign of terror. There were something like three hundred witnesses, including those women she kept prisoner. The list of the dead supposedly doubled that number. Creepy, creepy stuff. But that’s what happens when a sadist is given power. Lust is insatiable, particularly when it’s cruel.”
“You’re really going to liken Suzanne to a serial killer?”
He looked around at the handsome men who filled the hotel. “There are several ways to steal someone’s life, pussycat.”
I tried to imagine what life must have been like for Devlin when he walked into that casino for the first time, a desperate twenty-three year old with a devastated family to support. He had given up everything, including the Stanford degree that he had worked so long and so hard to earn. He had walked in that revolving door looking
for a glimmer of hope, and ended up with his ankles shackled to every other good-looking male who had the misfortune of working for Suzanne Everhart.
If Caz and Dev were to be believed, anyway.
It was a little easier to believe as we passed her potential new victims all the way up to our room. Like Devlin, and even Caz, each male employee wore a charming smile, as though this crap service job was the best thing that had ever happened to them. Caz pointed out every expensive watch, ring, shoes, and particularly ties that they all wore, things that none of them could afford on an hourly wage at a casino alone.
These perks were their shackles.
I used the privacy of the elevator to pry further. “Why would she bother? Harvey’s been virtually out of the casino biz for years. Why would she risk a possible White House run on sex?”
“I already told you. Cruel lust is insatiable. Remember Countess Elizabeth? She was obsessed to the point of self-destruction. She flirted with getting caught, where she’d be forced to answer for her many sins. I personally think she got off on it. That’s the challenge for people like that. See how far you can push that envelope. See how much you can get away with. And if you have the money and means to do it, it just makes the game more interesting.”
“You’re suggesting that she’s psychotic.”
“I’m not suggesting anything. I’m saying it outright.”
“Caz,” I dismissed with a shake of my head.
The doors to the elevator slid open to our floor. “Don’t you trust me yet, pussycat?” he asked before he held out his hand.
I took it with a sigh and let him lead us to our suite, which, according to the gold plate on the door, was named Prelude. My brow creased. “The suite is named?”
He nodded. “They are all named. Why?”
“Is there one named Overture?”
He paused as he thought about it. “I suppose there could be. Why? What were you thinking?”
“Suzanne used that word to control Devlin in a moment that I know he couldn’t have been easy to control.”
“When he was trying to kill me,” Caz supplied with a nod.
“Exactly. But something about that word made him stop. It means something. And it means something to her too. I saw it on her face when I said the word in that meeting.”
We walked into the opulent suite that featured his and hers bathrooms as well as a separate sitting area from the king-sized bedroom. It had a balcony facing out over the strip, where one could watch volcanos erupt, pirate ships fight off the British or people float down lazy canals in a gondola.
Caz, though, wasn’t interested in the view or the bed or the sitting room. He quickly swept around the mirrors and under the tables, until he found what he was looking for behind a huge art piece hanging just across from the bed. He opened his hand to show me the tiny piece of equipment that looked like a tiny, flat earbud.
“What is that?”
“That, my dear, is surveillance equipment.” He nodded towards the clock, which he immediately unplugged.
“She fucking spies on people?”
“Not all the time. Not everywhere. But yeah. She’d probably hook up all the rooms if she thought she could get away with it, but at the moment it’s pretty random, just to cover her own ass. Suites are a common place to find surveillance cameras, just because of the higher end clientele. They can turn it on at any time, set mostly to motion activation in case there is any activity in the room.” He pointed up to one of the smoke detectors on the wall, before he hopped up and snatched down the shell casing, pointing to the little pinholes around the sides to capture a 360-degree view of the room. “It sends the feed to someplace off-site, where video is reviewed for any… untoward activities. Suzanne gets the highlights. Usually it has to do with the hotel staff and expensive belongings that walk away, but every now and then you get something a little juicier, and a lot more illegal. Some of our best sessions included unintentional porn,” Caz told me as he put all the offending items in the drawer. “The best ones were the famous people who trusted Suzanne enough not to sweep the rooms the minute that they check in. We’re talking A-listers. Politicians. Royalty,” he added with a smirk. “They’re the freakiest ones.”
I was stunned. “How can she get away with that?”
He shrugged. “She’s Suzanne Everhart. Friends in high places and all that.” He flopped on the bed. “You remember what I told you everyone having the same naughty desires, they just hide it behind a respectable face?” I nodded. “Suzanne understands that better than anyone. She knows we all have too much to hide if anyone dared peek inside our innermost private thoughts. Her job has always been to catch people at their most vulnerable and use it against them. How do you think she caught Harvey?”
It reminded me of what Lucy had said last year, when she, too, suggested that someone like Suzanne, who was so completely different from anyone that Harvey had ever dated, ended up his wife of nearly ten years.
“So here’s this really rich guy, this stupidly rich guy, who can have any woman he wants and he picks a pre-Devlin Suzanne. Not only does he marry her, but he looks the other way while she has this parade of studs stampeding through her stable. Why would he do that? It doesn’t make any sense. She has to have something on him.”
Was she right?
“So what does she have on him?”
Caz shrugged. “That is the million-dollar question, isn’t it?”
I sat on the edge of the bed. “So if she has something on Devlin, maybe it is something that could be traced back to that suite.”
“You’re one smart cookie, pussycat,” he grinned.
“And how are we supposed to find it?”
“That,” he said as he sat up, “is the billion-dollar question. The only way we’re going to learn anything is by getting closer to her. As luck would have it, it’s her birthday this weekend, and she’s notorious for throwing these big birthday bashes where all the pretty people play. I suggest you get something sexy to wear when you are at Darcy’s.”
I scoffed. “You don’t really expect me to play that game, do you?”
He shrugged again. “Up to you, CC. She’s got what you want. The only way you’re going to get it back is if you take it.”
I stood from the bed. “We’re going back to L.A. This is insane.”
He rose to his feet as well. “We can. And you can go back to pining for Dev, letting him pull your heartstrings until it dissolves into dust.” He stood right in front of me. “But that isn’t you, CC. It never was. Why do you think it hurts?”
I sighed. “So what am I supposed to do?”
He walked me to the front door of the suite. “You go to Darcy’s. You play sweet. You play nice. You gain her trust. You find out whatever you can use, and then you slap Suzanne in the face with it, like you know everything.” He opened the door and thrust me into the hall with a pat on my behind for good luck. “You’ve got till Saturday, when Suzanne and Harvey get back from Washington in time for her big party. Let’s give her a nice surprise.”
My eyes narrowed as I glared at him. “You knew about this party before we got here. Didn’t you, Caz?”
His gaze never wavered. “There’s very little I don’t know, pussycat. Haven’t you figured that out by now?”
With that, he shut the door between us and I was left to my own devices, to untangle this complicated web.
I arrived at Darcy’s a little after nine o’clock. I had called her on the way, and as usual she tried to put me off, but I used all my powers of persuasion to finagle my impromptu meeting.
Mostly I begged for clothes, given that I had brought nothing with me, and apparently I had a big party to go to.
Darcy Masters was even more of a people pleaser than I had been, so I knew she wouldn’t turn me down if I was in need. And of course, she didn’t.
When she opened the door, I was expecting to see the same girl I met the year before, with her wiry copper hair and her utilitarian wraparound dress
es, with various food stains all over her clothes because she never stopped working long enough to eat. Instead, the Darcy Masters that opened the door this time around had her hair cut and styled, with a little bit of makeup on her face, wearing an outfit of her very own.
“You look incredible!” I greeted as I gave her a big hug.
She shrugged it off with a shy smile. “Jorge is in town for some big concert. He wanted me to go. I settled on the makeover instead.”
We laughed. “You are his favorite project.”
I followed her into her cluttered living room, which, like all the other times I had visited, had various outfits in various stages of production all over the room, for every size imaginable, given the differing sizes of her cloth mannequins. It was an explosion of color and fabric that all seemed to sparkle with her fairy dust. Considering her newfound financial windfall courtesy of YC, I was surprised that she hadn’t moved someplace nicer, or someplace bigger, but it appeared this was where she was most comfortable. She was a hermit after all, one I suspected suffered from acute agoraphobia if her skittishness to travel away from the townhome–and Vegas in general–was any indication.
“What brings you to town, CC?”
We sat across from each other on the sofa, with a pile of fabric in between. “I wanted to talk to you. Just us.”
She immediately frowned as she plucked some material from the pile in between us, fiddling with it between her fingers so she didn’t have to look me in the eye. “If this is about Youniquely Cabot,” she started, but I cut her off.
“This is about Devlin. And Suzanne Everhart.”
Her startled eyes met mine. “What… what do you mean?”
I decided to lay all the cards on the table. “I want to know what she has on him. I know she has something. It broke up our marriage. And I deserve to know what it was.”
“CC,” she started as she rose from the sofa. “I don’t… I don’t know anything about Suzanne Everhart.”
Masters Forever (Masters #3) Page 9
