Page 132 of Blue Moon

“Thanks, honey.”

She flashed me a smile. “Any time.”

“If we just went ahead with the murder thing,” Dice said, “that would be one less issue to deal with.”

A breathless sob burst out of Elene.

“Nobody has time to bury a body today.”

“We have a walk-in freezer, so?—”

“No.”

“You’re not my boss.”

“You want me to get Priest to tell you the same thing?”

Caro’s hold finally released, and Tulsa hauled her to the other side of the room as Elene sucked in a lungful of air. This day was going swimmingly so far. Already, I’d had to leave the security exercise I was conducting in the hands of Nye Holmes and call in a favour from Sofia Darke’s little bro to play the bad guy. Plus I’d had to cancel dinner reservations at Arabica. The Lebanese feast I’d been looking forward to had become a Maccy D’s from the drive-through by the airport and a packet of dry roast peanuts.

I pointed at Caro. “You’re here to support Luna when we find her, nothing else. If you pull another stunt like that, I’ll have zero qualms about cuffing you to something solid for the duration.”

“But she started all this.”

“I didn’t mean for anyone to get hurt,” Elene sniffled, combing through her hair with her fingers to see how much was missing. “I just wanted to save my nephew.”

“By sacrificing somebody else?”

“Ronnie said he had a property portfolio worth hundreds of millions, so I didn’t think he’d even miss what I took.”

“Well, he doesn’t, and it wasn’t his money, so?—”

“Enough!” I held up my hands. “Arguing gets us nowhere. We’ll deal with Elene later, but right now, we have to focus on Luna.”

And I also had to look at the bigger picture. Yes, Mark Antony had fixated on Luna when she came to perform at the Nile Palace, but the chances were, she’d have returned to Vegas anyway. It was her home. After the bust-up with Ryder, she wouldn’t have gone to Richmond. And the theft of the money had given Luna the push she needed to strike out on her own. She’d had less to lose. With her mom still in control of the millions, it would have been far easier for her to fall back into her old life.

And now? Now, we’d get most of the money back from Elene. She’d probably spent less of it than Amethyst would have wasted in the same time period, and on a more worthwhile cause. Nobody needed a massage every fucking day. Liberating the cash from Amethyst would have been ten times harder.

As for Elene’s nephew, I had a plan for that. I wasn’t a huge fan of kids, but I wasn’t about to let a boy suffer for want of medical treatment. And Hill… Once we were sure we had no further use for him, we’d let him go on the proviso that he kept his mouth firmly shut. I didn’t want him confessing all to Amethyst. Better for her to think the money was still missing than in Luna’s hands. And Khatia would just have to manage without a house-elf.

Caro huffed out a sigh. “Fine, I’ll keep away from her. For now.”

Good. “Elene, you’re staying in here. Someone will bring you food, and after we’ve dealt with the current situation, you can return the money and we’ll see about getting in touch with your sister.”

“But—”

“You will be returning the money. We’ll discuss the logistics later.” I pointed at the door. “Right. Caro, out. The rest of us need to get back to work.”

Caro didn’t look back as she stomped out, and as Dice filed past, she ignored me too.

“Black sends his regards,” I told her.

She hesitated. “Say hi to him, I guess.”

This was progress. For most of her life, she’d blamed Black for her father’s death and refused to speak with him at all. He’d had to funnel money for her mom’s medical bills and later her boarding school fees through Pale because she didn’t bear him the same grudge. It was only years later when she’d somehow gotten hold of the bodycam footage of that night—which I suspected Echo had helped with—that she’d found out the truth and thawed a little towards Black and me. We weren’t exactly best buddies, but she hadn’t hurled any knives in my direction recently, so that was a win.

Downstairs, Tulsa sat Caro in the kitchen with Marcel and ordered her to keep her ass on the stool for the remainder of the night. Or was it morning? Between the jetlag, the lack of sleep, and the distractions, I had no idea what time it was. I checked my watch. Coming up to five a.m. Luna had been gone for nearly twenty-four hours, and we weren’t much closer to finding her than we had been yesterday morning. At least Ryder was too busy bugging Echo in her basement lair to notice the drama upstairs.

“Any news?” I asked when I found them.

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