Page 46 of Sinful Palace

Willow looked away and shrugged. “It doesn’t. I just thought it would be nice,” she replied. “Your mom has been really kind to me while I’ve been here, so it sucks seeing her upset.”

I leaned back. “Okay. So you want weekly visits with friends or family and for me to be nicer to my mom. Is that all?”

Her eyes darted back toward me. “There is one more thing,” she said. Her tone had turned timid again.

“Tell me.”

She swallowed hard and lifted her chin, squaring her jaw. “I want you to help my mom.”

My brows shot up. “What? How the hell could I help her? And why would I?”

Her lower lip trembled. “I really think she and Jamie are innocent, but the media won’t stop smearing them. I’m worried about what’s going to happen. Also, I feel like it’s my fault this stuff blew up in the first place, so I need to do something to fix it,” she said, words tumbling out a mile a minute. “You have more resources than me, because you work at Caldwell. You have access to a lot of information.”

I sighed. “Willow, I get what you’re saying, but this shit is not your fault or your job to fix. Even if you never made that confession to the Order where you said you thought there was a chance your mom might’ve done something to Rutherford, this shit would’ve blown up anyway, because someone filmed her and Jamie having that shady-as-fuck conversation near the pool. The other recording of you was just the icing on the cake for all the asshole speculators.”

She twisted her fingers in her lap. “I know, but I still feel horrible. I really want to try to fix things. I can’t just sit around and do nothing while my mother gets blasted for something she probably didn’t even do.”

I reached over and patted her arm. “If she’s innocent, she’ll be fine. The truth will come out eventually. Besides, it’s 2018. She and Jamie aren’t going to go through some medieval witch trial where they get thrown in a lake with weights attached to their legs to prove whether they’re innocent or guilty. They’ll get a fair trial.” I held up a hand. “That’s if they even get indicted, which probably won’t happen.”

“I’m not so sure about that,” Willow murmured.

“Why?”

The tip of her tongue darted out to lick at her dry lips. “I think she’s being set up. Whoever’s behind it knows exactly what they’re doing, and I think they’re going to keep doing it. They’ll find more and more ways to make Mom and Jamie look guilty, and then they might actually end up in prison.”

“Who would do that?” I asked. “Who would want to set her up?”

“I’ve been thinking about it for ages, and I keep coming back to the Order. It’s the only thing that makes sense to me.”

I frowned. I’d be lying if I said it hadn’t crossed my mind that the Order might be involved with all this Rutherford shit, purely because of the way Willow’s secret was leaked.

Q and the high council claimed it was the work of a hacker, but I wasn’t so sure. Something about that excuse didn’t add up, especially with the strange way my father behaved when I asked him about the whole thing a few weeks ago. Given that, it seemed obvious that the high council members were hiding something. I just had no idea what it was, or why.

“I don’t know,” I said, slowly shaking my head. “There’s definitely something off about the Order lately, but I don’t think they’d frame someone for a crime they didn’t commit.”

Willow’s eyes widened. “You’ve been a member for longer than me. You’ve never heard of them doing anything like that?”

“Nope.”

“But you think there’s something weird going on with them,” she said, tilting her face to the side.

I nodded. “Yeah. Definitely. The way your secret got ‘hacked’ while no one else’s did… it reeks of a set-up. It also seems like an inside job.”

“The council admitted it could’ve been that, but even then, they made it sound like it was just a rogue member.”

“Well, that’s probably true,” I said, scratching my chin. “The rogue member theory makes the most sense.”

“How?”

I lifted one shoulder. “Well, why would the Order frame your mom for Rutherford’s murder and then make it look like they had nothing to do with it? We’re all members, and we’re all meant to be privy to major operations. Ousting not one but two presidents in a row would definitely count as a major operation. So if that’s what the Order has been up to, surely we’d have some idea. The council wouldn’t keep denying all involvement.”

Willow leaned forward. “I get that, but this is what I’ve been going over in my mind. What if some of the members are secretly doing a whole bunch of shady stuff behind everyone’s backs, and the rest of us are just pawns to be used whenever and however it suits them? Like… they might need us all for favors, influence, or money, but they don’t want us to know the truth of what’s going on behind the scenes, in case they’re up to something terrible that the majority of members wouldn’t support.”

I frowned and rubbed my jaw. “You’re talking about a secret society within a secret society.”

“Exactly.”

I shrugged. “I guess that could be happening, but I don’t know. You have to admit it sounds kinda crazy. Like something your friend Rowan would come up with.”

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