Page 46 of Devil's Riches

With that, we left the bunker with our bags of food and headed up the steps. Annalise’s wails drifted up the passage as we slammed the hatch down and locked it. Nate’s face remained stony and impassive the whole time.

“I know it’s hard,” I said, briefly touching one hand to his forearm. “I mean, she’s still your mother.”

“She stopped being my mother the second I found out what she did to my dad,” he muttered. “Emilie, too.”

A lump suddenly appeared in my throat. I swallowed it and straightened my shoulders. “What next?”

He rubbed his jaw. “Well, those two aren’t going to help us anytime soon,” he said, nodding toward the hatch. “So we should go back to the library and write down everything we know now. See if anything jumps out at us. Greg might’ve accidentally let something important slip.”

We traipsed back to the house in silence.

Once I’d typed out everything Greg told us earlier, I leaned back in my seat and frowned. “I think we should start trying to work out who the twelve families are,” I said. “We already know two of them, if I’m right about the Hollands, so we just need to figure out the other ten.”

“How can we do that without Greg and Mom?” Nate asked, forehead creasing.

I bit my bottom lip as I mulled it over for a moment. “It won’t be easy, but we could write a list of every single rich family on Avalon and go through them one by one,” I finally said. “Every time we eliminate one for not being a viable option, that’ll narrow it down for us a little more.”

“What constitutes a viable option?”

I held up three fingers. “For one, they have to have lived on the island since the 1950s, at least, because that’s when the Golden Circle was formed. They have to have a certain net worth, too. I’d say we can safely cut out any family worth under a hundred million,” I said. “Also, we can easily rule out anyone who made their fortune in the last couple of decades, like all the tech billionaires who moved over here from Seattle. They’re loaded, but there’s no way they’re involved. Their money is too new.”

Nate nodded slowly. “Fair enough. But you know how many rich people live here, right?”

“No shit. It’s Avalon.” I tightened my lips and brought up a Google page. “I’ll start by looking at the Forbes site. While I do that, maybe you can start listing all the families you know.”

We worked tirelessly for hours, sorting through census records and online net worth rankings. By dinnertime, we’d narrowed our list down to 118 family names. All of them had lived on Avalon since the 1950s or earlier, and they all had a very high net worth.

Nate frowned at the list and pointed to four different names. “We can knock these ones off as well,” he said. “I know for a fact that they’re all broke now, so those online ranking sites must be outdated.”

I ran through the names with a black pen. “Anything else jump out at you?”

He was silent for a moment as he scanned the page again. “I can see at least six others that don’t belong,” he said. “They’ve lived here since the island was settled, but they only became rich in the last twenty years.”

“So we’re down to 108 names.” I sat back and let out a sigh. “That’s a start, I guess.”

A look of irritation clouded Nate’s face. “It’s not enough.”

“I know. It’d be nice if they all wore labels, wouldn’t it?” I said with a rueful half-smile.

“Yeah, no shit.”

I sat up straight. “Actually, that gives me an idea,” I said, heart suddenly hammering in my chest. “Do you remember my friend Ruby?”

“Yes.”

“When I first started at Blackthorne, she explained all the different fraternities and sororities to me. She said they have different symbols to represent them. Like yours, for instance, with all the skull motifs, and the Roses with their silver rosette jewelry.”

Nate’s forehead wrinkled. “You think the frats and sororities could be involved in the Golden Circle?”

“No. Not at all. But Ruby also said that the rich families here on Avalon really get it into their kids’ heads that symbols and emblems matter a lot. They show who you are, what you’re worth, and what sort of power you have.”

“That’s true, but I doubt the Golden Circle wear gold circular pins on their jackets, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

“Well, no, obviously they wouldn’t do that. But seeing as symbolism is apparently so important to the old families here, do you think there’s a chance the Golden Circle might’ve developed some sort of secret symbol? Something that linked them all? A signet ring with a certain pattern on it, maybe, or something else along those lines.”

“I don’t know,” Nate said, shaking his head. “If they did, I can’t think of anything that fits. And my mom has definitely never worn a signet ring.”

I looked over at the library entryway. An arrow with a short line cutting through it was inlaid with gold on the marble floor in that area, set in a matching gold shield-shaped frame.

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