Page 96 of Devil's Riches

18

Alexis

I awoke very slowly.My head felt like it had been split open with a hatchet, and my tongue felt dry and swollen. My vision was blurry, but when I instinctively tried to draw my hands to my face to rub my eyes, I realized they were restrained.

Cold panic flooded over me. For a moment, I struggled against my bonds fiercely. Then I lay back, trying to get a grip on the situation. Panic and struggle wasn’t going to help me right now. I had to use my brain.

Where was I?

How did I get here?

I closed my eyes, trying to force the foggy confusion out of my mind. I recalled having a hideous nightmare where I slowly became paralyzed at a dinner party. I’d tried my best to slide off my chair to reach help—to reach Nate—but I couldn’t move more than half an inch on the soft velvet seat. The whole time, there was an old man smiling at me as if my paralysis was a funny joke.

As my mind gradually grew more alert, I realized that the horrible fragments weren’t evaporating from my mind like they usually did after I woke up. They weren’t from a nightmare at all. They were broken memories from something that really happened before I ended up here, strapped to a bed.

Think harder.

I took a deep breath and tried to recall my most recent clear memory. It was Nate’s face, drawn with concern. I’m still not sure about this, he’d said as he watched me get dressed up for a dinner party. A dinner party with my grandfather…

My heart raced faster as the holes in my memories filled up, one by one.

Edward had drugged me. He hadn’t told me why, but I had a feeling I already knew the answer to that question.

He knew about my investigation into my father’s case and the Golden Circle. How he knew, I wasn’t sure, but it seemed obvious that he did. I couldn’t think of any other reason for him to knock me out with powerful sedatives and abduct me from a dinner party at his house.

Another memory floated back to me; a much older one. A text from an unknown number, sent to me weeks ago. I’d forgotten all about it until now, because the morning after I received it, the copycat Butcher left two bodies in the Blackthorne quad. After that, middle-of-the-night texts from unknown senders were the last thing on my mind.

An image of the message flashed in the front of my mind.

Stop digging or there will be consequences.

It had to be Edward. He’d known about my investigation all along. Probably had someone tailing me from the minute I returned to the island.

When I caught a car following me around the mall and park in Avalon City several weeks ago, that was probably one of his minions too. At the time I assumed it was Nate, but when I spoke to Sascha about it, she’d suggested that it could be our grandparents keeping an eye on us.

She was right. I should’ve listened to her.

I forced myself to open my eyes and take stock of the situation. The fluorescent lights above my head and the pale blue walls surrounding me told me that I wasn’t trapped in some sort of dungeon. That ruled out the Blackthorne tunnels, or any of the other tunnels in the vast subterranean network that stretched beneath Avalon.

I blinked, trying to clear the last of the haze from my eyes. I could see side rails on the white-sheeted bed I was in, and a metal IV stand stood on the left. A saline bag hung from it, and I groggily realized that it was connected to a drip tube in my left arm. On my right, an unused heart monitor and pressure cuffs sat on a table. Across the room was a sofa and a low coffee table with a nice floral arrangement sitting on it.

I was in a hospital.

Relief flooded me. I was safe. Then I remembered that my grandfather owned several hospitals, and I realized I wasn’t safe at all. Edward was hiding me here in plain sight. Probably told all the doctors and nurses that I was a criminal. That explained the cuffs.

A doctor entered the room a moment later, dressed in a white coat over dark blue scrubs. She was middle-aged and had a kind face.

“Help,” I croaked. My tongue still felt too thick to fit in my mouth, and my throat was parched. “I’m not supposed to be here. Edward Paxton—”

She smiled faintly and shushed me. “Don’t try to talk right now, Ms. Livingston,” she said. “You’re too weak.”

“But I need…”

As the doctor leaned over me and attached a clip to my finger to check my pulse, I caught sight of an ID badge hanging from a lanyard around her neck.

Dr. Selina Redstone

Hepatologist

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