Page 31 of Devil's Riches

“How so?”

“Well, I saw a lot of words like ‘investigate, organization, conspiracy, danger, expose, money, connections, elite, power,’ and other similar stuff,” I replied. “I also saw ‘Arcadia Bay’ and ‘Golden Circle’ mentioned several times, along with the number twelve. There were a few references to ‘Avalon’s most powerful families’, too, but it seemed like he didn’t actually know which families, because there was an intact string of words on one of the first pages that said: ‘still need to narrow it down and get the right names from source when available’.”

“So he had a source.” Nate’s forehead wrinkled. “Did he say who it was?”

“No. I have absolutely no idea who it was,” I said, shaking my head. “If I did, he or she would’ve been my first stop when I came back to Avalon.”

“Damn. What else was in the notes?”

“The rest of the visible words were just common ones like ‘the, it, with, as, and, are,’ and so on,” I said. “So that was pretty useless. But like I said, what was in there was enough for me to get an idea of what happened to my dad. He was looking into a criminal organization that was operating here on Avalon, and they were called the Golden Circle. He wanted to expose them.”

“He didn’t say what he thought they were doing?”

“I think he did, but those pages were completely washed out,” I said. “There were a couple of other pages that were completely intact, though. There wasn’t much on them, but if you get me a pen and paper, I’ll show you what they looked like.”

Nate got up again and retrieved a large notepad and pen from the cabinet. I took them and moved closer to him so he could see exactly what I was writing.

“The first intact page had something like this,” I said, writing out ‘IL?’ in large letters.

His brows puckered. “Just that? ‘IL’ with a question mark?”

“Yup. I figured it could be someone’s initials, or maybe a reference to Illinois.”

“Illinois is two thousand miles away. How can it be related to this?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe there’s someone there who knows something. Or maybe it’s just a person’s initials, like I said before,” I replied. “It could even be initials referring to a company, or some other place. There’s no way to know for sure.”

Nate drummed his fingers on the table. “There’s no one in my family with a name beginning with ‘I’, so it can’t be a Lockwood,” he said. “But I still think it’s a person’s initials. It seems like the most obvious explanation.”

I nodded and turned to a new page. “There was also a drawing with these words,” I said, sketching out a large circle. I put a dot in the center and twelve dots around the edges, like a clock. Above the image, I wrote the words ‘Golden Circle’ and ‘Bodies = ???’.

“What do you think it meant?” Nate asked, staring at the page.

“I think it was just a random sketch he made when he was thinking about the number of families involved in the organization,” I replied. “He seemed convinced there were twelve of them, and this clock picture confirms that.”

“What about the ‘Bodies’ part with all the question marks?”

“I have no idea what that part means. Sorry.”

“Is there anything else?”

“No. That’s all.”

Nate frowned. “There’s not much to go on, is there?”

“Nope. Why do you think I started breaking into people’s houses when I came back to the island?” I said, raising my brows. “All I knew was that a bunch of uber-rich families were involved in some sort of fucked-up scheme that wound up killing my father when he tried to expose it.”

He nodded slowly. “So that’s why you broke into my father’s study.”

“Yes. Your family is one of the wealthiest and most powerful families on the island, so it seemed like an obvious one to look into. I didn’t know that your dad wasn’t a real Lockwood at the time. I found out later that he’d married into the family and changed his last name.”

“But you told me a while ago that you found something in his study anyway, right?” he said, cocking his head. “A diary entry that mentioned your father?”

“Yes. It was just his contact details. So he knew my dad, or he at least knew of him for some reason.”

“Hm.” Nate’s forehead creased. “You didn’t find anything else in his study, did you?”

“Actually, I did, but I wasn’t sure if it meant anything,” I said as a memory crystallized in my mind. “Your dad seemed to write little notes in his diary all the time to remind himself of stuff, and I found one that made me wonder.”

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