Page 4 of Devil's Riches

“Why didn’t you just tell him the truth?” I asked. “If he knew you were his uncle from the start, he would’ve let you go.”

He snorted. “I doubt that. I would’ve had to explain why I was locked down there when I supposedly died ten years ago, and if I told him that story, there was no way he’d ever let me out.”

“Why?”

“Didn’t I tell you to stop asking questions?” he snapped.

“Yes, but it’s not easy when you keep talking to me,” I said, looking at the frosty ground ahead.

“Smart-mouthed bitch.” Greg smacked me on the back of the head, making me stumble again. “How long have you been dating my nephew, anyway?”

“I’m not dating him.”

But right now I wish I was, I added silently, picturing myself in a different universe where Nate and I were regular people who’d hooked up because we desperately wanted each other. Not because our lives had crashed together, twisted by mayhem and madness.

I never thought I’d reach a point where I’d long for a guy like Nate and fantasize about a world in which he was mine, but right now it was all I could think about. If that imaginary place was real, none of this shit would’ve happened, and the incredible sex between us would’ve been just that: incredible sex. Nothing more, nothing less.

Greg scoffed. “I don’t believe that for a second.”

“It’s true,” I muttered.

“Well, whatever’s going on between you two, I have to count myself lucky, don’t I?” he said. “What are the odds that Peter Covington’s daughter would wind up being friends with a Lockwood after what happened all those years ago?”

“What happened?” I asked, lifting my brows. “Did you kill my father? Or is he still alive like you told Nate?”

He let out a cruel, mirthless laugh. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

“No shit. That’s why I asked,” I mumbled, earning myself another hard slap on the back of the head.

Greg fell silent after that. When we reached the front of the estate, he paused and fumbled in his pocket for Nate’s car keys.

“This has to be it,” he said, clicking a button on the fob as we approached Nate’s sleek black car. There was a loud clicking sound as it unlocked.

He wrenched open the back door and shoved me inside. My forehead smacked against the window on the other side, making pain rocket through my skull, and my fingernails felt like they were about to snap right in half as my hands broke my fall on the seat. Swallowing my cries of pain, I rolled onto my back, clenched my teeth, and started kicking at the door and window on the other side.

Greg opened the front door and slid into the driver’s seat. He turned to look at me and sighed. “You’re going to be trouble, aren’t you?”

“Fuck you,” I spat.

He rolled his eyes and turned back to the front with another sigh, as if I were just a kid throwing a tantrum because I didn’t want to go to school. “Please tell me my nephew keeps money in here for emergencies,” he muttered to himself as he leaned over to the glove compartment. He opened it up and let out a triumphant whooping sound. “Perfect. Look at this, sweetheart.”

He turned back to look at me, waving a thick wad of cash in the air. There had to be at least a couple of thousand dollars there.

“I think this’ll get us everything we need for our adventure,” Greg went on with a grin, like we were two best friends about to head off on a road trip together. He dropped the cash in the center console and turned back to rifle through the glove compartment again. “Huh… what’s this?”

He held up a small bottle. “Why does Nate have trichloromethane?” he asked, raising his brows as he turned to look at me.

I gritted my teeth. “I don’t know what that means.”

“It’s chloroform, sweetheart,” he said, leaning over to the back seat to shake the bottle in front of my face. “Why the fuck is it in here?”

I didn’t reply, even though I knew the answer. Nate must’ve left the bottle in there after using it to incapacitate me when he and his Skull friends ambushed me in that dark alley several weeks ago.

Greg narrowed his eyes at my stubborn silence. Then he lifted one shoulder in a casual shrug. “Oh, hell, why am I even asking? It’s like looking a gift horse in the mouth,” he said, tipping some of the chloroform onto his left shirtsleeve. “I don’t think you’ll be much trouble now, will you?”

He smirked, leaned closer, and held his wet sleeve over my mouth and nose. I thrashed around, trying to evade the sweet-smelling chemical, but it wafted up my nostrils anyway.

I felt a blanket of blackness descending upon me, making my eyelids feel heavier and heavier by the second. My mind went into freefall as my consciousness ebbed, swirling with fear and disorientation, and my body went limp.

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