Page 72 of Pay the Price

It was still hard to say out loud.

“I don’t want to invalidate your feelings, because I can’t even imagine how hard it must be to be in your position.” Willa hesitated, choosing her words carefully. “I guess I’m just saying, sometimes I think our gut — that little voice inside that’s our deepest instinct — knows the truth of a person. Or persons, in this case.”

I looked across the patio at the three men who, against all odds and all reason, had started to feel like mine. Were the feelings I had for them my deepest instinct? Some part of me that knew they were good, in spite of everything?

Or was I under the worst kind of delusion, thinking I could change a man? Or even worse, thinking they didn’t need changing because I thought they were better than they were?

“Maybe,” I said.

“I guess the real question is whether you can live with it,” Willa said.

Willa was right. Sleeping with the Beasts was one thing, but could I stay with them knowing they’d murdered Blake? That they were capable of such a thing?

Could I live with it?

I didn’t know.

Chapter 43

Daisy

The activity that increased in the office leading up to the ground-breaking ceremony didn’t slow down after it. An assortment of new tasks and crises arose daily. There were environmental holds that kept Kyle on the phone for hours, trying to sort them out while construction workers stood by, burning money at the site. More than once, Natalie had to run out of the office and drive up to the ridge to meet with Piers and the architects, trying to work out some new problem or obstacle while construction went on around them.

Diana was kept busy with an assortment of phone calls and paperwork required for the eventual hiring of hundreds of staff for the resort, plus the near-constant demands of Piers, who called her from all over the world when he was traveling (and apparently, at all times of the day and night).

It was like being on a runaway train that just moved faster and faster, and I was in the middle of it all — two days a week and sometimes three, if Diana asked me to come in an extra day — picking up whatever slack I could as the one and only intern in an operation that could have used five of them.

Sometimes Gray traveled with his father, providing temporary relief from the awkwardness that had never really dissipated between us. I didn’t trust him, and I still remembered the way he’d looked at Ruth at the ground-breaking ceremony — the way he’d looked at me, like my little sister was a gauntlet I’d thrown between us.

We were all working double-time on July 3rd, hoping to clear our desks of the most important work so we could enjoy the long Fourth of July weekend.

After the fight that had broken out between the Beasts during Summer Shit, I was nervous to go back to the Blades’ compound for the event, but I’d been informed by Otis that the compound had the best food and the best view of the fireworks, so why would we go anywhere else?

It was just after five p.m. by the time I finished the last stack of resumes Diana had instructed me to review for the resort’s hospitality staff. I liked that their requirements seemed lenient — no college degree required for management as long as the candidates had the kind of experience that would allow them to do the job, plus plenty of entry-level jobs that would provide opportunities for advancement.

I’d suggested we list the jobs not just on the main job-candidate site but also on the online job board for the local community college, and we’d gotten tons of good applicants. There had even been a few names I’d recognized — former classmates at Blackwell High or their siblings.

I logged out of my computer and stretched in my desk chair with a sigh. I had four days off, and I was looking forward to getting a lot of work done on the house, not to mention hanging out with the Beasts. I’d thought a lot about my conversation with Willa (can you live with it?) since the cookout at the Kings’ over the weekend, but I was no closer to an answer.

What I did know was that I wanted to be with the Beasts now. The house at the top of the falls was a world of our own making. There, no one questioned how I could fuck (love? no, I wouldn’t think about that) the three men who’d murdered my bother and there was no one to look horrified by the fact that I didn’t want it to end because there was no one to tell.

In town I was sure people were talking. The Beasts had stopped following me when I was at work and the gym (we’d agreed I’d turn the tracking app on my phone back on when I’d returned to the house), but I’d been to the home store with Wolf and Otis, had been grocery shopping with all three of the Beasts at one time or another.

Word had to be out, but right now, I didn’t care. Once we got enough proof about the trafficking ring to take it to the police — enough proof that even my dad couldn’t buy his way out of it — I’d have to figure out the future.

But not today.

I picked my empty coffee cup off my desk and carried it to the kitchen.

“You heading out?” Natalie asked. Hold music played from the phone, on speakerphone, on her desk.

“Just about,” I said. “You?”

She rolled her eyes. “If I ever get an answer about this permit.”

“Ugh, good luck. I hope you actually get to enjoy your time off.”

She opened her mouth to answer when a voice sounded from the phone on her desk. “Natalie?”

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