Page 80 of High Class

Matteo holds up his hands in surrender. “I’m sorry. That was uncalled for.”

I shake off my fury and stalk to the other side of the room so I’m as far away from him as possible.

“Waiting until we have more information before we approach Pratchett is our best bet right now,” Owen says calmly. “If we get more info before the ball, we’ll confront him. If not, we’ll have the ball as a backup plan.”

“You might want to turn on the news.”

We all turn at the sound of Skylar’s voice.

“I thought you were going to sleep, Princess.”

She holds up her phone. “I ended up doom scrolling instead. Turn on UNN.”

Matteo grabs the remote for the large television and powers it on. When UNN fills the screen, my stomach lurches.

“The body of well-known Madame, Renda St. Claire was found only a few yards away from the back entrance of the same nightclub where Mayor Fulbright was assassinated just ten days ago. Police have not indicated whether the two crimes are related, nor have they released any new information about the investigation into Fulbright’s murder. The chief of police has scheduled a press briefing for eight tomorrow morning. We will continue to bring you updates on this developing story.”

The anchor transitioned into another story, and Matteo muted the TV.

“How did you know about Renda?” I ask.

“Zara mentioned her in passing tonight when Jeanie and I were asking questions about her work. I recognized the name and thought it might be important.”

Matteo crosses the room and pulls her close. “Good call, Princess. Go get some sleep now.” Before she walks away, he holds out his hand, palm up. At first, she stares at him defiantly, but something shifts between them, and she drops her phone in his hand.

“Now you can’t doom scroll,” he says, then kisses her on the cheek.

When Skylar is gone again, the four of us quietly discuss what we need to do to put a stop to this.

“What I can’t figure out is why the man would seek out Zara’s sister that way,” Owen says. “Just leaking her birth name and that she was in Vegas to that gossip show was enough to get a reaction out of us.”

“He also said something to her about Matteo. Maybe he’s trying to send a message to us. Make some sort of power move. We’ve always known Pratchett isn’t someone we could work with forever because of his personality,” I say.

Owen nods and scratches at the back of his neck. “But something just isn’t sitting right with me. I’m going to see what else I can dig up on his movements over the past few days. Do you think you can talk to your dad and see if he’ll give you any information?”

I glance at my watch to check the time. It’s after midnight in New York, so I’ll have to wait until morning unless I want to catch him off guard and wake him up in the middle of the night.

As if on cue, my phone rings and Pop appears on the caller ID.

“Speak of the devil,” I mutter, flashing my screen at the others.

“What’s wrong, Pop?” I say when I answer.

“This is bigger than all of us,” he says. “So much bigger. We need to work together if we’re going to fix this.”

I blink rapidly as I try to process what he’s saying. “Why did you kill Renda St. Claire?”

“You idiot. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. I didn’t. She was taken from us.”

Fuck. I lower the phone and put it on speaker so the others can hear.

“What is going on? Who did you piss off?” I ask, my voice quiet even though I’m simmering with rage.

“I was just about to ask you the same damn question,” he barks. “Renda said that the Sin City Suits—that’s a stupid moniker by the way—were disrupting things and had to be stopped.”

Everyone sits up straighter. Sin City Suits is the name Victor came up with for us as a joke five plus years ago when we first came to Las Vegas, because all of us have a penchant for expensive formal wear. It’s not something we’ve ever spread publicly.

“So, what does murdering the mayor of New York have to do with us?”

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