Page 13 of Vicious Seduction

Unease coalesced into a thick sludge in my stomach.

Was I being ridiculous? I couldn’t tell anymore. My body responded to him unlike it had to any other man. I didn’t understand. He was the same as the rest, wasn’t he? He was angling to do business with Lawrence—that meant his morals were definitely questionable. He wanted me to give him a chance, but I could never trust him. Use him? Maybe. But never trust.

My phone buzzed again.

I took a slow, deep breath to prepare for what he might have said next, only the message wasn’t from Oran. It was a thousand times worse. The message was from my mother.

That sludge in my belly turned rancid.

Eliza: We need to talk. Can you come by the house?

The gall. I wouldn’t step foot in that house if it started raining acid, and that place was the only shelter.

Me: No. If you need to say something, say it.

Eliza: I’m not texting about this, Carolina.

I should have told her to fuck off. That was what she deserved. Hell, I would have had her number blocked if I didn’t suspect she knew more than she was telling me. I didn’t trust my mother or her asshole husband, but on the off chance she had real information, I couldn’t ignore her.

Me: Meet me tomorrow, 1pm at the Applebee’s on 50th.

Eliza: You can’t be serious.

If I had to see the woman who birthed me, then I would make the most of it. Seeing her mortification at the possibility of being spotted entering her equivalent of a food brothel would fill my heart with joy.

Me: You’ll survive.

I grinned.

She didn’t deign to reply.

CHAPTER 8

LINA

I arrivedat Applebee’s early so I’d already have a booth, forcing Eliza to make the walk of shame through the restaurant. I even asked to be seated in the back. A vision came to mind of Cersei Lannister walking naked through the streets of King’s Landing inA Game of Thrones, the people throwing food at her and calling out “shame.”

I grinned. This wasn’t the same, but close enough. I’d take what I could get.

Eliza arrived wearing large dark sunglasses and a scarf tied around her hair, neither of which she removed upon entering the restaurant or sitting down. She perched on the edge of her bench so stiffly, I would have thought it was lined with broken glass.Such a bitch.

“What do you want?” I asked dryly.

“Don’t you think this has gone on long enough?”

“I’m not stopping until I get answers.”

“If there was something to find, you’d have found it by now.”

“Not necessarily. I think we both know how well you and your cronies keep secrets.” Secrets like how they’d do anything to acquire status as New York elite, and they weren’t above using their children in the process.

“You’ve dangled this over our heads long enough. You need to start looking somewhere else.” Her words struck a nerve, and all my frustrations surfaced. So much time had slipped by, and I was no better off than when I started this hunt. I couldn’t fathom how she could be right, yet… Maybe I could use her impatience to weasel information out of her. I’d gone to her in the beginning, but of course, she swore she didn’t know anything. Would her answer change now? I’d had to blackmail her to get my foot in the door at that fucking nightmare of a club. I wondered what she’d offer up at this point to get me to disappear.

“Do you have reason to think I should focus my efforts elsewhere?” I raised a brow as I bit into a french fry.

She sneered, her body listing backward in the booth. But as she considered my words, she seemed to sober, her blue eyes going glacial. “Maybe you should ask that handsome new stranger about how he acquired his membership at Olympus.”

Her insinuation shocked me, but I’d come prepared with my best poker face, so I didn’t show any reaction. But then, neither did she. I couldn’t tell if there was any truth hiding in her comment. Could Oran be the man I was looking for? He and Lawrence had known one another, at least tangentially,which would explain Lawrence’s role. I knew Lawrence was involved, but could Oran be the one truly responsible?

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