After a little more interrogation I had been able to rest easy. Clara hadn’t seen too much that night—and Ivan had kept his hands off.
Lola brushes it off. “You don’t have to thank me for that.”
“I do.” Then in a lower voice, I ask, “Do you think it was wrong of me to keep her hidden like that?”
Her dark eyebrows shoot up. “What? No way. You kept her alive. You kept her safe.”
“Yeah.” I know it’s true, but there’s a part of me that feels guilty anyway. Our father had kept us locked up under the guise of protection too. Maybe he meant as well as I did.
Her look is knowing. “Take it from someone who was bounced around foster homes her whole life. Being with family, no matter how much money you have or where you live.”
Then I can’t help it. I have to give her another hug. “Oh, Lola.”
“Be proud, that’s all. And get some of that.” She nods towards where Kip waits for me. “You deserve happiness too.”
“And you,” I say softly.
“Of course.” Desolation flashes through her eyes before she hides it.
I catch sight of Blue watching us. Watching her. His expression is unreadable, and I can’t help but wonder if he wants her.
Then why hasn’t he taken her?
She’s stage Lola again, flirty and smooth. “Maybe I’ll come visit you,” she says with a wink. “We can show your boyfriend that thing we did. In the VIP room. Together.”
She says that last part loud enough so Kip can hear. His expression turns both forbidding and curious, a dark look that gets me hot.
Lola, being Lola, notices and laughs. She heads back into the club. I frown when I notice Blue follow her in. Something is up with those to. I’m going to insist she really does visit me—and find out what the deal is.
Then there is Candy. She’s stiff in the hug I give her.
I step back quickly, not wanting to push. “Thank—”
“It was all Lola. Trust me, if it was up to me I would’ve had her strung out and on the pole in two hours flat.” Candy looks bored, but then again, that’s how she looks whenever she’s around me and Lola. She’s like the inverse. She can fake interest onstage or in the lap of some asshole. But put her in front of people she actually cares about and she turns into an ice queen.
So it’s interesting that she acts coldest to Ivan.
I give her a look that says I’m not buying what she’s selling. She just smiles, mysterious and hard.
She’s already walking away when I call out. “Did you know?”
Her face gives nothing away when she turns to look at me. “What?”
“You asked me, when you saw Kip and me together. Does she know you’re related? Did you know about him and Byron?”
“There’s not a lot that happens in this club that I don’t know about.”
“All seeing,” I say. “Like Ivan?”
Her eyes go flat. “Nothing like Ivan.”
Then she stalks off.
Then Kip calls me back, because they’ve reached the bottom, the hollow beneath the fountain.
Of course we find a pile of dirt and leaves, sprinkled in by the storms. There are also cigarette butts and other unsavory items. The fountain is in front of a strip club, after all.
And we find a leather case that contains a lifetime’s worth of jewels. Of treasure.
A bounty that even my father couldn’t have matched.
Kip is holding the box, looking inside. I wonder what he sees. Not the dusty, vibrant jewels. His father’s sin? His mother’s shame?
I place a hand on his arm. “Now you can have everything your mother wanted you to.”
He looks up at me, bemused. “What?”
“The mansion. The trips around the world.”
He smiles. “I keep my mother’s house in her memory. I’ve hardly lived there. I’ve mostly been traveling. Some for my job—private security. Others were just places I wanted to go.”
“Oh.”
“It’s yours anyway,” he says softly. “It belongs to your mother, to you, not me.”
Yes, I could use the money. Far more than Kip, apparently, with his private security jobs and jet-setting ways. I had a few thousand stuffed under the mattress back at the motel. And my father’s money, most of which was funneled into offshore accounts I didn’t have access to.
Dirty money. I’m better off without it. I believe that, but it also means I’m broke.
But I don’t want to take the jewels either.
Kip doesn’t see their rich colors, the shimmery strands of gold and cut jewels. And neither do I. I see my mother’s wish for true love—and her betrayal when she left me behind to find it. I see my father’s deepest pain when his wife left him…and the strange mercy he showed when he let her live.