My throat tightened. “Could the police help pin it down?”
“We can’t call the police,” Eve whispered. “He could kill Toby.”
“Discreet inquiries could potentially be made to a trusted police contact without providing details,” Oren said. “Unfortunately, my three most trusted contacts have been recently transferred.”
There was no way that was a coincidence. Attacks on my business interests. Attempts to chip away at my security team. Paparazzi set on my every move. Police contacts transferred. I thought about what Alisa had said we were looking for. Wealth. Power. Connections.
“Play the recording again,” I told Xander.
My BHFF did as I asked, and this time, as the conversation ended, Jameson looked to Grayson. “He said that Avery could call him Luke. Not that his name was Luke.”
“Does that matter?” I asked.
Grayson held Jameson’s gaze. “It could.”
Eve started to say something, but the sound of a ringing phone silenced her. It wasn’t the burner phone. It was mine. My eyes darted to the caller ID. Thea.
I answered. “I’m kind of busy right now, Thea.”
“In that case, do you want the bad news first or the really bad news?”
“Is Rebecca—”
“Someone got a picture of Eve standing outside the gates of Hawthorne House. It just went live.”
I winced. “Was that the bad news or—”
“It went live,” Thea continued, “on the internet’s biggest gossip site, alongside a picture of Emily and an exposé on rumors that Emily Laughlin was killed by Grayson and Jameson Hawthorne.”
CHAPTER 32
I texted Alisa first. Handling scandals like this was part of her job.
Breaking the news to the boys and Eve was harder. Forcing my mouth to say the words felt like breaking my ankle. A moment of wrongness. A sick crunch . The shock. Then the shock wore off.
“This is bullshit,” Nash bit out. He took a breath, then turned discerning eyes on his brothers. “Jamie? Gray?”
“I’m fine.” Grayson’s face was like stone.
“And in keeping with my general superiority in our sibling relationship,”
Jameson added with a sardonic smile that was just a little too sharp, “I am better than fine.”
This was Luke’s doing. It had to be.
Eve pulled the gossip site up on her phone. She stared at it. Her own picture. Emily’s.
I flashed back to that moment in Toby’s wing when she’d told me that she didn’t look like anyone in her family.
“Why does it say you killed her?” Eve asked, her voice reedy. She didn’t look up from her phone, but I knew who she was addressing that question to.
“Because,” Grayson replied, his voice blade-edged, “we did.”
“Like hell you did,” Nash swore. He looked around at the rest of us.
“What’s the rule about fightin’ dirty?” he asked. No one answered. “Gray?
Jamie?” He swiveled his gaze to me.
“There’s no such thing as fighting dirty,” I said lowly, “if you win.” I wanted to win. I wanted to get Toby back. I wanted to take the bastard who had kidnapped him—the bastard who had just done this to Jameson and Grayson and Eve— down.
“Fighting dirty?” Eve asked, finally looking up from the website. “Is that what you call this? My face is going to be everywhere.”