As fun as his idea sounded – and we would definitely be doing it at some point – I really couldn’t let things wait. I had been home for far too long without real action. And though I had sent Beau back to Diamond Grove, and my soldiers were out on various jobs every day, I had not done that much myself. My core team of men, and the others in my home, had been doing the bare minimum as I tried to give us all some time to heal and grieve. But that had to stop now – we had to get the ball rolling and figure things out.
“Can we raincheck this? I would love to do it, but right now I think I need to work.”
Price nodded his head. “You let me know when you’re free and I’ll take you out and rock your world so hard you’ll be thinking about it for the next year.” He winked and leaned in, kissing my lips before we both looked up at the sounds of the Jester trio arriving, Delilah and Misha in tow. Angel usually came to our meetings, but he’d been an hour deep into a tea party with Diamond and Yumi and I hadn’t wanted to disturb. Especially when he had a princess crown on his head and was making both girls laugh.
Misha almost fell over in his haste to join us in the kitchen, Darius right behind him. Both seemed like they had not slept a wink and even though I had been up late with the girls again the night before, and had my panic attack, my dark circles werefar better than theirs. Kellan, Delilah and Widow looked just as confused as me, and we all paid rapt attention.
“I think we’ve cracked it!” Misha almost yelled as he stopped beside me, kissing my cheek and stealing the drink out of my grip, swigging half before he returned it with a cheeky grin.
The only reason I didn’t shoot him was because I loved him too much to have him dead, and he didn’t normally steal my snacks and things unless he was desperate. I would let it slide for now and let him make it up to me later on or something.
“Cracked what?” Linc yawned through a spoonful of his dirty porridge. He was sitting at the kitchen island, cradling his poison food and had oil flecks on his hands that I knew would be grossing him out.
“Logan’s mom’s note.” Misha yanked the note in question out of the pocket of his jeans, chucking it onto the island. “We figured out everything Jen was on about and I think it’s going to help us find Cassie O’Malley.”
Hearing her name instantly made me stiffen, but I was quick to pay attention as I read the note again to remind myself of what it said.
When I finished reading, I glanced up, seeing that Darius had a tablet with him. He pushed his glasses up on his dark face as he turned the screen around, showing us all what he’d found.
“So, we all agreed Jenifer was talking about Cassidy on the inner circle? And that Ford had already checked out his entire inner circle and determined they weren’t guilty.” There was a chorus of nods. “Well, she didn’t mean that it was an alias of your stalker for definite. She was telling you about someone else and trying to get you to search elsewhere.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because Cassidy Bruins is John O’Malley’s supposed to be dead sister Shannon.” Misha blurted out.
I cast my mind back to what I knew of Shannon O’Malley, remembering all the things my daddy had told me about. She was supposedly murdered by her brother well over a decade ago, and her body had never been found. Nor had that of her newborn baby or her husband. Honestly, she hadn’t been much of a thought in my head in the slightest, but if she wasn’t dead, then she damn sure would be useful.
She would know what my stalker looked like.
They were sisters, after all.
“Tell me everything.” I took a seat next to Lincoln, stealing a sip of his coffee when my drink ran out. He didn’t stop me, but he shot me a tiny glare that promised I would pay for stealing from him.
Hopefully I would pay with his hand around my neck later on.
“Cassidy Bruins joined your dad’s inner circle the day before Shannon O’Malley was reportedly killed.” Darius explained as he scrolled through a bunch of documents to back his words up. “Then there’s nothing from them for about a year, until a marriage certificate is issued to a court in England, where Cassidy Bruins became Cassidy Cardinal-Fineman.”
“She made a fake identity and ran?” I wondered. “My daddy knew about it – he would have helped her escape.”
Darius nodded. “Ford did help her escape. And it says here she was a history teacher who specialized in mythology and married an accountant called David Cardinal-Fineman, who just so happens to be an alias of the same man who fathered Shannon O’Malley’s son.” He showed more proof for his words, not that I needed it. I trusted Darius and knew he and Misha had been working hard to prove their worth to the gang in non-violent ways, not that I had needed them to prove shit to me.
Misha continued explaining. “Not long after that, two separate birth certificates are registered, by Cassidy, in a hospital in North London. Where she claimed to have had twins; one boy, one girl. But the certificates were doctored, so the kids were actually almost one and a half by that point - the same age that Shannon O’Malley’s baby would have been.”
Misha pulled up the next page as Darius carried on his explanation.
“Ares and Hades Cardinal-Fineman. Ares is supposedly older than his sister by a handful of minutes. So, I presume the second child was to help throw the scent of their trail, so they had her rather quickly, or they had twins and we just didn’t know it. Either way; that explains more of the note.”
Logan picked up the note, paraphrasing as he said, “Ford found God in his circle, but it was Greek ones.” He said first. “That fits with the kid’s names even if, no offence to them, their names are stupid, and I hope they’re fake.” He scanned the page further. “Jen also said they were useful kings to discover.”
“As in Vice Kings.” I nodded, excitement at our lead coursing through me at a rather ridiculous speed as all the clues clicked into place.
Misha was practically bouncing in his socks, and I made a note to watch his coffee intake for the rest of the day, and see if Icould convince him to nap at some point before he wore himself out. I loved how eager and energetic he was when working with his skill set, but I also knew he had a tendency to become obsessed with his work and choose it over sleeping and things he needed to do.
“And she said that London had nice weather, Logan knew a girl called Cassidy, and she mentioned vices too… Jenifer told us where to find Shannon O’Malley and who she was. She laid it all out for us in one super convenient, not at all confusing letter that didn’t take weeks and weeks to work out.” He practically said everything as one word with his eagerness to tell us.
“You know what this means, princess?” Lincoln drawled as he finished his drink and nasty breakfast and yanked my chair closer to him.
“What, bunny?”
