“Sorry,” Aspen apologizes, head down like she’s just trying to sneak past us. “I just need to get snacks for movie night.”
Bishop’s eyes are locked on her like he’s in a trance while she pulls things out of the fridge, and color me fucking fascinated.
“Can we join, or is it a girls’ night?” I ask because now I’m dying to watch this play out. Bishop looks at me, his brow raised in curiosity.
“I think it’s just us girls tonight. You guys have fun. The pizza should be here soon. Just call for me, and I’ll come get it. Don’t hurt yourself trying to do it all!” She shakes her head and walks past me without looking at Bishop again, the sound of her retreating footsteps echoing on the stairs.
“I can get the pizza,” Bishop says, taking a swig of his beer like nothing at all odd just happened.
“You’re not going to tell me what that was?” I ask, but before Bishop can answer, the doorbell rings with our pizza.
FORTY-NINE
Levi
“You can really stop fussing.I’m fine.” I give Zephyrine a doubtful look. She's been at my bedside in the ranch house every day during my recovery from my collapsed lung. Fluffing my pillows, feeding me, and trying to make sure I have everything I could possibly want to read and watch while I was on bed rest.
I loved the first few days of it. Having her care for me in the wake of everything, knowing she was alive and well and safe from her father. It kept my mind at ease. But now, I’m ready for the end of the nursemaid-nun routine, and eager to have some semblance of what we had from before—to have my girl back.
My girl.
For now. Not for much longer though. With Charlotte and Zephyrine’s research into the relics, it’s obvious we need to return them. They belong back in the hands of the nuns at the convent, where they can stay safe until they’re returned to their rightful place. The same is true of Zephyrine. She’ll go back to being Sister Mary Anthony, and I'll lose her forever.
But first, we have to make a final decision on the information we have about her father. How to best get it out to the public, and I want Zephyrine in on the decision process. So tonight, we’ve got one final meeting with my family and the Kellys to see what options we have in front of us.
“So to summarize…”Grant glances around the table, sitting back in his chair as he surveys the whole group of us—Zephyrine, me, Charlotte, Hudson, Finn, Ramsey, Hazel, Dakota, Aspen, and Rowan. “There’s a series of black books that were pulled from the Schaefer vault. A forensic accountant we hired confirmed it has all the telltale signs of off-book accounting— embezzlement of public funds, bribery of public and private officials, and some piss-poor money-laundering scams that seem to have lost him money.”
“That’s what he gets for going to someone other than the Stocktons,” Hudson muses.
Grant tilts his head, a small smirk forming in acknowledgment.
“We need to decide what we want to do with it. How to wield it in the most politically damaging way. If we can find a journalist who we might trust to break the story,” I explain.
“How do we prove that the papers are authentic without getting you arrested?” Dakota asks thoughtfully.
“That’s part of the problem we have to solve,” I answer.
“This is fucked.” Ramsey stares at the stack of paperwork on the table.
I made physical copies just in case something ever happened to the digitals, but I also made backup drives of the backup drives, so it’s unlikely. Still, I like to be thorough.
“I mean, it’s unsurprising. It seems like he caught Dad up in one of his bad deals, and that’s how he got dragged into all this relic business in the first place. They were trying to recoup losses. The governor wanted Dad to help with his little side project, and he roped him into it by telling him it’d be the way to make himself whole again with money,” I continue.
“Knowing full fucking well it was never going to pay off because he was never going to sell them.” Grant’s pissed.
“Which is probably another reason why he killed them. They can’t ask for their money back or turn him into the cops for reneging if they aren’t alive to do it.” Ramsey comes to the same conclusion the rest of us have.
“And why he wanted us dead. It's the only way to bury this for good,” I add.
“But why go after the ranch? That’s the part that doesn’t make sense to me. He sent Curtis on a mission to marry me in hopes of what?” Hazel asks.
She thought she was divorced from my youngest brother, Ramsey, when this mystery started to come to light. She was engaged to a man who was working at our casino, and he was involved with her almost from the day he appeared in town. Thankfully, Ramsey had come home from jail just in time to intervene and help us unravel his plan and win his wife back.
“Well, he knew we never handed over the relic. His guys jumped the gun and killed our parents before we had a chance to come home. So I imagine Curtis was here to find it on the property.”
“It seems like a reach, but then it seems like the governor was making a lot of unforced errors.” Hazel shakes her head, and half the table nods along.
“Thankfully. I’d hate to see what someone fully competent in his position could do,” Rowan comments.
