It did feel like we were being extra sneaky, but at this point, I would break in through a window if it meant finding Lila.
“I rarely go in this way anymore,” Tess said as she opened a door to what seemed to be a servants’ entrance. “But if Lila wanted to get to her room…”
She shot me a meaningful look that had me smirking at her. Was Lila waiting for me in her room? God, I hoped so. But then, why hadn’t she just texted?
Tess rolled her eyes. “This way, Casanova.”
We didn’t get far before a voice stopped us.
“I had a feeling I’d see you here.” The deep voice coming from down the darkened hallway had Tess and me both freezing in our tracks.
“Now, now…” Their father’s form came into view. A shadowy profile in the doorway to a lit room. “Don’t go running off just yet. I was hoping to have a word with you tonight.” His voice hardened. “You too, Tess.”
Tess glanced up at me with wide, terrified eyes. I gave her a nod that I hoped was reassuring, and the two of us moved forward, into his office.
Maybe I should have been scared. I mean, this was one of the most powerful men in Hollywood. Hell, maybe even in all of America. But as far as I was concerned, he was a nasty old bully.
A muscle in my jaw twitched as my memory called up every terrible thing this man had done. Not just to Lila and Tess, but to Brandon and to Brandon’s family. This was a man who used and manipulated; he was a man who treated everyone around him like pawns in his own personal game of chess.
I had to blink to adjust my eyes to the light in his office. No glaring overhead light but every desk and end table light was turned on, and after the twinkling decorative lights outside and the glow of the pool, the light in here felt garish and harsh.
Or maybe that was the man standing before me.
His gray hair was slicked back, his clean-shaven jaw sharp, and his dark eyes were hard as they landed on me. “I was wondering how long it would take for you to come sniffing around for my daughter.”
I stiffened. He’d been waiting for me? I resisted the urge to look around. It wasn’t like Lila was hiding behind the planter in the corner.
But where was she?
I took a step toward him. “Where’s Lila?”
His cold, humorless laugh made my insides twist with revulsion. He reached for a glass of something amber and nearly empty. “In her room, I’d imagine.” He gestured toward me with a sneer that made me sick. “Waiting for you.” He cocked his head to the side. “Am I right?”
He knew he was.
I kept my mouth shut, but my hands clenched at my sides.
“Careful, son,” he said with a low chuckle. He was laughing at me. “You don’t want to do something you’d regret.”
“Don’t I?”
His brows arched as if I’d surprised him, and I felt Tess’s hand on my arm. “Come on, Jack. Let’s go find Lila.”
“Oh yes, go find your little sister.” Something in his tone had us both stopping. Freezing. “Tell her like how she’s just like her whore of a mother.”
I swung around ready to strike, but Tess lunged forward and clung to my arm.
“And while you’re at it,” he continued, his gaze fixed solely on Tess. “You might as well tell her that little secret you’re so proud you discovered.”
Tess paled beside me. I stared at her profile. What was it? What had she found?
And why the hell hadn’t she told me?
I felt like the earth was shifting beneath my feet. Like I couldn’t find stable ground. I had no idea what secrets they were talking about, and the fact that Lila was nowhere to be found… that her father knew we’d been messing around when she was supposed to be playing the role of Brandon’s girlfriend…
Adrenaline had my muscles braced for a fight, but Grayson Devereaux didn’t seem to be aware of my existence anymore. His cruel, hard gaze was fixed on Tess, and she was frozen at my side.
“But you won’t tell her, will you?” His tone was too gentle. Almost pitying. “Because while this big secret you’re so proud of might embarrass me… it would destroy our little princess.”
“What?” I turned to face Tess, waiting for her to tell me that he was wrong. Ready to watch her fight back. But the fierce, mildly terrifying spy I’d been getting to know these past few weeks had transformed back into the meek, shy girl I’d met back in Pinedale.
“What is he talking about?” I asked.
She seemed to shrink in front of me under her father’s withering stare. All her fight fading fast as she seemed to realize with a blow that he was onto her.
That maybe he’d been onto her all along.
Her father took a sip of the drink in his hand and then raised it in her direction. “Go on, Tess. Tell Jack the big news. He’ll likely be happy to hear it.” He arched his brows. “What is it, Tess? Cat got your tongue?”
He turned to me with a shark-like smile. “Tess has always been so tight-lipped with her secrets. But what she isn’t telling you is that my darling little Lila isn’t mine at all.” He sneered at Tess. “Isn’t that right, Tess?”
Thirteen
Lila
Isn’t that right, Tess?
The words were muffled, but they still rang inside my chest like a gunshot.
The air rushed from my lungs as I sank down to the hardwood floor outside my father’s office.
The silence somehow echoed louder than my father’s words.
It was the sound of voices down the hall that had broken through my self-pity sobfest. I’d exhausted myself with tears and had been lying there in silence for too long, unable to rouse myself to play the part I’d been given.
I couldn’t even bring myself to finish texting Jack or ask Maria for an ice pack to try and stop whatever bruise was surely forming on my cheekbone.
I’d just lain there. Miserable and lonely, until I’d heard voices.
I shouldn’t be out here. If Daddy found me…
I swallowed thickly. Daddy. He was Daddy. He was my daddy.
...my darling little Lila isn’t mine at all.
The sarcastic way he’d said ‘my darling little Lila.’ That had clawed at my insides first, and it took a full second for the rest to register.
Not his.
Not… his?
I could hear my own breathing and shut my mouth to quiet it. Closing my eyes, I counted, drawing in a slow breath and holding it before letting it out again. I did that until my head stopped spinning, but my blood seemed to be curdling in my veins, making my limbs tremble and my heart lurch at a bizarre tempo.
I waited… for what? I didn’t know. For something. For someone. I supposed I was waiting for Tess to speak, to tell him he was all wrong.
I was waiting for Jack to come bounding out here to find me.
But we all seemed to have frozen in the face of my father’s cold, emotionless voice.
“What is it, Tess?” His tone took on that taunting edge that I knew so well. The tone that I so rarely heard him use with Tess.
I used to hate Tess for the fact that he never talked to her like this. And then, I’d pitied her for it because I’d thought it meant she was too meek. Too much of a brownnoser.