Page 56 of Vicious Seduction
I couldn’t get the tiniest hint of information anywhere I looked. Either everyone legitimately had no knowledge about secret club activities or they’d been highly motivated into silence. Normally, secrets didn’t stay secret. People liked to talk. I might have been swayed by the stark absence of information if it weren’t for the notably shady moral character of members whom I knew. That alone was enough to paint the entire club in a heavy coat of suspicion.
Lina was the only person who had made the slightest insinuation that Olympus was anything but an elitist social club. And every minute I spent with her left me more unwilling to discount her impression. Not to say I understood her complex feelings on the matter. She seemed to despise them yet couldn’t stay away. It was a fucking mystery to me.
I knew of one person who might still have information. I hadn’t gone to her yet because I knew anything she’d give would come at a cost. But if it meant freeing Lina of whatever shackled her, it would be a price worth paying.
“Here to see Caitlin Byrne, detainee 563270.” I handed over my identification at the jail registration desk. This was only the second time I’d come to see my wife and would hopefully be the last until her trial, assuming she had one. If she was smart, she’d take her plea deal. Then again, if she was smart, she never would have crossed me.
Once approved, I sat at the first visitation booth, each containing a phone receiver on either side of a thick plexiglass window. Ten minutes later, Caitlin walked into viewand sat opposite me with all the borrowed haughtiness of a bastard royal—powerless and too dense to see it.
I imagined wrapping the coiled phone cord around her neck and cinching it tight until her body went limp. The visualization enabled me to produce a small smile as I brought the phone to my ear.
“I suppose you’re here about the papers.” Her voice carried through the line though she was sitting mere feet away.
“I’m curious how far you’ll drag it out, but no. That’s not why I’m here.”
“I’ll drag it out as long as necessary if that’s what it takes to get what I’m owed.”
Malice widened my smile. “You’ll get what you’re owed. I heard you got stuck in solitary for a while—two whole weeks, if I’m not mistaken.”
Some of her smugness cracked and faded as reality dawned. “That wasyou,” she hissed.
“Just making sure you get what you’re owed, like you said.”
She bared her teeth at me. It was almost comical considering only one person in this room held any power, and it wasn’t’ her. “I’ll make your life a living hell, Oran.”
“Save the threats for someone who gives a shit. What you should be more concerned about is whether you’ll ever know life beyond cinderblock walls and razor wire. If I were you, I’d take every opportunity I had to improve my chances.” She’d been framed for her own brother’s murder, which was particularly fitting since she’d harbored an incestuous obsession with the man. A minor tidbit that would have been nice to know before I’d agreed to our arranged marriage.
The man was dead now, and I knew she was innocent in his death because I’d been the one to frame her. I also knewI’d provided such an air-tight case against her that she had no chance of clearing her name. I’d considered simply killing her for betraying me, but death would have been too easy. She cost my father his life. That alone deserved a lifetime of punishment.
Her eyes narrowed warily. “You want something from me.”
“There’s a huge difference between minimum and maximum security facilities. With the right influence, a judge could be persuaded that you weren’t a safety risk.”
She mulled over the options, her face twisting with bitterness. Finally, she leaned back and lifted her chin. “What is it you want?”
“I want to know about Lawrence Wellington and the Olympus Club,” I said evenly.
A glint of surprise flashed in her eyes. Her mind had to be racing with all the possibilities about why I cared enough about those two things to come here. To come to her.
“This about that server of yours? The one you say you hardly knew?”
“Doesn’t matter what it’s about.”
“Sure it does. I don’t know what to tell you if I don’t have the proper perspective.”
“You tell me everything you know and let me worry about filtering out what I need.”
She shrugged a shoulder. “I don’t know a whole lot.”
I waited in silence until she sighed and continued.
“I don’t know much about Wellington. I only came into contact with him because of the Russian.”
“What about Olympus?”
“The hoity-toity club for the uber wealthy, right? The ones that have fancy dinners over at that building on the Upper West Side?”
“That’s the one. And if you know that much, you know more than most.”