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No, no. It’s still here. Thank fuck for that.
Fuuuuuck.
We sink together onto the desk, our bodies no longer supporting our weight. My dick still shimmers with whatever sinister pussy magic she pulled on me. My balls have never felt this empty or my chest this full.
Claudia’s the first to move, rolling away from me and grabbing for my boxer shorts. I expect her to toss them to me, but instead she pulls them on, yanking her dress down on top of them.
“Hey, those are mine.”
“Yeah, and you don’t need to get to the bathroom with someone’s cum dripping out of you, so shut it. Stop tearing all my underwear, and maybe you’ll get them back,” she glares at me as she twirls around The boxers bunch up around her narrow thighs beneath the dress. It looks ridiculous, but I’m not about to point that out to my queen. She shuffles outside to use the bathroom down the hall. When she returns, I’m sitting in the middle of the floor, shuffling papers around my feet.
“I hope you’re not touching any important documents with your bare ass,” she says, flopping down beside me.
“Unlike Howard Malloy’s finances, my ass is perfectly clean, thank you.” I stare at the mess around our feet. “You’re trying to figure out what his shipment could have been.”
“Sort of. I keep coming back to my price,” Claws says. “I know Julian. He may have lied his ass off about my true lineage, but in his personality – his essence – he was truthful about who he was and what he stood for. He was so against trading in skin, and yet he must’ve paid a hell of a price for Howard Malloy’s child. I feel like that price is the key to the whole thing, and it’s sitting right under my nose and I can’t see it.”
My father said Malloy came to him about an important shipment that disappeared from under his nose. Shortly after that, Malloy himself disappeared. We were positive this shipment was the treasure Julian August traded for my life thirteen years previously. What we didn’t know was what the fuck that treasure could possibly be, or how Malloy managed to lose it at that precise moment.
“Hunting down Mackenzie is more important than this treasure,” I growl, my fingers tightening around Claudia’s arm as it all floods back to me, how close we came to losing her.
“They’re the same thing. Mackenzie’s after the treasure, too.” Claudia looks up at me, her icicle eyes hard, crystalline. “I’ve been wrong about so many things. It wasn’t Brutus who broke in. It was Mackenzie. She’s an accomplished cheerleader – she can vault a fence without batting an eyelash. And I bet she was the one who shot at us by the front door.”
That makes sense. Mackenzie has shown herself to be a reckless, lousy shot.
“She kept Brutus alive for days with that Grey Death,” I say. “She broke his legs. She tortured him. She probably thought he had the treasure, especially since he’s the only other person alive who knows what Claudia August looks like. It would certainly explain how he managed to hold on to his empire.”
“If that’s true, the treasure is long gone. He’d have spent it, sold it off, traded it for drugs and whores like he did with every penny in my father’s accounts. But something about this doesn’t feel right – if Brutus captured a treasure he knew Julian traded for my life, why not use that story to bolster his claim? Why keep quiet about it? There’s never been any talk in the underworld about the treasure during Brutus’ reign, and things are still silent now. If Brutus had the treasure, he didn’t spend it or tell anyone about it, and that makes me think he never had it at all.” Claudia continues, “I can’t stop wondering about that first break-in. Why did Mackenzie want to get in this house so bad?”
“Because she’s fucked in the head. Because she wanted to frighten you. That shit gets Mackenzie Malloy wet. Ask George – she’d back me up.”
Claudia flashes me a cruel, dazzling smile. “Those are my genes you’re talking about.”
“My comment still stands.”
“Fine, fine.” Claudia glances up at Howard’s shelves, crowded with leatherbound volumes and artifacts. “But seriously, why did she come here? Was she trying to frighten me out of the house, stop me from finding the bodies? Why bother with all the pageantry, when she could have gone to the police or City Hall at any time and got my squatting ass kicked out? So why didn’t she? Why did she wait and hide in Germany instead of claiming what’s hers?”
“Because Brutus saw your face,” I say. Claudia’s nails dig into my arm. I know she doesn’t want to think about that night, so I rush past it. “Not to get all Eli on you, but I think we can deduce from the fact she captured Brutus that Mackenzie knew at least a little about who you were and what her father had done. Mackenzie knew she wouldn’t be safe while Brutus lived, in the same way Antony didn’t want to risk you exposing yourself as Mackenzie Malloy until Brutus was dealt with. Maybe she wanted to start a new life, I don’t know. But your face is her face, so you starting at Stonehurst Prep set this whole wild ride into motion.”
“True. But if Mackenzie killed Brutus so no one could associate her face with Claudia August, why break into the manor?” She taps her chin. “I get killing me. It ties up loose ends. But the break-in doesn’t make sense. What did she achieve by trashing my room and hurting Queen Boudica?”
“It’s almost as if…” My mind whirs. It doesn’t make sense and yet… “Howard’s shipment disappears a few days before Mackenzie kills him. What if Mackenzie’s after the shipment? What if she thinks it’s in the house, or maybe that you have it?”
“I don’t understand. Why would she think it’s in the house if Howard lost it?”
“I don’t know. Maybe she doesn’t know he lost it.” I stare at the pile of papers. “But today we have evidence that Malloy Manor holds all kinds of secrets. What if Howard Malloy built some secret compartment where he was hiding his shipment? Mackenzie might’ve seen him hide it there, watched him check on it over the years. Maybe it was a giant treasure vault he swam in, like Scrooge McDuck. So she thinks it’s here, safely hidden away until she’s ready to walk in and take it, but she also doesn’t want to alert my father or Brutus to her existence, so she decides to wait until the situation is more stable. But then you start telling people you’re Mackenzie Malloy, and she knows the truth. She knows you’re living in her house, and she doesn’t want you to get your hands on what’s rightfully hers. So she breaks in to check her treasure is still intact.”
Claudia’s eyes twinkle like shattered glass. “Do you think she took it with her?”
I shrug. “It’s possible, but no. If she has the treasure, what possible reason would she still have to be in Emerald Beach? Brutus is dead; she could pay for a new face, a new life.” I stare down at the broken bust of Julius Caesar. A jagged crack runs along his aquiline nose. “If I’m right, Mackenzie Malloy believes Howard’s treasure is in this house, and she’s not going to stop until she takes back what’s hers.”
Eli
Tiberius offers to drop me off at my job at Nero’s club. I should have been suspicious when he mentions we need to make a stop first, but what can I say? I’m new to this whole running a criminal empire thing.
I should have protested when he heads along the highway out of town and turns off onto the dirt road leading to the Everlasting Hart Ranch. But there’s only so much a scrawny, smartass runner like me can do against a three-hundred pound wall of muscle. What was I going to do? Knock him out with my witty repartee and take the wheel on a dangerous gravel road?
“What are we doing here?” I ask instead.
