Dante asked, grinning. “And Jacob? I bet mommy dearest will be really happy to hear that the two she’s invited into her house have been hooking up with her daughter—”
I elbowed him. With my mom, we’d have to take baby steps, but hopefully she’d come around.
She would have to, because I refused to give any of these guys up.
Chapter Twenty-Eight – Vaughn
Brittany was alive. I’d be the first to admit, I didn’t think it was possible. Markus had attained the crime scene photos, and there was a lot of blood. Jaz told me what Archer had said, relayed what Brittany had claimed to do, and it was the only way she could’ve gotten all that blood together. Days upon days of patient work.
Patient work was not Brittany Pots’s strong suit. A girl like her worked with her anger, her jealousy, letting it flare up and dictate what she did. To be patient, to wait until after the dance and stage the crime…
It didn’t make sense.
Monday night, it bothered me so much I spoke to Markus about it. I did not like going to him for help, but I couldn’t shake the nagging feeling that kept poking at me from all angles. Something here wasn’t right.
Markus was in his office, as he often was, looking at paperwork when I entered. He didn’t even glance up, his dark eyes glued to whatever was before him. He wore a black suit, matching both his hair and eyes, and his personality. Black as night, black as the devil himself. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say Markus was the devil incarnate.
But I knew better. If the devil was nothing more than a man, what did that make us?
I sat in one of the leather chairs facing his desk, waiting until he looked up. The walls of his office were a dark mahogany, a few built-in bookcases on either side. No windows. Nothing but the dark elegance that permeated every single room in this estate—except the basement.
“What now, Vaughn?” Markus spoke, leveling those dark eyes at me. “Do you want to have your girlfriend over for another playdate? You keep having her over here, and the others might start to get ideas.”
As if I would ever let any of my brothers touch her, sexually or otherwise. No, I didn’t think so. Some of my siblings might like to share, but I was not one of them. The only ones I shared with were Dante, Jacob, and—begrudgingly—Archer.
“No,” I said. “There’s something on my mind, and I was hoping you could help me.”
In all my life, I’d only started coming to Markus lately. Before Jaz, I’d kept to myself, kept to my silence. Now, everything was different. Surely he couldn’t fault me for wanting to get to the bottom of things when her life was in danger?
Markus’s gaze narrowed, and he examined me. What he saw, I couldn’t say, but eventually he relented, “Fine. Lay it on me, but do it fast.” He knew the talk of the town, knew everything that happened lately, but he did not know all of the little details, so that’s what I told him.
The dance. The frame job. The fake murder. How Brittany had miraculously returned at the end of Archer’s mother’s funeral. How she’d acted in the hospital to both Archer and Jaz. None of it added up.
Markus took it all in quietly, letting the information stew in his calculating brain. After a few minutes of silence, he said, “It’s obvious.”
“What is?” Whatever was obvious to him was clearly not obvious to me, as I had no idea what he was talking about.
“Brittany had help.” The three words landed hard, and I felt almost stupid, like I should’ve put two and two together. “Someone who helped plan the frame job, someone who helped her pull it off.” His wide shoulders shrugged. “And obviously someone who informed her of the mother’s death, so she could stage her arrival at the most inopportune time.”
Why didn’t I think of that? Brittany wasn’t intelligent enough to pull off framing someone else. She wouldn’t have thought to get some hair from Jaz and incriminate her with her own DNA. No, someone else was the brains, but who?
“You think there’s one culprit out there,” Markus said, “but my guess is there’s two. While Brittany was busy with her fake murder, someone else was busy slicing and dicing. The two girls at that party, the mother. All with the intent to make Jaz look bad.” His