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Chapter Twenty-Three

Natalie

I was right. This is the best sleepover in the history of sleepovers.

There’s been pizza and movies and enough junk food to leave us all feeling vaguely nauseous. Even Izzy indulged herself after only a few minutes of worry.

Now we’re all tucked into our beds for the night, with the lights twinkling above us as we talk in hushed whispers so Papa won’t hear and come to scold us again.

He was just in here a few minutes ago, sternly reminding us that it was time for Little girls to go to sleep and that if he had to spank us for not following the rules, all our Daddies would be very upset.

The warning was enough to have us falling silent for all of two minutes until we were pretty sure he was out of hearing distance again.

“Tori,” I whisper, my eyes locking onto hers in the dim light. “I’ve been meaning to ask. Why does Uncle Max call you 'little thief’? Does it have anything to do with how you got to the island?”

“Uh-huh.” Even in the dark, I can see the blush coloring her cheeks. “It’s kind of embarrassing.”

“It’s also completely off the record,” Juju says, pushing up onto one elbow to glare at me. “Right, Nelly?”

“Of course. I’m not Natalie Bauer, ace reporter right now.

I’m just Nelly.” The lie rolls easily off my tongue.

If Juliet hadn’t spoken up, I would have definitely considered this conversation on the record.

Now I’ll have to find a way to get permission to include their origin stories in my article.

If I ever get around to writing it.

Tori rolls her eyes. “Of course it’s off the record, Juju. She’s our friend.”

Ignoring the twist of guilt in my stomach her words inspire, I force a smile. “Yup. So, what’s the deal?”

“Okay, well, it’s kind of embarrassing. I don’t want you to think I’m like, a bad person or anything.”

“Sleepovers are a no-judgment zone.”

A grin stretches across her face. “I like that rule! So, before Daddy brought me to the island I had a lot of debt. Like a lot of debt. My mom was really sick for a really long time and then when she died…” Trailing off, Tori blinks back tears.

“Anyway. It left me with a lot of debt. And then it seemed like everything was getting more expensive. My rent went up, groceries went up, you name it. And I was feeling pretty desperate, then one day I got this file in my email. It was a bunch of different accounts for the company I worked for. Routing numbers, account numbers, balances. Basically everything you would need to… move some funds around. So that’s what I did. ”

“When you say you moved them around, do you mean into your bank account?”

“Uh-huh. Just a few dollars at first, nothing that would raise any flags during an audit. So then I decided, you know, go big or go home, right? So I siphoned off a million dollars.”

Shock renders me literally speechless for what may be the first time in my entire life. “You stole a million dollars from your company?” Pausing, I let the new roll around in my mind before grinning at her. “Honestly, good for you.”

Tori giggles. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. I mean, why should you have to struggle just to eat and put a roof over your head when there are billionaires out there hoarding more wealth than they could ever spend in a lifetime?”

Juju, who’s been listening to the story without interruption, lifts her head to glare at me. “It’s not hoarding . It’s… investing. Or something.”

“Yeah, sure, a few million dollars to make sure you have enough money to retire on. But billions? Nobody needs billions of dollars. If they put that money back into the economy… well, never mind, that’s a whole soapbox you really don’t want me to get on.

We’ll be here all night. My point is, I think what Tori did is pretty badass. ”

“Well… thanks.” The blush on Tori’s face burns even brighter. “Too bad it was all a trap.”

“What do you mean?”

“Daddy set me up. He was the one who sent me all the info I needed to embezzle from his company. And when I finally took the bait, he threatened to put me in jail if I didn’t come to the island with him for thirty days.”

Shoving up onto my knees, I stare down at her, my mouth falling open in surprise. Very unprofessional of me, I know, but if this is all off the record anyway, I’m not really worried about being professional. “Are you fucking serious? He blackmailed you into coming here?”

“Better than being kidnapped out of your bed,” Izzy mumbles, so softly I almost don’t hear her at first.

But I do, and the indignation I feel has me rising to my feet. “Are any of you here of your own free will?”

“I mean… now we are,” Tori says with a shrug.

“Yeah, but you realize what they did was illegal, right? Like really fucking illegal. How are you just okay with it?”

Sitting up, Juju pins me with a stare, one eyebrow raised in a rather impressive imitation of the looks our Daddies often give us. “Same way you are. You wouldn’t have chosen this life, but now that you’re here, you don’t really wanna go home.”

“It’s not the same. I came here because I wanted a story.”

“And you ended up becoming a mob boss’s babygirl.

” Pushing up to her feet, Tori grips my shoulders, her expression serious.

“Can you really tell us that if Uncle Evan gave you the chance to go home tomorrow, free and clear, no strings attached, that you’d actually take it?

That you’d go back to New York, working your ass off and fighting just to save a penny instead of staying here and being loved and pampered like a literal princess? ”

“That’s not… I’m not… That’s not the point .”

“Maybe not,” she says with another shrug.

“I’m not saying what our Daddies did was right.

But at the end of the day, we all love being here and we’re a hell of a lot happier than we were back home.

So even if we wouldn’t have chosen this life at first, I think I speak for all of us when I say we’d choose it now, without a second thought. ”

Shifting my gaze, I look over her shoulder at Juju, then Izzy. “Is that true? Would you choose this now, if they gave you a choice?”

“I did choose it,” Juju says. “I tried to escape once but I couldn’t go through with it. But my situation is a bit different. I’ve been in love with Jasper since he became my brother, and if being his baby is the only way I can have him, then yeah, I’d choose this over and over again.”

Izzy sits up, wrapping her arms around her legs as she seems to think the situation over.

“I miss New York,” she admits quietly. “And I miss dancing for lots of people. But Daddy’s building me a theater here, and I get to teach my friends, and being here has taken the pressure off, and it’s reminded me of why I loved dancing in the first place.

Plus, I get to eat real food without worrying so much about gaining a couple pounds.

So yeah, I would choose this, every time, even though I’ve had to give up a lot of things I thought I wanted. ”

Tears burn at the backs of my eyes. “See, I can’t do that. I can’t just turn my back on my dreams. I’ve never wanted anything the way I wanted to be a writer. How am I supposed to just give that up?”

Pulling me into her arms, Tori gives me a surprisingly hard hug. “When Uncle Evan gets home, talk to him. Tell him how you’re feeling. I bet he’ll know how to help. All our Daddies want is for us to be safe and healthy and most importantly, happy . He’ll know what to do.”

Before I can argue, a light flips on outside the room and we all scramble back into our beds and pretend to be asleep when Papa sticks his head in the door a few seconds later. Not long after, the sounds of my friends’ deep breathing greets my ears and I know they’ve all fallen asleep for real.

Rolling onto my back, I stare up at the twinkling lights on the ceiling, and wonder what the hell I’m supposed to do now.