Page 23 of Gilded

LUKA

I break another piece of lead in my mechanical pencil. “Motherfucker.”

I throw it across the room, right as Jairo opens the door. He pauses with the door cracked. “Good to see you too. Is it safe to come in?”

I cover my face with my hands and rest my elbows on the table.

I’ve been working on these fucking security plans all goddamned day, while Malia simmers in the back of my mind.

Malia and the way she tasted. Malia and the sight and sound of her pleasure.

Malia and how she intervened with the guards last night.

I’ve got all the South American locations split up between the men, but I grabbed some back to get to the end result faster, only to find myself slogging through muck. So many victims. So many people living in fear and desperation. “Enter at your own risk.”

He sits across the table from me and stuffs a piece of beef jerky into his mouth as he uses his hands to open his laptop and mutters something I can’t understand.

I lift my head, scowling at the garbled speech. “Want to try that without food in your mouth?”

He pulls the jerky from between his teeth. “I found a trust.”

“Fuck.” I should have known. “She just told me she doesn’t have one.”

I push to my feet and wander to the window. Her lying isn’t a surprise, but it is a huge disappointment.

I cross my arms and set my feet wide. It’s dark now, and the New York skyline across the park twinkles back at me.

Jairo leans against the arm of the sofa facing me. “She doesn’t have one from her father. This one is from her grandparents.”

“ Grandparents? Christ, I need to go into a different line of work. How did I miss that too?”

“It was a pretty deep vein of information. We didn’t have any reason to dig into grandparents who hadn’t seen Malia in decades.”

Her internet searches pop into my mind. “Varopolous?”

Jairo nods. “Shipping moguls in Greece.”

I sigh and return my gaze out the windows, but I don’t see the ocean or even the island now. My mind is toiling in a hundred other places.

“After their daughter died,” Jairo says, “under suspicious circumstances—surprise, surprise—they sued for custody of Malia. They fought with Tarik for years. Ultimately, Tarik got full custody, they got slapped with a restraining order and were denied visitation rights. I imagine that’s what happens when you have bad friends in high places.

“They created a billion-dollar trust fund for her—billion, with a b—which she can access when she’s twenty-one. She is also the heir to their shipping corporation currently valued at about thirty billion . Remind me to ask these people to adopt me.

“There is no way to know whether she’s aware of any of this.

The trustee is the attorney who created the trust, a man here in New York.

They probably had it done here so the attorney got all the details right.

What pops out at me most, though, is the stipulations of the trust and the private island her grandparents included. ”

“ Another island? What is it with this family and islands?”

“I don’t know about that, but this particular island is different from the rest. His current island in the Mediterranean is on the Italian side of Greece.

This one is between Turkey and Greece and has been used as a pit stop for refugees fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East for decades.

Coyotes taking them from the Middle East to Europe charge between three and ten thousand per person. ”

My thoughts warp, and a dark, sick feeling coats my stomach. “Motherfucker. That’s like shooting fish in a barrel.”

“Sure is. There’s no question the plan for that island would be to continue letting the coyotes get them to the island but then take over from there.

They’d probably steal the money from the coyotes and kill them.

But that island has been a lighthouse for desperate people for decades.

They’d still find a way to get there, thinking it’s their path to freedom, only to have Tarik package them up and sell them into slavery.

He’d make money on the front and back end.

Over the years, an average of two thousand people a day land there. ”

“Jesus.” I draw out the word, rubbing my face. I do some quick math. “That could net a trillion a year.”

“There’s nothing to say that Malia even knows about it.

But if she does, there is a chance she plans to pick up Tarik’s torch.

It’s not something I would suspect given what we know of her, but she continues to keep secrets, she’s desperate for escape and is clearly trying to plan just that.

We’re talking about one hell of a lot of escape money.

With money comes power. With power comes freedom.

That’s pretty persuasive to a woman who’s been controlled all her life. ”

“This just keeps getting darker.”

“You haven’t heard the darkest part yet.”

I rub my eyes. “Christ.”

“Those stipulations I mentioned—her grandparents require proof of life every birthday. If they don’t get it, they revoke the trust.”

My gaze turns to Jairo.

“And on her twenty-first birthday,” he says, “if they receive proof of life, the content of the trust becomes available to Malia.”

“Twenty-one.” The cogs of my mind catch and stick. “The first day, Zeiger told me Tarik was keeping her off-limits until she turned twenty-one.”

Jairo nods. “They’re probably planning on stealing it from her. Davey says it will take several months to disburse the trust, but once she’s twenty-one?—”

“Tarik doesn’t need to keep her away from Zeiger anymore. Whether she’s dead or alive, he still gets the trust.”

I rub my face with both hands. I don’t even know which end is up anymore. “There’s a lot of ifs in there. If she knows about it. If she stays alive until her twenty-first birthday. If they can steal it from her. If she followed in his shoes.”

That last one is the hardest to swallow, but desperate people do desperate things.

“You’re letting that black-and-white thinking cloud your judgment,” Jairo tells me. “You’re beating yourself up by trying to stick with your original theory that she’s guilty.”

I am. Even though I can see I’m doing it, even though it’s bugging the shit out of me, I’ve always struggled with the need to definitively put labels on things. And Malia isn’t fitting into any one package yet.

I look at my watch and stand. “I need to change.”

In my room, I change into my suit and stare at my ties. My first instinct is to grab a red tie, but my mind tells me it’s childish to try to match her dress. Though it would give the impression we’re together.

I’m so sick of second- and third-guessing everything. My missions are always clear-cut and planned down to the minute. With Malia, my emotions are in play, something I never allow. I hate the way she sets me off-balance.

“Fuck it.” I grab a red-and-black tie and finish dressing.

My driver, Peter, a retired Army Ranger, is waiting in the lobby with the car out front.

We don’t talk on the short drive. My mind is filled with conflict and questions.

At the heliport, I wait at the rear entrance of the clubhouse. It’s windy and cold tonight, and I pull up the collar of my wool trench coat. Tarik’s chopper lowers to the otherwise unoccupied deck right on time.

The chopper rotors slow, and the pilot steps out and opens the door for Malia.

She takes his hand to reach the ground, then glances around until she sees me.

And I swear to God, I feel her smile in every inch of my body.

She’s wearing the dress I sent for her, and she’s ten times as gorgeous as I imagined.

Then Toby rounds the chopper, and I roll my eyes. This kid has a real control streak.

Before she reaches me, her expression shifts. And when she’s standing in front of me, she asks, “What’s wrong?”

She’s got the oddest way of reading me.

“Not a thing,” I lie, scanning her head to toe. “Jesus, you’re stunning.”

Her shoulders loosen, and her head tilts. “Thank you.”

I don’t acknowledge Toby as I hold the door to the clubhouse open for her.

The interior light makes the dress glimmer and wink, and every head turns as she passes.

In the parking lot, Peter waits with an open door.

Toby gets into the passenger’s seat, and I help Malia into the luxury SUV, then head to the other side.

I slide in, and Peter heads out of the parking lot and toward the venue. I feel Malia’s gaze on me, but I look out the window.

“God, we’re not spending the night like this,” she says. “Tell me what’s going on? You haven’t been this dark since you met my father.”

I frown at her. “Dark?”

“Dark.” She gestures toward me. “Your mood. Your disposition. I don’t know, like, your aura.”

My brows shoot up. “Aura?”

“Don’t make fun of me. I feel things. I don’t know how. I think it’s just some kind of intuition I’ve learned from having to watch other people all my life to know what’s happening beneath the surface. What’s bothering you?”

I press a button, and the glass separating us from Peter and Toby rises. “Tell me about your trust.”

Fear edges into her expression. “Where did you hear?—”

“You told me you don’t have one.”

“I don’t. My father stole it. He made me sign it over to him.”

“What’s in it?”

“I didn’t know about it until that night and didn’t get much of a chance to look at it. All I saw was a large dollar amount, names of people I don’t know, and a promise to marry Soren before blood ran into my eyes.”

“ Blood? ”

“Soren threatened to cut my ear off if I didn’t sign it over to my father. When I kept resisting, he stabbed me in the temple. They’re both barbaric.”

“Where?”

She turns her head, and I move her hair away from her temple, exposing a linear scar. Zeiger is such an idiot. The temple is an extremely vulnerable spot. He could have killed her.

“That explains Soren’s comment about cutting off your ear my first night here. The trustee would have to approve the transfer for your father to get access.”

“He’ll do whatever he has to do to get what he wants. It wouldn’t be hard to find someone to make sure it happened.”

We pull up to the entrance of the Pendry Manhattan, but she doesn’t start to get out, just looks at the understated but elegant entrance. I’m not any more interested in getting out than she is and let the silence rest.

“Would you be pissed if I begged off this party?” she asks.

My shoulders release some tension. “I’d be thrilled.” I slide the partition window down. “Change of plans. Take us to Positive Vibes on West Fifty-first and Eighth.”