Page 45 of Merciless Prince

“Did Francesca tell her anything?”

“No. She knows better. But this isn’t good. Shay still suspects that something happened that night.”

“How do you know?”

I slipped my phone out of my pocket and held it up. “This is her recent search history. It’s what she was Googling while she took the train back up here.”

Derrick stood to look at my screen. His eyes grew progressively wider as he scanned the list.

Missing people New York

Missing people New York State most recent list

Missing man New York Joe 2019

Missing man New York Joseph 2019

Hellfire Club Bellingham

Hellfire Club murder

Hellfire Club Knight family connections

Derrick rakeda hand through his hair and swore under his breath. “Did she find anything?”

I shook my head. “No relevant results showed up for her. But this is bad. It means she isn’t going to stop digging.”

“What did Francesca say to her when she asked about it?”

“That all the stuff she saw was part of a student film that we were helping out with.”

“And Shay didn’t believe her?”

“It sounded like she did. But the search history says otherwise. So I think she’s on the fence for now.” I let out a short sigh of irritation. “You can see from the third search that she’s close to remembering Joseph Cafferty’s name. She could remember it any minute now and look it up.”

“And if that happens, she’ll see a bunch of posts from his family about how he disappeared two months ago.”

“Exactly. She won’t be on the fence then.”

Derrick groaned. “Shit. We are so fucked.”

“Yeah, we might be, and it’s your fucking fault,” I said, cutting my eyes at him. “That’s why I wanted you to be the first to know about this shit.”

As I spoke, Derrick finished his last mouthful of beer and hurled the bottle toward the trash can on the other side of the room. It bounced off the edge and landed on the carpet, spilling the last few droplets of amber liquid on the carpet.

“How the fuck is itmyfault?” he asked, turning back to me with his eyes flashing.

“You’re kidding, right?” I scoffed and shook my head. “The SNS thing.”

Last Friday, Derrick took my phone when I wasn’t looking and texted my older brother Lachlan, pretending to be me. He gave Shay’s details to Lachlan and told him he needed to get her on the show and make sure she was so thoroughly humiliated that she would never want to return to TV. He also told my brother to contact the top casting directors in the city and make sure Shay was blacklisted, just in case.

Lachlan—who worked as a top exec at the network, thanks to good old-fashioned nepotism—thought he was doing it as a favor to me and happily set it all up. After it was confirmed, Derrick told me all about it as ifhe’ddone me the favor, and we went to watch the show in the studio.

At first I enjoyed seeing Shay stumble through the scene, making a complete idiot of herself on live TV. The bright pink shame on her cheeks and her wide, petrified eyes made my cock ache with twisted, lusty need.

It was only later that I realized how fucked we were because of it.

“I don’t get it,” Derrick said, crossing his arms. “How was that a bad thing?”