Page 94 of Twisted Trust

“I dunno!”

My fist collides with his jaw once more and his head snaps back, hanging there. “I-I swear I don’t know! I didn’t ask! I–I was jus’ supposed to watch her.”

A fuzz descends over me as it clicks in my mind. Even back then when Maeve thought I was dead, she was being watched by the Serpents. But why? What is so important about her?

“Five years ago, before you were tasked with watching her, were you at the drug deal?” Naz continues.

George sluggishly raises his head but he struggles to hold it up. “What deal?”

“Don’t bullshit me,” Naz snaps. “You know what deal. Five years ago. The drugs. The bombs. Your lot had a hand in it, didn’t they?”

George slowly nods. “Mmhmm.”

“Why?”

“W–We were asked to… by one of you.” His remaining eye slides to me and I freeze as coldness seeps through my chest.

“Me?”

“Mmhmm.” George’s eye closes. “He works for the Syndicate.”

“Who?” Surging forward, my hands sink into his blood-soaked shirt and I shake him awake. “Who is it? You worked with someone from the Syndicate? Who?”

“Was it him?” Naz appears beside my shoulder and as George cracks open his eye, Naz shows him a picture on his phone screen. “Is this who you worked with?”

“Yeah,” George gasps with his dying breath. “Th…That’s him.” His eye closes and his head lolls back as a deathly silence takes him. I unhand him in disgust and his body clatters back into the chair while Naz turns his phone to show me the picture.

Antony.

“Antony was working with the Serpents?” It doesn’t sound plausible given how desperate he is for power. Aligning with a smaller family that’s nothing more than a pack of rabid dogs barely makes sense.

“Do we believe him?” Naz glances back at George. “Maybe he’s using his last breath to lie.”

“Maybe, but I doubt it. We already know that Antony’s been pretending to be this Cameron guy to get close to Maeve and he’s been doing it for years. Now we find out that he was in league with The Serpents back then and we’ve seen them in Vegas this past month…”

“But why Maeve?” Naz sinks back down onto the table. “Do they know each other? Is he in love with her?”

The thought disgusts me, but it comes with a cold, almost painful understanding. “No,” I reply. “But I was. And I still am. Back then, if it became public that I was with Maeve, then you know what everyone would see. The Gallo heir finally settling down. No one would ever question whom control of the Syndicate would pass to.”

“So he found out about Maeve?”

I nod slowly. “He must have. Shit… he must have followed me or something, learned about her and then set the whole thing up. The bombs and the explosions were to force a rift between us, and then all that fake evidence painting Maeve as a Serpent was to paint her as a traitor which not only hurts me, but makes it look like I was about to bring a Serpent into the deepest fold of the Syndicate.”

“So why didn’t he?” Naz frowns deeply. “Why go to all that trouble and then instead help Maeve? We have to assume he had a hand in the people telling her to run and protect herself. Why?”

Our eyes meet. “Scott. He must have worked out that Scott is my son.”

“An insurance policy?”

“Maybe. But only one thing’s for sure right now. Antony’s in bed with the fucking Serpents which means no one is safe.”

34

MAEVE

“Pink? Red? Pearl? Maybe even Oyster?” Marcella fans the cards out in front of me and looks up at me with a pleasant, hopeful smile.

But I don’t have an answer.