“Then what’s it like?!” He squeezed his eyes shut tight on the outburst and then shook his head as if trying to rid it of something awful. He turned his back on her. “You can’t be here, Sef. Not here. I don’t want you around me here.” He swiped at a passing lampshade, knocking it and its square stone base to the floor. “Why couldn’t you stay put like I asked you?”
“That’s what I thought I was doing.” She approached him slowly. “I didn’t know this was where you were heading.”
“How’d you find out about this place?”
“Eva.”
“How’d she find out?”
“Your cousin, Sondrio. He’s her contact inside your family or...one of them anyway- so she says. She was coming here to meet with him, but she thinks Shannon’s trying to kill her, so she’s trying to lay low until she gets the info she needs.”
“Did she talk you into getting involved with this?”
“Sondrio apparently knows Shannon’s location. I thought- if it turned out she was telling the truth about him being her contact- I could get the location, share it with you.” Persephone began to wring her hands and pace.
“He agreed to tell her where Shannon was- with her resources and manpower she had a good chance of unseating the man. Her plan was to share the wealth with Sondrio in repayment for his help finding Shannon.”
“Ah hell,” Hill burst into another round of laughter, “my cousin still believes women are idiots. She would’ve killed him after he gave her what she wanted.”
“You’re right,” Persephone clapped her hands to her sides. “It was the only reason she’d have agreed to meet with him in person.”
Hill paced the room then as well. “Guess Son has proven himself a valuable asset,” he recalled what Rupert Hambro had told him earlier that night. “Looks like I won’t have to spend all weekend in this godforsaken place after all,” he slanted Persephone a look then. “Why would she trust you with this? She’d have to know you’d use it to shut it all down.”
Persephone nodded. “Mae killed Saffron, came after Eva and with Shannon after her… not to mention all of us… there’re things she doesn’t want in anyone else’s hands if they can’t be in hers. All those research camps she and the others visited, Eva thought she’d find what she was looking for there. What she found instead was a possible line on where Shannon was. She decided your cousin would be the easiest and most fun to manipulate into confirming that possibility.”
Persephone folded her arms across her chest and gave a self-disgusted smile. “She didn’t tell me to come here, but she knew I would- knew I’d be too curious to stay away. She even put in a good word for me with Sondrio. She hates me enough to risk her endgame if it sees me getting what she thinks I deserve. I can embrace her deception because if your cousin talks, and I get out of here before whatever he’s cooked up with her goes into effect, it might give us time to find Shannon before she can.”
“If you can get out of here before…” Hill rolled his eyes and appeared to be grumbling below his breath. “Well this is all very thoughtful of you, Goddess. Stupidly thoughtful. Trust me, my way will be quicker.”
Persephone bristled. “What are you gonna do?”
“Going to talk to my cousin,” he spoke with single-minded focus while heading for the parlor door.
“Hill wait,” she rushed to meet him there. “He hasn’t told me anything.”
“He will after I beat him half to death.”
“Hill,” she put herself between him and the door.
“Out of my way, Goddess.”
She smiled. “Why are you here?”
Hill wasn’t in the mood for soft conversation. “I don’t want to lose my temper, Sef. Not with you.”
She wouldn’t be swayed. “Do you think everyone here tonight is involved with Shannon?”
He bristled. “No. Not all.”
“Then, won’t you risk losing the ones who are if you go after Sondrio this way? Pulverize first and try to ask questions later? They’ll scatter and we’ll be left at the mercy of whatever details your cousin chooses to share. If Eva thought he’d be easy to crack, then surely we can. You can use the weekend to observe him-see who he’s coziest with-see what they know. If nothing materializes then, at least we’ve got Sondrio to work on.”
Hill bristled that time, adding an eye roll then. “You sound too much like Cai.”
“Probably why he’s running your dad’s business instead of you.”
“Cute. What’s your plan?”
“Only to encourage him to tell me what he knows.”
“Encourage? How?” Hill sent a lingering suggestive look into the bodice of her suit. He felt the heat rise along his neckline again and decided it was best to move away from her.
“It won’t be that way,” she said.
“You don’t think so? Goddess, that’s the only way a woman...encourages my cousin to do anything.”
“Wow…” Persephone fixed Hill with a similar lingering suggestive look. “You guys sound like you’ve got lots in common.”
“We did. A lot. And if you think polite conversation will encourage, forget it, Goddess.”
Persephone’s silver stare sparkled with pleading intensity. “If I can get him to tell me, everyone will still be in place when Cai blows the island. While Shannon and your uncle are doing damage control, we’ll be closing in on his hideout.”
“And you think that because Eva’s suddenly terrified that she’s about to be rubbed out, she’ll let you destroy what she’s spent years looking for?” Hill went to take a seat on the arm of a chair. “You said it yourself that this whole thing was a setup to get you here? Son’s bad enough, but there’re cats out there who’ve been at this perverted shit for decades and your boy out there? He’s almost got their habits down cold.”
Persephone resumed her pacing again. Hill smiled, knowing she was tiring of his lecture. He eased off for a while, indulging in the vision she was as she moved. Slowly, he raked her body in the suit, loving the sheer fabric of the pants showcasing her lovely legs. He was tilting his head to capture her many dips and curves when an image flashed of her talking to his cousin- of Sondrio’s hand tugging her belt…
“I once saw him try to choke a girl to death because she didn’t make him come when she gave him head.” He smiled when she turned to him, clearly horrified by his story. “That’s true. Ask Kraven. He was there- would’ve killed Son for it had I not been there to pull him off. I wanted him dead too, so it was a stretch for me to be so heroic. Son saw nothing wrong with it-girl was paid to be there. She was nobody to him, but a woman like you...Oh he loves women like you…”
Hill left the chair to crowd Persephone again. “Strong, confident, incredible to look at…” he walked his fingertips across the plump rise of her breasts at the suit’s straight bodice. “Those are the kinds he loves most- loves to break them down.”
