The Rich and the Dead (30 page)

Alexei turned the television off, downed his champagne, then greedily refilled his empty glass.

“Drink with me!” he shouted at Lila. “Toast your friend Chase's big news-making business deal.” She sat still, her glass untouched. “Drink,” he commanded.

Lila brought the champagne flute to her lips and took a small sip. Her hand was shaking.

“I can see him now. Celebrating somewhere. Thinking he is the king. But what Chase doesn't know is I am the one who bought his hotels. Me. The Russian pig farmer. The man he thinks is beneath him. He thinks some man named Nakaleni Suka bought his hotels. Well, you know what
na kaleni,
suka,
means in Russian? It means ‘On your knees, bitch.' And that's where he's going to be, on his fucking knees.”

Alexei picked up a pile of papers from the table. “It's all here. Signed and certified,” he yelled, waving the pages around, his eyes bulging and wild. “That idiot thinks he's still in control. But I'm the one who runs things now. Little does he know, I'm about to dismantle his entire life's work, piece by piece, and sell it to the dogs. He'll have to watch helplessly while I tear down everything he's spent his entire life building.”

“Why would you do that?” Lila asked, trying to piece everything together, but nothing quite made sense.

“You still want to act as if you know nothing?” Alexei asked.

“It's not an act,” Lila said, finally standing up. She was done with cowering.

“Sit down,” Alexei said, his voice suddenly cold and dangerous. “And I will tell you.”

Lila sat. Alexei poured himself another glass of champagne and downed it in a single gulp. “I grew up in a small city on the Black Sea,” he began. “It was Soviet era. A dark time, and we were all very poor. Every year a circus would come to town for a few days. It was all that mattered to the children. One year, when I was six, I saw a circus lion rip apart his handler. He grabbed the man's arm with his jaw, then devoured his face. My uncle tried to cover my eyes, but I pushed his hand away. I wanted to see. Do you know why?”

Lila shook her head.

“Even though I was a little boy, I knew what I was seeing. I knew what it meant. Life is cruel. A battle between weak and strong.” Alexei was pacing the room, his hands balled into tight fists. “Chase thought he could order me around, making me dance like a circus animal, all so I could be part of his stupid club.”

The Janus Society?
Lila wondered.

“And then he tells me I'm not good enough. Me! Alexei Romanovich Dortzovich, who is one hundred times more man than him! Now I own him. Now he is the one who does not belong.”

“Belong to what? Are you talking about the Janus Society?” Lila asked.

Alexei rushed toward her. Before she could duck out of the way, he shoved her to the floor. “Why do you continue to play games? The game is over. I have won. Don't pretend to know nothing. I was as good as in, then that asshole Chase, your spymaster, told me I was out. Now he acts as if I'm a stranger to him.”

He placed his foot on Lila's upper thigh and pushed her along the floor toward the door. “Now, leave. Go back to Chase. Tell him what I've told you. As much as I will miss seeing his face when he learns what I have done, I want you to be the one to tell him. And I have better things to do.”

Lila scrambled onto her hands and knees, trying to crawl toward the front door, but she was knocked back to the floor when Alexei's foot pushed her over.

“Look at you now, princess,” he said, laughing. “Get out. You are no longer of any use to me.”

One of the bodyguards opened the door as two barely dressed women from the strip club sauntered in. “Ah, here are some real women. Come to me, my lovelies. Pay no attention to this dog on the floor.”

The two bodyguards approached Lila, picked her up by her arms, and tossed her out of the house, slamming the door behind her.

Her palms and her knees were skinned and bleeding. Lila sat on Alexei's front stoop catching her breath, somewhat shocked to find herself alive.

CHAPTER 32

L
ILA LOOKED OVER
her shoulder to make sure she wasn't being followed by any of Alexei's goons as she hurried to the bridge that connected the cloistered opulence of La Gorce Island to the real world. No one was following her. She was alone.

It wasn't until she was on the other side of the bridge that she fully exhaled.

It was as cold as a Miami night could get, and she shivered in the frigid air. Her tiny cocktail dress and stiletto heels provided little protection against the elements. She walked for at least twenty minutes before she was able to begin to calm down. As the veil of shock slowly lifted, she realized that her body was in pain, and a debilitating headache was blooming in her skull.

Star Island was a long, cold, two-hour walk away, but Lila wanted to walk. She needed the time to collect her thoughts and settle her nerves. As she headed south toward home, she began to sift through what Alexei had told her. Here she'd thought she was seducing him in order to prove her overwhelming suspicion that he was the Star Island killer. But the whole time, he was using her to get to Chase. Yet again she had been wrong, all wrong.

Alexei wasn't the killer; he couldn't be. He would never have spent so much time and money buying Chase's empire if he was going to kill him in just two weeks.

And then there was the business with the club. When Alexei had been railing against Chase rejecting him, he had to have been talking about the Janus Society. It was the only thing that made any sense.

That explains why I've seen him with every member of the society,
Lila thought.

Of course, she realized, Alexei had met with all twelve members of the society because he was being considered as a new member. But then Chase must have rejected him, which explained the argument she'd overheard on the South Beach boardwalk.

Alexei wasn't going to murder Chase, or any of the rest of the society. He'd carried out his revenge by taking away what Chase valued most: his company.

But this new revelation left Lila more lost than she'd ever been. Instead of finding the killer, she'd found another dead end. She was, once again, lost in the maze.

By the time she stepped into Effie's driveway, it was a little past two in the morning, but Effie's bedroom light was still on.

Lila was desperate for answers, and she couldn't wait until the morning. Time was running out. She needed to dig deeper into what Effie knew. Maybe Lila's telling Effie about what had happened with Alexei would prompt Effie to be more honest about her involvement with the Janus Society.

And then Lila remembered what Alexei had said, about how he'd thought Chase sent Lila to spy on him because he couldn't send Effie. Lila wasn't sure what that meant.

As Lila climbed the stairs toward Effie's bedroom, she heard voices. She tiptoed to the door, curious.

“Please don't leave,” Lila heard Effie plead.

“Never beg. It's beneath you,” a man said. Lila instantly recognized Chase's distinctive voice.

Effie and Chase? So they were together. Hiding in the darkened hallway, Lila listened.

“How could you be so cold?” Effie sobbed. “You won't even look at me!”

“Just calm down. Here, take this,” said Chase, in a tone as measured as Effie's was wild.

The sound of glass shattering exploded from the room.

“I've told you, I won't swallow those tranquilizers anymore,” Effie screamed. “I don't want to be calm. There is nothing to be calm about.”

“You're weaker than I thought you were.” Lila didn't have to see Chase's face to hear the sneer in his voice.

“You're not who I thought you were either. You're cruel.”

“I'm not cruel. I'm in control. I take care of my business. Why don't you take care of yours?”

“I told you I can't do it anymore.”

“Then you know what I'll be forced to do.”

“No one is forcing you.”

“You spoiled child,” Chase said. “How can you say that?”

“But I love you.” Effie let out a large, mournful sob. “And you said you loved me.”

“Of course I love you.” Chase's voice was rough. “What matters more than anything is that you do your job. And we won't ever have to have this conversation again.”

“Why can't you help me, just this one time?” Effie wept. She sounded trapped and desperate.

“I should never have exposed myself like this. Rules are made for a reason, right?” Chase paused. “Now go wipe your face, and then let's go downstairs and fix you a drink.”

Quickly, before she could be discovered, Lila slipped off her high heels and moved away from the door, running down the stairs and out the back entrance, wondering what she had heard.

CHAPTER 33

L
ILA HURRIED ACROSS
the lawn, her bare feet racing over the dew-heavy grass, making her way as quickly and as quietly as possible to the guesthouse. She got inside and locked the door behind her. Safe.

Needing to wash the miseries of the day off her skin, she took a long, burning-hot shower. She winced as the water hit the scrapes on her hands and knees, watching the blood circle down the drain. Then she wrapped herself in a terry-cloth bathrobe, poured four fingers' worth of Wild Turkey in a tumbler, and collapsed on the couch.

Her head was spinning. She felt as if she were a pinball, bouncing off of one concussive surface only to be propelled to another. The moment she hit one wall, she was sprung back into the fray for another round. Nothing felt in her control. Each lead had only set her off in the wrong direction. Now she was thoroughly lost, and couldn't see the big picture.

Taking a sip of bourbon, she tried to settle her spirit and sort through her tumbling thoughts. Several things had become abundantly clear to her tonight. Alexei had been vetted as a possible member of the Janus Society. But he was rejected, and, in revenge, he carried out a raid on Chase's hotel conglomerate.