Series: Webs We Weave Series by Krista Ritchie
Total pages in book: 147
Estimated words: 145038 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 725(@200wpm)___ 580(@250wpm)___ 483(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 145038 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 725(@200wpm)___ 580(@250wpm)___ 483(@300wpm)
“Olly will move in with me,” Hailey declares, picking at her nail polish. “Or I’ll live with Jake.”
“You don’t have to do that,” Phoebe says. “Really, we can figure something else out. Maybe we just buy Trevor a coffin to sleep in. Let him live out his Dracula fantasies.”
“Maybe we just throw you to the bears, PG. Since you’re so good at being bait and all.”
Goddammit.
I open my mouth, but Phoebe puts a hand to my chest and says, “It’s fine, I started it.”
“I’ll sleep on the speedboat,” Nova offers.
He wouldn’t even get into the hull of my sailboat for a five-minute chat. The irony of him being isolated on the Salty Miss most of the day—he gets fucking seasick.
“A life of vomit, ginger beer, and Dramamine.” I flash a dry smile. “Fun.”
“What about the wine cellar?” Trevor asks me. “No one ever uses it here. I’ll get a cot. It’s big enough to be a room.”
He wants privacy. “You can’t bring Sidney over.”
“I know.”
“It’s fifty degrees in there,” Nova warns.
“Fifty-seven, and that’s fine. I can manage.”
Nova shrugs stiffly at me like it is the best solution. It’s only temporary, too. This situation is far from permanent. “All right,” I say—just as Hailey’s phone rings.
She’s quick to answer. “Yeah? Yeah, everyone is here. Hold on.” She puts the phone on speaker. “It’s Carter.”
“Hello, Ailey and mates,” Carter greets. “I got a quick minute between some work I’m doing, and I found something out you’ll want to know.”
“About what?” I ask.
“Rocky, Rocky,” Carter singsongs with a grating cheerfulness.
“Get to the point, Carter.”
“Always so grumpy. Take a breath. Smell the sunshine.” He laughs at his own dumb joke. “Get it—you can’t smell the sun.”
“We’re hysterically laughing.”
“I know Ailey is smiling.”
She is.
“Barely,” I snap.
“Been dabbling into this Varrick character,” Carter says, “and he ain’t who he says he is.”
Jake frowns. “What do you mean?”
“His identity has holes. Not like Swiss cheese. Whoever built his alias did a hellava job, but it’s not my work. I found some discrepancies in his identifications.”
“They’re fakes?” I ask.
“The fakest of fakes, mate. His birth certificate, a hundred percent forged. The parents he listed—don’t exist. Passport, likely forged. I couldn’t trace any past identities. But I do know he started using Varrick around the eighties. Then he married into the Wolfe family, and the rest—well, you know most of the rest.”
Trevor stares at the phone. “So Varrick is a grifter?”
“No doubt about it in my mind. Varrick Wolfe is a conman, and the probability he knows your parents is high.”
Brayden.
I hear my name in the pit of my ear. His voice. Their voices.
Brayden.
“It’s not just high,” I tell Carter. “It’s certain.”
THIRTY-THREE
Rocky
The Badger Game
Victoria, Connecticut
“Don’t mess with the plan, Trev.” He’s driving Phoebe and Hailey to the Koning estate and dropping them off. With the Honda out of commission, he’s taking Nova’s Pontiac GTO, which Nova hasn’t let anyone behind the wheel of since he bought it at auction. He’s been flush with cash after he oversold some flowerpot painting like it was an original van Gogh.
That car is his current baby. He won’t even let me sit in the driver’s seat. So Trevor should be fucking happy.
His insistence on wanting to shadow Varrick and integrate himself into his life is killing me. Varrick being a con artist who knows my name should be a big enough warning to stay away—but my brother doesn’t see danger as a caution sign. I just want to keep him safe.
“When you drop them off,” I say, “don’t go looking for him.”
He’s quiet.
“Trevor. I don’t want to worry about you getting stabbed while I’m here, and no one will be around to help you. Just think about that, please. I won’t be there.”
“Okay,” he says. “Okay.” He’s relenting. “This is all weekend?”
“Saturday and Sunday. We’ll be done tomorrow morning,” I tell him. Family and close friends are invited overnight for the Koning soiree, filled with a ten-course dinner, and then we wake up to Easter Sunday brunch. It’s the first time Hailey has been hired on as staff for a Koning dinner, and we’re taking it as an opportunity to get the evidence we need to bury Claudia.
This weekend, we pull the rope.
Phoebe is principal on this job. She’ll take center stage, and I’m more on edge than I’ve been for any other gathering.
“Sounds good,” Trevor says. “See you later.” He hangs up quickly. Too quickly. I have a strange feeling in my stomach. See you later. He does mean tomorrow?
I carry this gnawing pit in my gut with me to the Koning estate. By the time I arrive and I’ve been greeted with an icy stare-down by the family butler, Niall Greensboro, I start walking the grounds.
Ever since I became BFFs with Trent, I’ve been to the estate enough to have it blueprinted on my eyeballs. Library on the first floor, west wing. Den next to the entryway. A theater room in the basement. The property covers over thirty acres and includes two greenhouses, an apple orchard, a private beach, a seventy-five-foot swimming pool with a pool house, and a main home with twenty-one rooms. It is extravagant.