The Insiders by Tijan

THIRTY-SIX

The whole reveal never happened.

Kash was supposed to tell me everything. He didn’t.

I woke late the next morning and Kash was gone. He left a text on my phone.

Emergency. I’ll be back when I can.

I didn’t know what the emergency was. No one shared, and no one else acted like they knew. And over the next few days, Kash was gone. Matt left, too, so it was me, Marie, Theresa, and the kids. Quinn was at her charity meetings/functions. My father was around. I heard his voice one day when I was on my computer, set up in Marie’s office. After Kash left, I asked to be let back on, and Marie was okay with it. The fact that it was her who gave me the okay wasn’t lost on me. Ironic. Or karma. Either of those, but I was eternally grateful to her.

Working on that computer saved me, because those few days turned into weeks.

Kash was able to return, but only at night, and he’d be gone the next morning. I knew this because he’d wake me up while sliding into bed. If he didn’t wake me that way, he woke me with his mouth on me. He would roll on top of me and take me to new heights, night after night. Or it was night after night, until it became every other night. Then every third night.

I missed him.

I loved spending time with Cyclone and Seraphina. I loved being able to work on my security program, and a small part of me was even enjoying the brief moments when my dad would enter Marie’s office to talk to her. I knew she let him know I was behind the wall partition, because he’d get quiet right away and leave. But after a week of this, she stopped telling him. I never moved.

I sat suspended until he would leave.

He’d come in for a general report from her. He wanted to know how Cyclone was during the day, what projects he spent time on, his dietary habits even. He would ask about Seraphina. He would ask if she had heard from Matt. He got the layout of how the staff was doing, who was complaining, who was doing well. He liked to praise the ones who worked the hardest, and he would watch the ones Marie said weren’t working. After a week, one of those was let go. After two weeks, a second one was let go.

He even asked about Quinn, wanting to know when she left, what charities she had mentioned to Marie.

She told him what she knew. Marie never hesitated or lied.

The only two people he never asked about were Kash and me.

It stung at first. I mean, how could it not? A father that I was foisted on. He was gone the first few weeks, then here, and still not talking to me—or about me even. But then again, maybe he asked when I wasn’t around? Maybe he knew I was there? Maybe that’s why he continued to ask her those questions, knowing I was there, wanting, in a weird way, to build a connection to me?

I didn’t know.

He just didn’t ask about me. That’s what I knew.

A month passed, and another couple weeks after that.

More days spent with my siblings. More nights with Kash. It was now nearing the end of July, and I was missing Chrissy.

“Heya, lonely sister, but one that’s so much more mature than me.”

Matt dropped into the chair behind me with a collapsing sigh. His head fell back, his mouth opened, and a full groan left him. “It’s fucking hot.” He rotated in the chair, casting a beady look at Marie, who was sitting at her desk. “I know you like it hot, but would it kill you to put a fan in here?” He gestured to me. “At least for Bailey’s sake. There’s a whole sweat line going down her back.”

“There is?”

I shot him a look. “Dumbass. I’m fine.”

“Doesn’t matter, because,” Matt stood, saying to me, “I came to rescue you.”

“Rescue?” I was still pissed at him. We had never talked about the sex club night.

“From Victoria and the German tutor for Cyclone. They have lessons in an hour, and I know Quinn is intending to ask both of them to stay for lunch.”

Marie piped in, “Mistress Quinn is still here?”

He nodded at her. “She pulled in when I got here. Called from the car to invite me for lunch.”

Marie hurried out of the room, the door slamming in her wake.

Matt smirked at me. He raised an eyebrow. “Want to tell me why you lied just now? I can see how uncomfortable you are, and this room is hot-like-a-sauna hot.”

More shifting around. I didn’t like this, not a bit.

“Spill it.” He was scowling.

I turned back to the computer monitor. “I just don’t want to be a nuisance. To anyone.”

I was turning the computer off.

Matt had fallen silent.

If he had come in to rescue me, I knew he wasn’t going to make me stay for that lunch. Not that Quinn would invite me. She’d been avoiding me as much as I had her, and it wasn’t the first time since I was here that the tutor and Victoria were at the estate.

They came once a week.

Marie would pointedly suggest I fix something on her computer, or Theresa’s monitor, or would say they would bring me something to eat in Kash’s villa.

No one had mentioned their visits, and while I caught the tail end of Victoria leaving once, I hadn’t brought them up, either.

I turned back, standing up. Then, catching Matt’s face, I froze.

He was pissed. Seriously pissed.

“What?”

“Why do you think you’re a nuisance?”

Oh God. Where would I start? “Matt…”

“Bailey,” he ground out.

He was waiting. His other eyebrow went up.

“Look, it’s nothing. For real. I don’t want to bug Marie. That’s all.”

He waited, still studying me.

I was waiting too. I didn’t want him to push this. It felt wrong to complain to him about his own family, because it wasn’t just Marie or Theresa that I didn’t want to bother. It was everyone. Well, not Kash. I liked bugging him. A lot. Every night. Multiple times a night. An itching was forming under my skin, and I knew that wouldn’t go away until Kash came again. It’d been three full nights since his last visit. I was addicted to him, needing the feel of him against me to keep going.

I mean, we barely talked.

I mean, that wasn’t going to fly all the time.

But, I mean, it was Kash. He was my fix.

“You sure that’s all it is?”

My knees almost buckled from the relief. “Yes. That’s all.”

He still wasn’t happy, but he was relenting. The look faded, and his smirk showed again. “Want to get out of here with me?”

I hesitated. “Where? I know what parties you go to, and Matt…” I didn’t want to swim in his depths. “I can’t handle your crowd. I’m not like that.”

“Like what?” But he was grinning. He knew what I meant.

“The orgies. The drugs. No, thank you.”

“I know.” His eyes flashed in an apology. “Look, I’ve been embarrassed. Really embarrassed. What you saw that night, or the other nights. I’m sorry, Bailey. I am. Seeing how you were looking at me, at everyone.” His foot moved back and forth on the carpet. “Kash reamed me out the next day.”

He did?

“I woke up and the night came back to me in patches. Jesus, Bailey. You saw me fucking some random from behind. That’s—yeah.” A strangled laugh slipped out. “That’s pretty high up on my list of embarrassments.” His eyes caught mine. “But I wasn’t high that night. I was the other night, but not that night. It feels weird. I just usually start out with people being disappointed in me, you know.”

He was trying to be funny.

“Hey.” My throat was closing up. “I’m not judging you. Don’t think that.”

“Still.” He shoved his hands deep in his pockets. “I want to make it up to you, and trust me, me getting you out of here before Cyclone and Seraphina insist you join the Trio of Terrors is one small way of making things right again. I got a friend who’s in a polo tournament today. You want to go?”

I wasn’t sure.

“It’ll be all classy and shit. Wine. Hats. Dresses. Guys who dress up like they’ve got sticks up their asses. The whole shebang. And if you don’t want to hang out in the club area, I know the place the tournament’s at. We own a barn there, and there’s a loft we can sit in. I won’t let anyone up there, if you don’t want them.”

I was weighing my options.

Stay. Work on the computer. Do something I loved? Or go to this polo place, where I was pretty sure I didn’t like any of Matt’s friends? If I stayed, Cyclone and Seraphina could make it awkward, if they insisted I join them for lunch. That meant enduring Quinn and Victoria—who, even though she had said only one sentence to me, I already knew hated me.

There was no dilemma here.

I groaned. “What do I wear to this getup?”

Matt’s smile flashed wide. “There’s my sister I love.”

I let out an abrupt laugh.

Sister. Love.

I felt faint. He could’ve tipped me over, right then and there.