Go Full Circle (A Go Novel Book 5) Read online

  6

  While still trying to figure out what was going on and who was loyal to who, Harlow almost missed the kitchen conversation taking an even more shocking turn.

  “Bringing you on was the best decision I ever made,” Ophelia said. It sounded like she was eating something. “I hoped this would happen. That we’d get this back. I am so pleased that we made up.”

  “Me too, honey,” Anwen said. “Though I wouldn’t say inviting me on board was the best decision. There was one better one.”

  Ophelia laughed; Anwen joined in. Harlow began to speculate about which decision they meant. Before she came to any conclusions, Ophelia illuminated the truth.

  “Cutting Jarvis out was more of a necessity than a decision. He had it coming for a long time. He was just lucky I didn’t do it sooner. You have no idea how close I came to doing it so many times.”

  “Oh, I do. I remember you used to talk about it… I never for a second thought you’d really follow through and kill him though.”

  For a minute, the world went silent. Anwen knew that Ophelia was the killer? Harlow couldn’t figure out how that could be. She hadn’t told her; Anwen had thanked Harlow for doing the job.

  If her crew had trusted Anwen with that tidbit, a lot had changed at home. Sickness churned in her belly. Tossing the towel over her shoulder, Harlow put a hand on the wall for support. This was a huge revelation. Knowing something like that suggested that not only was Anwen trusted, she was inside the circle. Sliding an absent hand along her stars, she tried to remind herself of their value, but couldn’t quite do it.

  If Anwen was one of them, she’d be sticking around. Ryske trusted her in more than just his bed. Giving Anwen her stars meant the crew trusted her with their lives.

  Ophelia could have revealed that truth to Anwen, maybe in an argument. Would confessing be worth that risk? It was more likely that Ryske had told Anwen, and instructed her on how to coerce the truth from Ophelia without the beauty realizing she was being manipulated.

  Even if Ophelia had revealed the truth in a fight, Anwen should have told Ryske that she knew. Harlow’s hand fell to her side; she balled her fist. Being apart from Ryske and her crew had been frustrating from almost the first minute, but she’d never felt the effects from an intelligence point of view more than she did now.

  All she needed was five minutes with any of them. In that time, she’d be able to find out everything she needed to know. Well, five minutes with any of them except Ryske; he’d find another use for any time they got alone.

  “Apparently not,” Ophelia said. “If you’d believed in me and appreciated what I was capable of, there wouldn’t have been any need for Ryske’s insane plan. I mean, really, An, you couldn’t have stayed in hiding forever.”

  Talking about Anwen’s fake death with such ease suggested the pair had buried the hatchet for real.

  “I should’ve trusted you,” Anwen said.

  Harlow really believed her. Rather, the tone was genuine. But her suspicions were rising. Anwen had good reason not to trust Ophelia, the woman had a hair trigger. She was quick with her hands and to jump to conclusions. Ophelia could flip on a person in a heartbeat. It might be coffee and croissants now, but if Anwen crossed her, or Ophelia suspected she’d been crossed, she could go off like a rocket. There would be no stopping her.

  On the flipside, if Anwen was double-crossing Ryske or their crew, Harlow would make sure there was no safety net to catch her. Blackmail be damned. She wouldn’t let her boys be manipulated again.

  “You should have trusted me,” Ophelia said. “We’d have been a formidable team.”

  The following pause drew Harlow closer. “We still could be.”

  Uh oh. That was Harlow’s decision made. She would need some real proof before trusting Anwen again.

  “Oh, sweetie,” Ophelia said, probably coupling her condescending tone with an arm rub or a hand pat. “You know that I’m thrilled you and I have reached a truce. Except it doesn’t change the fact that we both have the same goal. I let you dabble with Ryske now, I suppose, as a gift, a sort of farewell. Once he and I are together, I won’t want him to be with other women.” She laughed. “He won’t want to be with other women.”

  Harlow wondered if she’d get her chance to say farewell to him and if Ophelia would approve of their farewell taking fifty to eighty years.

  “You can’t tie him down like that,” Anwen said. “He doesn’t respond well to rules.”

  That was true for the most part. Some rules he didn’t mind her laying down. It meant something that Anwen was making some acknowledgement of who Ryske was. To Ophelia, he was just a prize she wanted to win. One she would keep to herself. She failed to see the truth and fiber of the man she coveted.

  “It won’t be a rule,” Ophelia said. “It will be what he wants. I’ll be enough for him. If he wants to play in the bedroom, I may allow him another, but she would have to be strictly approved.”

  Meaning not her or Anwen or anyone Ryske might show a preference for.

  “Do you love him, Fi?”

  With bated breath, Harlow awaited the answer to Anwen’s question.

  “Yes,” Ophelia said. “I love him more than you do.” She sighed. “You and Harlow, you just don’t understand what it is that we have. It’s complicated.”

  So much for feigned friendship. Ophelia hadn’t changed her opinion on anything, she was just being gracious enough to accommodate Anwen.

  Harlow didn’t feel any urge to rush in and defend her relationship with Ryske. As long as she knew what it was, and he did too, she didn’t need anyone else to understand it.

  “He cares about me too.”

  “Of course he does,” Ophelia said, using her honed ability to patronize. “We’re not going to forget about you. You’re going to need our support. Once Pothos takes off and we expand, we’re going to need loyal support staff. He and I will be busy, but you can always come to me with any problems.”

  So, it was Ophelia’s goal to groom employees for her illegal operation. More and more it seemed that Jarvis Hagan was right about his sister. On the night he died, he’d told Harlow about Ophelia’s nature. At the time, the information conflicted with her experience of the woman in many ways. So did the reality of Anwen versus her experience. Until that day, anyway.

  People proved to her time and again that what they projected to the world wasn’t always the reality of their nature.

  “You haven’t changed, Fifi,” Anwen said like it was a good thing.

  “I’ll take that as a compliment,” Ophelia said, upbeat and optimistic, at least until her next sentence. “Where is that girl?”

  That girl, Harlow assumed, was her. Instead of declaring herself, or doing as she had before, Harlow returned to Ophelia’s bathroom and sat down to look through the various bottles of scented oil. Better, she thought, to be caught procrastinating, than to suddenly pop up when Ophelia lost her patience.

  Ophelia knew where to find her and would have to dismiss Anwen before she came to bathe anyway. Harlow didn’t want to be a part of their fake farewell.

  Either Anwen was working for her crew, or she was betraying them. If it was the latter, Harlow would make sure it was the last mistake Anwen ever made.

  As expected, when Ophelia found her in the bathroom, she’d chastised her for wasting time. After that, Ophelia got in the massive tub anyway, expecting Harlow to do her duty.

  The deep tub had a sort of padded seat angled in the corner. Ophelia never had to let her delicate body touch the solid base of the tub. There were wide shelves all around it and a wall on two sides. Harlow sat in the corner behind Ophelia with her legs laid along each of the wide edges, her back to the wall.

  Ophelia had given her orders, and Harlow had done her duties without complaint. She massaged the difficult woman’s scalp, trying her hardest to resist the urge to dig her nails in. The debutante could be out of the water, dried and dressed by now. Instead, she preferred to lounge and be pampere
d.

  “I need to know things,” Ophelia said, scooping up some of the remaining bubbles.

  Know things? Excellent. A novel task… One with potential. Harlow’s next thought was that research would require internet access. She started to devise ways to get in touch with Maze. Maybe he could talk her through what she had to do in order to grant him direct access to Ophelia’s personal files. The ones that they’d so far been unable to touch.

  Another thought overlapped, maybe Ophelia wanted her to hit the streets. Harlow could play investigator, ask around about whatever Ophelia needed, and maybe slip in a visit home… Except, if she did that and Anwen saw her—

  “How does he like to be touched?”

  All thoughts, and hopes, vanished. Distasteful as it was, it didn’t take Harlow long to figure out what Ophelia was asking her. “Excuse me?”

  “You’ve been intimate with him… haven’t you?”

  Even though there was a trace of a question in her voice, it was slightly snide too. Nothing was certain. Everyone still thought she and Ryske had been sleeping together long before they actually had.

  “You’re asking me if I’ve had sex with Ryske?” Harlow asked.

  The question was ridiculous. Not just because of how intimate she and Ryske had been, but because this woman believed there would ever be any circumstances in which Harlow would share carnal knowledge of him.

  “I know you have,” Ophelia said. “It would be ridiculous of you to deny it.”

  “Oh, I’m not denying it,” Harlow said. “I’m just trying to figure out why you think it’s any of your business.”

  Ophelia raised her chin; Harlow kept massaging. “You work for me.”

  “That has no connection to my personal life.”

  The truth was, Harlow wouldn’t be there if it wasn’t for her personal life. In her opinion, that was a technicality. One didn’t give Ophelia the right to the other.

  “You must have noticed how he’s losing interest in you… Sorry, how he’s lost interest in you,” Ophelia said, washing the bubbles from her hand just to pick them up again. “It’s his way. He never keeps one woman forever.”

  “If you’re so sure about that, it amazes me that you think you could be any different.”

  Ophelia smiled. Harlow didn’t see it, but she heard it. “I am different. He knew if he gave into his feelings for me that they would overwhelm him… That’s why he wanted to be sure he’d sowed all his oats before coming to me… It’s almost time and when it is, I want to make sure he gets what he needs.”

  Ryske didn’t come with a manual and if he did, she would always refuse to be it. Harlow believed that he enjoyed their intimacy. Not because he told her, although he often did, because she felt it, she knew the truth of her love.

  There were no rules on how to be with him either. He didn’t need a specific act in order to get off. Sure, there were places on his body that got better results than others, but she didn’t think he needed attention directed there.

  “If you’re really the woman for him, you’ll know what he needs and how to give it to him.”

  “I don’t see why you won’t just answer the question,” Ophelia said with an edge of irritation. “You know he’s not shy about sex. He’d tell me himself.”

  “Then ask him,” Harlow said. “You ask him about what he needs from you in bed. Whatever he wants you to give him, he’ll ask for… Like you said, he’s not shy.”

  If Ryske wanted something from her, he demanded it, or he took it. That was the nature of their relationship and their trust. Sure, they might not always reveal everything they knew in the first minute something happened or when they learned something new. But when it came to physical trust, sexual trust, they had that in spades.

  “What’s his favorite sexual position?”

  Smiling, Harlow wondered if Ophelia thought she’d slip up without realizing it. If she did, favorite sexual position wasn’t a subtle start.

  “He likes us fully clothed on opposite sides of the city,” Harlow said and then gasped. “Oh my God, maybe you’ve been doing it this whole time.”

  Growling, Ophelia slapped her hands to the side of the tub and thrust up to her feet. “You’re an infuriating woman,” she said, climbing out and grabbing her robe. “What you have with him isn’t special! It’s over! Whatever you think you’re protecting, you’re not. It’s a delusion. He’s never coming back to you. If he wanted you back, he’d have challenged me.” Tying her robe, Ophelia turned in a flourish and opened her arms. “He hasn’t even asked.”

  Because Harlow had made him promise not to. On the night Ophelia had won her, when she was secreting the bracelet back into his pocket for fear Ophelia would take it, Harlow had told him to let her go. She’d made him promise not to make any move to get her back or free her.

  He hadn’t wanted to promise, but there had been no time to argue. He hadn’t had much choice.

  “What would you like to wear today, mistress?” Harlow asked, using the term to further irritate her boss. Climbing off the tub, she let the water run out and started into the bedroom. “I have laid out a few choices.”

  Ophelia could stamp her feet as much as she liked, nothing would change. Harlow wouldn’t reveal anything of her relationship with Ryske, not even on pain of death. She’d be devastated to think that Ryske shared their intimate secrets. Not because she was ashamed of them, but because they were made more special by the fact they weren’t public knowledge.

  They’d had sex with others in earshot. They’d had sex with others in the room. But those glances, those touches, those quiet moments, like Ryske had talked about in her childhood bedroom, those moments belonged to her and her man, and no one else.

  7

  Friday was always a difficult day of the week. Harlow hated knowing that Ryske was at the club and she wasn’t. Maze would be with him, which was a comfort. Penzance was usually at Windsor’s as well. Occasionally, he’d come back with a story or two, but her crew still didn’t seem to trust him enough to invite him into their circle all the way.

  At Brash’s, Ophelia’s men took it on rotation to stay with her. They were tasked with ensuring she didn’t run away or do anything against Ophelia’s rules. In Harlow’s opinion, it would be more logical to take her to Windsor’s. But she wasn’t an idiot and understood what Ophelia was trying to do: restrict her input into the Pothos operation and her time near Ryske.

  For a month, Harlow had endured the distance. Although she didn’t place a massive premium on her boss’s honor, Ophelia had stated that if she behaved, she would get to go to the club. Her doubts turned out to be valid. Ophelia had left hours ago and ordered her back to the apartment that she shared with Brash. Either Ophelia had never intended to take her or Harlow hadn’t been well-behaved enough.

  Lying on her bed, reading a book that she’d snagged from Ophelia’s closet, Harlow was trying to switch off. It wasn’t an easy goal when she was still obsessing over Anwen’s visit. How long had Anwen known about Jarvis Hagan’s death and Ophelia’s affair with Anthony Yarker?

  When her bedroom door opened and someone came stalking in, she sat up, surprised but anticipating Ryske. Turned out her imagination was making promises that reality couldn’t cash.

  “Vane,” she said to the man striding in a straight line from her bedroom door to the foot of the bed. “Ever think of knocking? I could’ve been naked.”

  “That would’ve been a lot of fun for me,” he said and tossed a bundle of powder-pink fabric onto the bed.

  “What’s this?”

  Unwinding the material to figure out what it was, she discovered a loose fitting dress. With delicate spaghetti straps that crisscrossed at the back of the otherwise backless dress, they reconnected to the skirt just above where her ass would be.

  “Put it on,” he said and maintained such a severe demeanor that she began to worry. A moment later, he cracked a smile. “You’re coming to the party.”

  Harlow didn’t have to be told t
wice.

  Leaping off the bed, she began to strip, without even caring that Penzance was there. He was gentleman enough to turn his back… eventually. Harlow had never changed clothes so fast. Once the dress was on, she ran to the closet to pull out the only pair of heels she had. They were the ones she’d been wearing the night she got there.

  “Did she say why?” Harlow asked, rushing for the door with Penzance in hot pursuit.

  “Do you care?” he asked, taking hold of the door above her head when she opened it.

  Unable to contain her grin, she didn’t even care if she was being setup. Tonight, she had a chance of seeing Ryske. “No. I don’t give a goddamn.”

  Thinking about Ryske on the drive to Windsor’s, Harlow didn’t give a lot of consideration to who else she might have a chance to see. Not until Penzance turned into the alley at the back of the club and she spotted the wedge of shadow.

  “Oh, God,” she said and leaped out of the car before Penzance had even put it in park.

  Rushing across to the shadow, she knew what she’d find there. Who she’d find there.

  Diving into the passenger seat, Harlow threw her arms around the man on the driver’s side.

  “Nightingale!”

  “Noon,” she said, squeezing him tight. “Oh, honey.”

  This was probably a bad move. She should be behaving and doing as told. Her opportunity to come to Windsor’s again may be linked to how compliant she was. In fairness, Harlow hadn’t been expressly told not to leap into another car and embrace a man. It was just assumption that Ophelia would class it as against the rules.

  Harlow was still hugging him when Penzance moved up to the driver’s window. To her surprise, he didn’t interrupt. He actually stood with his back to the vehicle, blocking anyone’s view of what was going on inside.

  “What are you doing here?” Noon asked, pulling back to inspect her arms. When he saw the mark on her face, he touched her cheek. “What happened?”