54. Harper
FIFTY-FOUR
HARPER
This was it. The moment I’d been working toward for the last week or two.
I’d been training with Lilly in secret to up my deadly game. We threw knives and practiced hold-break techniques, and she taught me the weak points of a man’s body outside of the obvious. All this last week of training was leading up to this.
I had to thank Lilly if I survived this stupid and very reckless escapade I was on now.
Taking out guards was the easy part. Just jack into the security system and feed it a loop from the night before. Take away their advance notice system, and they’d flounder to find me using screens that were as good as blank.
Each one fell in a semi-silent gurgle of their own blood as I slit their throats one by one, moving with an efficiency that would make the boys proud.
Thirty guards later, my hand was really starting to tire out, and I regretted the choice of weapon I’d made. But that was the way of it when dealing with knives. I wanted to be symbolic. I wanted to take him out exactly how the boys had been instructed to do me in seven years ago. I wanted it to come full circle.
Especially after I discovered the secrets the elder Blackwood patriarch was hiding under his bed.
Figuratively speaking.
I moved like an avenging angel in the night, clinging to walls so I wouldn’t trip the silent alarm. I slipped effortlessly past a group of guards responding to a strange radio call, around the corner, and down the hall to the end of the wing holding the Blackwood elder’s bedroom.
My step-father. My attempted murderer. The bane of my existence.
And now, future dead man walking.
There were two big, burly guards outside his room, and no doubt at least one more on the other side of the door to eliminate before I could get to him. But as fate would have it, they were radioed a second before I moved in for the kill. In a minute and a half as I watched from the sidelines, they extracted Blackwood from his room, ushering him down the hall to the study staircase.
Dammit. The study is armed for his protection. Be a whole lot harder to get out of that place unharmed.
I wasn’t a planner like Rowan. I wasn’t a crazed psychopath like Nash. And I certainly wasn’t as graceful as Angel. Fuck, the way he moved in a fight made you think he walked off the set of The Matrix or something. That left the element of surprise, and that most people underestimated me because I was once a spoiled, wealthy socialite, and I was a small-ish woman. Surely I couldn’t cause much damage, right?
Lilly had made sure I could quell that biased stereotype with a quickness.
And now, she’d given me my test—if I wanted to stay with the Blackwood boys, I’d have to become what they were.
Killers.
And it just so happened she knew precisely the guy who deserved to go.
She said it’d be cathartic. That it would be freeing.
She was so right.
I was coated with blood, my hands covered from all the slit throats, my front messed up from dragging bodies around, but all in all, I thought it really added some aesthetic to the overall look.
Lilly sent the boys on a mission to allow me to leave the house without their knowledge. They wouldn’t have let me go if they knew. It was too soon since my injury, they were concerned for my well-being, I planned to kill their father?—
All valid reasons.
But it didn’t matter. I’d collaborated with Lilly and her ex-husband, the cop, to get a backdoor into his computer. And once I was in, the startling amount of dirt I managed to find on him was enough to lock in a hit of my own .
If I hadn’t been planning to kill him for my own mental health, I wanted to kill him for the things I found on his computer pertaining to the boys.
Secrets upon secrets. Proof upon proof that everything he did was with the intent to break them.
When he was dead, I would tell them. I promised myself that much. And if I didn’t survive . . .
Well, they’d find the folder of secrets I left with Lilly to be a bit eye-opening.
Two more guards headed down the hall in the direction of the office, and I grimaced in frustration as they entered the damn room, guns drawn. Of course, there would be something to happen that would derail the tentative vibes I had.
I had planned to kill him in the same bed that he let my mom lie in until the poison he’d fed her did its job.
Now, I’d have to settle for killing him in the same chair he sat in to torment all the children under his thumb.
I snuck around the corner and down the hall, barefoot and silent, hoping my good fortune so far would continue to hold until I was within killing range of him.
I wanted him to see my face as I ended his life. The boys might have their hands tied, but I had no such hangups, and I was tired of this man— any man— running my life. Dictating how I lived. Keeping me in fear.
I’d lived in fear long enough.
I wanted to be free. I wanted to be me.
Not some watered-down version of my former self, straight out of the discount bin, scared to leave the house because someone might be after her still.
That kind of life was no life at all.
I’d rather be dead.
Taking out the guards in the hallway was easy enough. I lured one around the corner with the sounds of wet hands slapping against the wall. The second came right after the first, almost ruining the moment for me.
I slit both of their throats and didn’t bother to hide the bodies this time. I wanted anyone who came after to know that there was danger ahead. That they’d been bested.
By a woman.
I slipped into the office, the door clicking shut behind me in a mockery of the silence of the room. From behind the desk, the man I’d been forced to call father for quite a few years of my life blinked sleep from his eyes, still sitting comfortably behind that ominous desk, hands steepled in front of him as he scanned the room for the source of the sound I had no doubt he heard.
His eyes found mine in the dark, likely the only part of my body he could see, considering I’d dressed in a black so dark it rivaled the Torino’s paint job. As I watched in real time, his lips spread into a knowing grin that made my skin crawl.
"I was wondering when you’d come find me, girl."
One step forward was all it took to enter the dull light from the lamp on his desk. One step closer to the end of his life and the end of my hiding.
I lowered my shades, my glare full of disgust and hatred I didn’t bother to hide. "Blackwood. I see you’re still the same pompous asshole you’ve always been."
His eyes found a guard in the far corner, and when the man moved forward, he held up his hand to hold him off. "I see you’ve been hanging out with those worthless boys of mine. The skeleton makeup doesn’t become you."
"Deflecting doesn’t become you," I spat back, crossing my arms pointedly as I stared him down. "I’m here to finish what you started, not to make small talk."
Now he waved the guards forward a few feet, staring pointedly at my chest instead of my face. Pig. "You won’t be finishing anything unless you plan to die on the floor of my study today." Contempt dripped like blood from his lips, and I had to shake off a vision of jamming the knife personally into his chest and twisting it painfully until he screamed. "Where are my worthless sons hiding? Surely they’re lurking outside waiting for you to do the job they couldn’t."
The guards closing in on me stopped in their tracks as I took out a blade and shined it on the lapels of my leather jacket. Good. I wanted them to be afraid. I didn’t want to reveal my hand too soon, but I wanted them to know I wouldn’t go down easy.
"I didn’t bring the boys with me. This is between me and you." I stared pointedly at the sharp tip of the blade I’d stolen from Nash, my name etched into the side of the blade. I hoped that decal would slice my name into the inside of his muscles and sinew and fat, permanently marking him until his body decayed. "I’ve wanted to be free of you for a long time. I figure that’s why my mother died, too. She dared to want better for herself. And you wanted her money." I stared back down at my blade, twisting it in the dim light. "Too bad you can’t always have what you want."
"You could have leveraged yourself, and we could have ruled an empire," he said suddenly, his lecherous voice filling me with disgust. "Instead, you had to go and run game on those boys, who don’t even deserve you."
"Jealous of your sons?" The laughter bubbled from my chest, and I couldn’t stop it. I didn’t want to. "What a joke. A grown man lusting after his own step-daughter. How pathetic."
"I can appreciate a fine woman. And you’re not hard to look at. You got your mother’s looks, you know."
I stepped forward and flung the spare knife in my other hand in his direction. I relished the hollow thunk it made as it slammed into the wooden paneling behind his chair, inches from his face.
I could almost imagine how tightly he was clenching his asshole right now, as he started to realize that this was more than just an empty threat .
That I was more dangerous than I appeared.
His gaze drifted sideways to the knife still protruding from the wall, and I watched with a sick sense of perversion as he swallowed thickly, motioning to his other three guards with a hand signal. They all closed in but stopped feet away from me, like they were almost scared to touch me.
Or maybe they’d been told to bring me in alive.
Either way, they were going to be disappointed.
"This only ends one way," I spat at the man who’d taken my whole life and ripped it to shreds. "With you getting exactly what you deserve."
"Deserve is such an antiquated word. Who deserves what? And who are you to determine what someone else deserves?" His stare intensified as he shook the last dregs of exhaustion and stood in his silk pajamas and smoking jacket, hands slipping into his pockets like every cliche mobster who thought he was above reproach. "You’re not a jury of my peers. Nor are you anything more than a pawn in a game full of players far bigger than you."
I flipped the engraved knife in my hand, absently watching as the sharp edge glinted in the thin sliver of light over his shoulder as he stalked me, circling with an overblown sense of confidence. As far as I could tell, he was unarmed, and I was not. Seemed like an open-and-shut case.
But the biggest predators were always the ones hiding something behind their backs.
And this one had been in the game for a long ass time.
He wasn’t to be underestimated.
I decided to play his game. Just because I was new at it, didn’t mean I couldn’t win.
"So your big plan was to kill me for the money, and now that you can’t get the money if I’m dead, you think you can convince me to marry you so you can have it?"
His grin widened. "I never said that. Harper, your imagination has grown almost as much as you have. "
His attitude made me rage. "Fuck you, Blackwood," I spat, hating him and everything he stood for. Everything he was had brought me nothing but pain, sadness, and difficulties.
Those and the ones I’d fallen in love with along the way.
That ended today.
I straightened my spine, refusing to give in to the urge to kowtow to the man who’d demanded such obedience when I was younger. The movement made my wounds ache, but I ignored the pulling, tensing pain instead of giving in to it, pretending it wasn’t there. The boys would kick my ass if I popped any stitches. "You are the kind of scum those sons of yours should be ridding the earth of, not me. And I’m here to make sure you’re served the justice you’ve earned."
He waved a hand in the air dismissively, rounding behind me as I struggled not to turn to keep him in my line of vision. "I don’t answer to you, girl. When my time comes, I will answer to the devil himself."
He was too ballsy to do anything when I couldn’t see it.
Predators like him wanted you to see it coming.
"Hell is too good for any of you Blackwoods. Especially you."
I spun in a circle, pulling the throwing knives from inside my jacket sleeve. Like magic, they hit their targets, one, two, three. His guards fell like dominos, one after the other, like a comical road show.
He watched them crumple, each with a matching blade protruding from their throats, with little interest or concern. It was as if he thought himself above death, like he had something that would guarantee nobody would ever touch him.
I doubted it. But he could try.
"You’ve learned a few party tricks," he mused, his hands coming together in a slow clap. "Unfortunately, that won’t save you. Where they came from, there are twenty more on the grounds, all ready to respond to a push of this button in my hand." He waved the strange square of plastic, reminiscent of a garage door opener, in my face mockingly. As if it would stop me from killing him where he stood. "Try me."
"They can’t respond if they’re already dead," I pointed out, showing him my bloodstained hands. "And you’d be hard-pressed to find a single one I didn’t already take out of commission."
His eyes narrowed dangerously as he stepped a foot or two away from me, wariness shuttering his features. For the first time since I arrived here tonight, he seemed to be registering that I wasn’t working with anyone, that I was far more dangerous than he suspected.
Still, he tried his last playing card, a desperate attempt by a man whose facade was cracking.
"If you kill me, Angel will never know what happened to his mother. Nash’s mother’s bills will go unpaid, and she’ll likely be taken off life support. And their devastation will wreck Rowan." His smile returned with a vengeance, thinking he’d won over me as my face fell.
In fact, I was just toying with him. I wanted him to feel comfortable enough to let his guard down. Wanted him to feel like he’d won, so that when I jammed the blade into his body and bled him dry, he could die with the feeling of betrayal, loss, and defeat my mother probably felt when she learned on her deathbed that her husband had poisoned her.
Fuck you, asshole. Every minute longer I let you breathe is a concession you don’t deserve.
"The boys would understand," I muttered, slipping the engraved blade out of my sleeve again. "They would."
"Are you confident enough to test that theory?"
"I’m doing this for them," I remarked, and like a cobra, I struck.
He moved faster than should be normal for a man in his condition, of his age, and instead of lodging the blade in his heart, instead, it sliced across his throat and chest, blood pouring out of him as he swore and launched himself over to his desk. With a single hand slapped over his throat, he reached under his desk with the other, and I had seconds to react before he fired off a shot or two in my direction, missing me by inches.
"You bitch!" he screamed, holding the gun out at chest level as I ducked behind the couch. "You’ll pay for that with your life."
"You wish!" I tried to calm my racing heart as the adrenaline pumped through my veins. The room felt warm, too warm, my side aching with a renewed fierceness from all the strain of today. I shouldn’t have pulled a stunt like this so soon into my recovery, but it couldn’t wait any longer. I could feel the warmth of my cheeks as I steadied my hand and formed a plan on the fly.
Okay, so stabbing him head-on was now out. Time to improvise.
"When were you going to tell them all the secrets you hid from them?" I waited for him to pop off another shot, but he was patient, waiting for me to make a mistake. "Were you ever planning to do a big reveal, or were you just going to take those things to your grave with you?"
His laughter came from the wrong side of the room, telling me he’d managed to move silently while I was a sitting duck. A few more feet, and he might have an angle on me to take a shot. "I don’t even know what you’re talking about. You’ve deluded yourself into thinking you have something on me that you don’t."
"You killed Angel’s mom, just like you killed Ro’s."
The silence on the other side of the couch was deafening, and I took that moment to rise to my knees, glad that he hadn’t bothered to turn on any overhead lights.
"That bitch killed herself with the heroin in that needle. I just helped her along, is all."
But he hadn’t. He’d shoved the needle in her arm, conveniently forgetting to tell her it contained more than a hit of her drug of choice. He killed her to cover up what she’d found out, what she’d suspected all along .
"You’ve had Nash’s mother in an induced coma since the day of her car accident, simply so you could declare her legally dead for marital reasons and move in your newest bride." Angel’s mother hadn’t spoken much English when he picked her up as a desperate hooker in a strip club where a lot of the women came from countries far away against their will. "Another woman you took advantage of."
I could hear his feet shuffling, and then the sound of a clip locking into place echoed around the room. I guessed he was about three feet away, to my right, this time.
I could slide around the chair and put the desk between us with ease.
Hell, if he wanted to kill me, he could have fired through this fucking chair by now.
So why didn’t he?
The door to the study creaked open, and I didn’t have time to think. Knowing it could mean I missed a man, I let a single blade fly, the one in my hand, regretting the action almost immediately as it landed in the chest of a man dressed in all black.
"Fuck," a familiar voice groaned out as he fell to his knees, a hand reaching up to cradle the knife in his heart. "I always knew you’d be the death of me, Harpie girl. I just didn’t think it’d be like this."