Chapter 2
PURPLE DYE AND RED EYES
Margot Merriweather-Brown, aka a billionaire heiress undercover on a secret mission to destroy her father to avenge her disinherited sister
English is the worst language.
We don’t have specific words for grief bacon, and we don’t have specific words for I’m simultaneously proud of myself for not freaking out and calling my security agent immediately and also horrified at the carnage in this cabin and also holy fuck, that dude is big, and I took him down all by myself, and I’m a badass, or I will be once the adrenaline leaves my system and I can take a deep breath without wanting to cry, and oh my god, do I want to cry right now, and I never cry.
Maybe I’ll just call it Friday night.
That’ll do.
For the rest of my life, whenever I think Friday night, that’s what it will mean.
And maybe my heart will try to beat out of my chest the same way it did when I was woken out of a dead sleep when the alarm started squawking, and the way it’s still thumping too fast right now.
I thought I was being overly paranoid when I rigged the homemade burglar alarm.
That I’d wake up in the morning and call Daphne, my sister, and tell her how ridiculous I was, and we’d both laugh about what might’ve happened if someone had walked under the bag of hair dye and gotten flour all over their face.
But instead, the fucking thing went off, and nothing about this is funny.
Someone broke into the cabin in the middle of the night, on the first night of my entire life without a security team within a hundred yards, and as I stare at the man hunched over and still coughing softly, I need a paper bag to breathe into and a place to go have a panic attack, which is what I’m pretty sure this is.
Rhys O’Malley’s identity will be verified for me shortly, because I texted my head of security his picture and name and told Cyril to look into him.
But right now, Rhys is blinking at me as I hang up with Lucky, the only one of the triplets I’ve spoken with so far. Lucky’s confirmed that Rhys is a family friend and that this isn’t the first time Decker’s messed up the cabin’s calendar.
It feels very convenient.
Especially since Lucky slipped in one of our email communications and clued me in that his brothers—Decker especially—were worried I’d say something I shouldn’t to someone I shouldn’t be near while I’m here.
I should be more suspicious of Rhys, but it’s hard to not feel increasingly more in control when he has dark purple hair dye dripping down the top of his face and flour all over his nose and short beard.
His eyes are blood red and leaking tears.
I mean, they’re actually a lovely shade of blue—the irises—but the whites of his eyes are as angry as the twist of his lips.
Hopefully the dye and flour and red eyes don’t make it too hard for my security team to identify him from the picture I sent them.
I huddle closer to the short hallway that leads to the bedroom, ready to sprint. I can lock myself inside, then crawl out the window when Cyril gets here, which will likely be within the next three minutes, but I don’t think that’ll be necessary.
I hope it’s not necessary.
If I wasn’t worried about blowing my cover before I’ve even gotten to meet the other two triplets, I would’ve already ordered my security agent here to handle Rhys, because who the fuck breaks into a secluded cabin in the middle of the night?
But what I’m here to do—to finally put my father in his rightful place after everything he’s put Daphne and me through, but especially her—is too important to blow it on the first unexpected turn of events.
“I need to rinse my eyes. Can I move without you flinging the skillet at my head?” Rhys says.
His voice is deep and raspy in ways that remind me I haven’t had sex in at least six months, but then I remind myself that Margie Johnson, my cover identity, hasn’t had sex in two years, and that doesn’t actually help.
Also, I’m clearly on the downhill slope of the adrenaline rush if I’m thinking of sex and not just survival.
I nod to him. “Yes. Move slowly and go to the kitchen sink.”
I don’t ask if he’s been here before.
Lucky’s reaction on the phone made it clear Rhys is a known entity to him, so it’s possible Rhys knows the floor plan and can find the kitchen on his own.
Provided this really is Rhys.
I text his picture to Lucky too. Is this the guy you know?
Rhys finishes rising slowly, and did I say the man was big?
That was an understatement.
He’s six five if he’s an inch, and he could fill a doorframe and a half with how wide his shoulders are.
He stretches his fingers on one hand, then balls them into a meaty fist. Thick veins trail up from his hands, disappearing beneath his leather jacket, which hangs open to reveal a tight black T-shirt, also covered with flour but clearly outlining thick pecs and a solid stomach underneath.
A wisp of fear takes hold in my gut again.
Can you blame a woman who’s used to having personal security for going overboard with the self-protective measures when that’s what was looming in the shadows?
“Who are you?” he asks while he makes his way quickly to the kitchen, one wincing bloodshot eye trained on me.
I trail him from just the right distance that I can still get to an exit path if necessary.
“I’m Margie Johnson,” I announce.
The lie is easier than it should be.
While I pride myself in overachieving the hell out of everything I do—apparently now including makeshift intruder alerts—this is the first time I’ve tried to overachieve being someone else, and it’s weird.
Rhys bends over at the kitchen sink. It’s an old porcelain single basin that fits perfectly with this mountain cabin vibe, which I’m purposely focusing on so I don’t stare at his ass.
My phone buzzes in my hand—the hand not still holding the cast-iron skillet—and I look down at a note from my head of security, who’s staying in a cabin a mile down the road.
The text includes an image of some kind of building access or security badge bearing a picture that’s strikingly similar to the man in front of me, along with the quick info on Rhys.
Rhys O’Malley. 34. Formerly private security for Technique Group Inc. Unknown if terminated or quit. Ten years in the Marines. No criminal history. No known current employer. Immediate threat assessment is relatively low. Use code word if situation changes.
Translation—Cyril is not, in fact, a mile down the road, but is now right outside the window that I cracked open after I smacked Rhys in the stomach so that my head of security could hear me if I needed to say the code word.
Cyril doesn’t congratulate me on my security system working right.
Probably because if he’d had his way, this guy never would’ve made it through the front door, because Cyril would’ve been outside waiting instead of me relying on a homemade booby trap.
“How do you know Lucky?” Rhys’s voice bubbles a little through the water rushing over his face.
Guilt threads through my belly at the knowledge that I assaulted an innocent man—even if I didn’t know he was innocent at the time, because honestly, who arrives at a remote mountain cabin after midnight?—and the guilt isn’t assuaged by knowing that I’m about to drop lie number two.
It’s good to practice on real people instead of myself in the mirror. And the one thing I promised Lucky—that I wouldn’t tell a soul that we share DNA—is the most important piece of my job here.
It’s how I intend to earn my brothers’ trust before I confess my real name and ask them for a favor.
Plus, god knows I’ve seen families destroyed. Theirs seems functional and healthy.
The lies about the man who raised them being their biological father aside.
Which are actually admirable, if you ask me.
I’d do a lot of morally ambiguous things in the name of protecting my sister, and keeping a secret that she doesn’t need to know and that could hurt her would be the easiest of those things.
And finding out that they’re related to my father is definitely something that could hurt them.
“We met in nursing school and kept in touch after I dropped out,” I tell Rhys.
He briefly angles his face to look at me like he doesn’t believe me.
He shouldn’t. I come from a long line of liars, even if I prefer to operate with the truth until I can’t anymore.
Like right now.
I’ve known for years that my father has other children besides Daphne and me.
I’ve known for years I’d only find out who they were if I managed to locate the legal paperwork detailing the payoffs and the nondisclosure agreements.
My mother probably knows too, but she’s always looked the other way because she likes the billionaire lifestyle.
It’s far more comfortable than the way she grew up.
But then I took a DNA test under a fake name on the off chance he’d missed any, and now here we are.
Not only did the Sullivan triplets of Snaggletooth Creek, Colorado, slip through the cracks of my father’s otherwise meticulous cleanup processes with his mistresses, but there are three of them.
Triplets.
My father missed that he fathered triplets about the same time I was born.
“You dropped out of nursing school?” Rhys says while my phone buzzes again.
This time it’s Lucky. Yeah, that’s him, and I’m gonna need the story about what’s up with his face.
I’ll text him back later. For now, I look back at Rhys, debating if that internal whisper of you need to apologize to your brothers’ friend is right or not. “Yes. I fainted dead away the first time I had to stick someone with a needle.”
Lies, lies, lies, more lies. At least this is one that Lucky and I agreed on beforehand.
I’ll help you find a better job and you can stay in my cabin while you get on your feet, but you can’t tell anyone who you really are because my dad doesn’t know we know that we’re not genetically his, is what Lucky said three weeks ago when I told him I wasn’t happy in Iowa, where Margie Johnson was raised by a single mom who passed away two years ago.