Chapter 28
TWENTY-EIGHT
The house fell silent not long after I retired to my room.
Most of the staff live off the property except for Carson, the butler, and the head of the house, Maria.
Father has very few guards posted inside the house, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t any at all.
There are also the cameras to worry about.
None of them are in the same hallway as his office.
I realize now that it is no doubt because he doesn’t want anyone to see who is coming or going.
Or the damage he is inflicting.
My sweaty hand reaches out and grips the door handle, turning it slowly, quietly. The corridor is silent, eerily so in this big house. My feet are bare. The old wood floor often creaks, and I want to remain as stealthy as possible.
The pulse of my heartbeat patters an unrelenting drumbeat against my rib cage, threatening to burst through my chest. My breaths come in shallow, quiet rasps. Cold sweat washes down the back of my neck and clings to the collar of my pajama shirt.
I am a wreck. What the hell am I doing pretending to be some kind of spy?
I have no idea in hell what I am doing, but still, I press on.
Not because of the promise I have made to the twins, but because I need to know what kind of man my father truly is.
Doubt has wiggled itself underneath my skin, causing a persistent itch.
My father isn’t who he says he is. He has never been very caring toward me, but I have always taken his punishments without complaint, believing I deserved them somehow.
What your father did is never okay, whether you did something wrong or not.
Those words still ring in my head. I’ve never thought of what my father did as wrong. Simply harsh, but I’ve been told my entire life that I was deserving of it. That it was necessary. But the more I think back on the times my father ordered my discipline, he never once told me what I’d done wrong.
My silent feet lead me to his office.
The place I have come to fear over the years.
His office has never been a safe place in this house.
The well-oiled hinges barely make a sound as I inch open the heavy door and creep inside, quietly closing the door behind me.
The safe is in plain view. He doesn’t bother hiding it.
There is no need in this house. Not when everyone follows your orders without question.
He has curated a carefully crafted team of devoted sycophants.
Men who would do anything for him. Men with both power and means.
There are no buttons on the safe. Instead, it has a scanner for an encrypted barcode that very few people have access to.
The problem is recreating the barcode. You can’t.
Although barcodes aren’t unhackable, encrypted barcodes are hard to simply copy.
The barcode itself contains specialized data that the reader readily interprets.
Without that specific data, the safe won’t open.
Unless you are able to short-circuit the entire system.
Which I can, thanks to a handy device I managed to sneak in with my luggage. The Kavanaughs’ hacker, Bridgett, rigged up a small device that resembles a button cell battery. I fetch it from the pocket of my pajamas, running my fingers over the soft metal.
Reaching out, I go to attach it to the safe’s interface when a pair of loud voices filters into the room from the hallway.
Shit.
Panic rises inside me as they approach. I need to find a place to hide.
Fuck.
My gaze whips around the room, heart beating rapidly in my chest.
Thump.
Thump.
The door handle rattles as I dive into the coat closet to the right.
“You should have kept your mouth shut, Sarah,” my father hisses as he steps into the room. “She isn’t as stupid as you think she is. Did you honestly think she wouldn’t catch what you said?”
Sarah snorts mirthlessly. “Please.” Her voice is full of derision. “She’s more gullible than her mother and look how that ended.”
“Killing Elizabeth was a mistake, and you know it,” he hisses. “Your petty jealousy almost ruined everything for me. If Elias hadn’t been able to have Ford cover it up, you’d be in jail.”
A sudden longing skates through me at the mention of Elizabeth’s name.
Who is she?
Why does her name sound familiar?
“Lin is the one who started it,” Sarah practically whines. “You know that. She’s the one who changed her identity and inserted herself into everything. Which is your fault. If you hadn’t spilled your fucking guts about Elizabeth and Toph Eriksen, she’d never become fixated.”
My father grumbles something under his breath.
“You still need to be more careful,” he warns.
“If Bailey finds out the truth before Kenna comes to train her, it could be a problem. It’s bad enough she’s here now.
Barret was supposed to track her after she left the body shop and snatch her up for holding at Wonders.
We aren’t going to get that chance now. Knight isn’t happy about that.
He wants her to be trained before his son’s upcoming nuptials. ”
“We should never have sold her to the Knight boy,” Sarah sneers. “She should have gone directly to auction.”
“Then we wouldn’t have been able to control Eriksen.” My father’s tone is reprimanding. “We need her as leverage, but now that has come to an end. Eriksen and the Iron Horsemen will be wiped out just like the Vixens, and we won’t have to worry about Bailey any longer.”
Sarah releases a long sigh.
“All right.”
“Good.” Feet shuffle outside the door, and I clutch the items in my hand tighter as tears stream down my face. The sound of the safe opening fills the room.
Please don’t be taking the laptop.
Please don’t be taking the laptop.
The safe beeps, the locking mechanism engaging.
“Let’s go.” My father’s voice is tense. “Make sure you dress Bailey in something eye-catching. Don’t embarrass me because of your dislike for her.”
Sarah makes a disgruntled noise but ultimately agrees.
Three steps, and the sound of the door opening and closing. It feels as if I can finally breathe.
What the hell did I just overhear?
Shaking it off, I focus on the task at hand.
Getting the information from the safe. I slip out of the closet, closing it quietly behind me in case anyone is still in the vicinity.
Quickly, I place the small electronic device on the safe’s interface and press twice to activate it.
There is a small hum, then the interface glitches, and then the locking mechanism disengages.
That was easy.
I turn the knob of the safe and open the heavy door. The inside of the safe is nearly empty, aside from a few accounting ledgers. I push those aside and push on the black velvet wall at the back. It tips downward, revealing exactly what I have come for.
The laptop.
Snatching it up, I place it on the desk and get to work, starting it up and inserting the decryption key.
Okay, that is settled. Now to do some digging of my own. I turn back to the safe and peer inside. There is a small stack of manila envelopes nestled to one side of where the laptop has been.
Pulling them out, I hold them in my shaking hands, afraid of what I will see if I open them.
The truth, no matter how freeing it could be, is a deadly weapon.
Knowing the truth means I have an edge, a weapon of my own, but do I want to know the truth that I now suspect?
Going my whole life believing in one thing, only to have it ripped from beneath me would be a devastating blow.
Can my soul take it?
With trembling fingers, I peel back the front of the first manila envelope. The tears I had been shedding before, while huddled in the closet, begin again in earnest. What I have overheard and begun to suspect is laid bare before me.
There is no escaping reality now that I know the truth.
Two truths, in fact. And one lie.
A lie they will come to regret.