Page 164 of Lock Up the Darkness

“They weren’t false.”

“You pretended to be Revenant.”

“Because he was your only point of contact. Given who my father is, you wouldn’t have exactly been comfortable if I’d reached out as myself. But the reason for reaching out wasn’t false. I know you’d been working with him to infiltrate the dollhouses operation, that you brought down ten of them and continued right up until the both of you had to disappear.”

“And you think you can take up that mantle?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“To bring down the Infidels, of course.”

She scoffed. “Revenant was former black ops, highly-skilled and incredibly well-trained. Years of experience and training made him the incredible operative he was. You appear to be well-intentioned, but that won’t be nearly enough.”

“Yet, you’ve managed to do very well. The infiltration, even escaping Carson Monroe, something that’s no small feat.”

“I wasn’t just anybody.”

“Not just a doll, you mean?”

She flinched. “If you want to leave here unharmed, don’t refer to me in that way again. And that’s what gave you away before I saw you. Calling me Amethyst. He knew not to do that, how despicable it was to me to me referred to by that awful name.”

“You’re skillfully skirting the question, Olivia,” a voice rang out and we both spun to see Asher leaning against the doorframe of the way I’d come in. “Nicely done. Kill might let it slide to appease you, but I won’t.” He pushed off the door and strode into the room and purposely stepped into the light.

“Jesus,” she choked. “It’s been a long time, Asher.”

“Not long enough for you, I suspect.”

She looked around him. “Where’s the other one?”

“Other what?” I asked.

“The other son? Jonah, isn’t it? The three sons of the Head Infidels. You’re in this together, yes? The leaders of the Hexwood faction now looking to challenge the fathers?”

“Thanks to recent insight we were able to obtain, that’s now become possible,” Asher told her. “And the intel we know you possess is a gamechanger where that’s concerned.”

“You can’t take up Revenant’s mantle. It’s too dangerous.”

“I’m the son of Carson Monroe. You think I haven’t lived and breathed that since the day I was wrenched into his fucked-up world? If you don’t assist us, I promise you I’ll use everything at my disposal to hunt Revenant down myself and obtain it that way. I won’t stop, I won’t tire, and I’ll overturn every single obstacle he throws in my path. The problem is, with that approach, he’ll be exposed. And then it will become dangerous for him.”

Asher let that darkness that he usually tampered down show in full force for her. He let her see the depths of his depravity, that merciless part of him that would run right over everything and everyone to achieve what he wanted.

And he was doing a really great job of hiding the fact that there was one exception to that now. He did have a limit. And that was Aurora. I knew better than to believe that he’d actually follow through with the threat he’d just made to out Revenant. He’d track him down, sure, but he’d do it discreetly. He wouldn’t endanger Aurora’s dad, knowing what he meant to her. And what Aurora now meant to Asher.

Olivia blew out a breath and sat back down on the couch.

“I wasn’t just a random woman who got caught up in their dollhouse operation, who was taken off the streets and kidnapped into that sickening situation. Of course, that’s what they thought, what I made them think, that I was a nobody.”

Asher frowned and folded his arms across his chest. “You were a plant?”

She nodded. “I met Revenant years ago when he was still black ops. We served together, we ran together, and at one point, we were together in a personal sense too. He came across the dollhouse network when he was investigating what really happened to his ex-wife. He wasn’t in a position to take it on at the time. He had a grieving daughter at home who needed him. So I took it on. Without telling him. He wouldn’t have allowed it because of the extreme danger that it posed. When I was taken as a doll, my previous existence was nullified by your father. I effectively disappeared from the world and it took Revenant a while to realize I wasn’t just on assignment somewhere working deep cover. That it was more than that. But then that client came to him and he made the connection to me. We started working together. I’d amassed a wealth of intel and he was on the outside, able to use it to begin dismantling the operations.”

“So, that’s why they weren’t able to break you?” I asked. “You’ve had training to withstand psychological attacks?”

“Something like that.”

“Do you know where he is?” Asher asked.

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