Page 58 of For the Night

Reese shrugged and shook his head. “Doesn’t sound like us.”

Ash agreed. “You’re makin’ shit up. Rule number one, don’t underestimate your enemy.”

Macklin grinned. “I’m glad you said that, Sir. Welcome to the stage, Kit and Lane.”

I covered my mouth with my hand and struggled to stand still. The two guys entered the club, wheeling in a very old TV.

“Part of going down memory lane is obviously to go through old home movies,” Macklin said. “Took me a while to find this in one of the supply closets, but I just had to track down one that still took DVDs.”

Yeah, talk about ancient.

“I bet he’s never heard of VHS,” Greer muttered.

Lane plugged in the TV, and they had everything cued up.

“I’ll admit, I’ve been saving this particular video,” Macklin said. “After your grand speech, I thought, this will come in handy one day. I forgot about it, life went on, until one day just a couple months ago—you went on another brat rant, Reese.”

River turned to his brother. “You can just never shut up, can you?”

Snickers and chuckles traveled through the crowd once the video started playing. Right then and there, with Ash and Reese standing on the deck outside, going on and on about how clueless brats were.

“Am I right or what?” Reese boomed out in the video. “I swear, I’ll streak naked through DC if a brat ever outsmarts me.”

“Count me in!” Ash held up a beer bottle. “Ain’t never gonna happen!”

And every damn Sadist in the video cheered. Colt, Greer, KC, Kingsley… Lucian chuckled in the background, and even River. River didn’t say anything, but you could tell he was in agreement with the other Sadists. They goaded the brats around them, though I could only recognize a few of them. Macklin and Tate were there, as were Ivy and Gretchen. Scowling, shaking their heads…

“Get to the fuckin’ point,” Reese ordered impatiently. “You haven’t outsmarted us.”

“Haven’t we?” Macklin didn’t miss a beat. “Tate?”

“Right away,” Tate said. He had the audio cued up on Macklin’s phone.

“The rest of you can be the judges,” Macklin told everyone. His humor faded, and a hint of his dominance rose to the surface. “But in my eyes, it looks like we successfully fucked with their heads. For weeks.”

What followed was sheer magic. All the recordings we’d saved up. All of us. Tate, Macklin, Kit, Noa, Corey, Lane, Ivy, me… We’d bided our time, and we’d caught the Sadists unaware. At home, at a party, at events, during the cruise—one of us had been ready to capture their speculations, and we’d edited all the snippets to sort of overlap.

“…and do you have anything else? It’s gonna happen soon.”

“No idea. I don’t even know if Tate is involved.”

“What do we have so far? Who’s in on it?”

“…does anyone know…”

“…any chance have good news to share on the brat prank?”

“Those li’l shits can be crafty sometimes. Kit’s upped his game lately…”

“…possibly Tate. We’re not sure about him.”

“Oh, Ivy’s definitely involved.”

“What the fuck are they up to? I can’t figure it out.”

“…we usually have to suffer the most…”

“This is drivin’ me batshit!”

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