Page 79 of Vicious Little Games

“I want you two to figure out which of our house employees gave Lochlan details about my family. Somehow, he knew too much. I think he was provided photos and information. After your mothers’ deaths, I’ve kept your birth certificates off the public records thanks to an inside source in the courthouse. Things may have worked out with Lochlan and Sophie, but that doesn’t mean that I want to keep the rat working here or let them off scot-free if they’ve already quit and fled. My IT team hasn’t found any big deposits in any current or former employee accounts, so Lochlan probably paid in cash. It had to have been someone who came into the penthouse, not just a person who worked in the casino.”

“So, you want us to find the person responsible for running their mouth and make an example out of them?” I ask for clarification.

“Exactly.”

Going over to the table and two chairs on the far side of his office, he slaps his palm down on a laptop sitting next to two legal pads and a box of pens. “We don’t really have an HR department here, but you can find the employee histories on here, who currently works in the casino, their position, home address, et cetera. You can also find previous employees who could’ve left in the past few months after passing on information. Since there’s a high turnover rate, it’s not a short list.”

“You mean because you’re so picky and fire people for blinking wrong?” Cass teases her father with a grin.

“I pay them well so I can fire them for blinking wrong if I want. Now, get to work. I need a name by the end of the day.”

“Today?” Cass repeats.

“It’s a priority, so yes, today,” he responds. “Find them, scare them. Since no one was harmed, I’ll let them live this time, but we can’t let them get away with it. Understood?”

“Understood,” I agree.

Dante doesn’t want the person killed or seriously injured, but he wants us to make them suffer in some way. Since they could’ve been giving information to someone shady who wanted to harm the girls, I am more than happy to help.

When Dante walks out of his office, Cass mutters to me, “If it were so damn urgent, why did he wait this long to search for them?”

“He’s been busy with planning the wedding and then the drone attack and Flynn’s rampage against Lochlan.”

“I think he just forgot,” Cass says with a smirk. “My old man is slipping.”

“Dante isn’t slipping. He probably has been trying to get Lochlan to give up the name, but he refused to tell him his source.”

“Maybe,” she agrees. Sighing with her hands on her hips, she says, “There’s only one laptop with the information on it, so how do you want to do this?”

“Let’s pull up the employment history to narrow down who had penthouse access during the six months or so before the wedding, then weed people out from there.”

“Weed them out how? He just said there were no big deposits to their bank accounts. They could be sitting on the cash.”

“Nah, people who make what house staff make would spend some of it,” I assure her as I take a seat and open the device. “We just have to find out who needed the money or bought themselves an extravagant gift.”

“And how will we do that if purchases won’t show up in their bank account because they used cash?”

Glancing up at her, I grin. “Easy. We’ll use social media.”

“Social media?” she repeats as she slides a chair over to sit next to me. “You think some selfies will out our rat?”

It’s stupid how much I enjoy the way she says “our” like we’re working together as a team. I know we’re not, that we’re competitors, but most of the time it feels like we’re more partners than enemies.

“Yes, I think we’ll find our rat based on the photos they posted to social media. Which is why I don’t fucking use it. If a normal person makes a big purchase, or is going through hard times, then they would share that shit online, complain, or brag to their friends. That’s how we’re going to find our rat by the end of the day.”

“Going through a bunch of people’s socials is going to take forever. There’s no way we can figure out the culprit in a single day.”

“Good thing there are two of us. We can split up the list and use our phones to search online.”

“Fine. And if I find the rat before you?” she asks.

“Then you win.”

“Even though this was all your idea?”

I shrug. “I didn’t say it was guaranteed to work.”

“Fine,” she huffs, pulling out her phone from her slacks. “Let’s start by narrowing the list down to the time period and then going through each name.”

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