Page 115 of When Kings Fall

“All clear,” I told Brianna.

We stepped out together and crept along the corridor, following their path.

Voices caught our attention and we peered around the wall, finding the living room.

Kyle was standing there in front of a tacky bright-red pleather wraparound couch with two of the four guys dispersing and walking off through to another room to the right through the double doors I’d seen on the floor plan. It was a game room with video game equipment visible along with a massive flatscreen TV, a pool table, and even a bar. One such method to keep his guys happy. Until he gathered more power like before and then treated them like shit, as he’d done to Kyle.

The remaining two guys took a seat on the adjacent armchairs and Kyle shifted a little, moving to the side.

I realized why in the next moment as it revealed who he was standing in front of, the person who’d been blocked from view by him at first.

Christ.

There he was in the flesh.

Malcolm Lynch.

He was sporting that same dirty-blond buzz cut. Those beady eyes were as creepy as ever. He was dressed in an ill-fitting black pinstripe suit this time, his linebacker form filling it out.

I felt Brianna shudder against me and I turned to her, nuzzling her neck and whispering, “We’ve got this, Wildflower. No more haunting after this, no more shame, no more shackles.” I kissed her cheek.

“Yeah,” she murmured. “Yeah.”

“Time to let it all out.”

She nodded fervently, then nuzzled against me. “I love you.”

“I love you,” I whispered back.

I heard Kyle uttering the spiel we’d worked out, right down to every little detail.

I saw Lynch relax into it as he listened to what he was saying, his eyes lighting with malice as Kyle gave him the fake key to my downfall.

Despite his nerves, he was pulling it off really well.

Until he wasn’t.

Until he fucked up.

His nerves got the best of him and he tried to push it along too fast, the plan to ascertain the location of all six of the Osiris members up here, then contain them while Brianna and I took Lynch out. We only had four so far.

Kyle asked for privacy, gesturing for Lynch to empty the room of his soldiers.

“Hell,” Brianna grunted.

I cursed under my breath as Lynch stilled, then suspicion lit his eyes.

“Why the insistence on us being alone?” He looked Kyle up and down. “If you came here under false pretenses, to harm me or something, you shouldn’t come packing heat. My men frisked you and found zilch.”

He pushed to his feet.

When his soldiers went to rise with him, he signaled them to stay where they were, as he focused on Kyle. “Is that it? Is that why you really came here? You were always far too sympathetic to the kids back then. Now Royce is dead, you thought you’d go for broke, huh? With him gone there’s nobody to keep you hidden and as a ghost, so you figured you might as well set out on a suicide mission and try to take me out before I took you out?”

“And you call me the paranoid one.”

“I call you the weak-ass one, Kyle.”

Kyle held up his hands as Lynch advanced on him. “It’s nothing like you’ve said. Just… chill.”

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