Page 131 of Riordan's Revenge

Struan tossed down the last clothing item. “This is good, but we can do better. My family and I burned every stick of furniture that our father used, but that was for our peace of mind because he was already in the ground. We used the evidence we’dgathered on him to right a few wrongs. Is this helping you, Riot? What else do ye want?”

I shrugged. “That event tomorrow is a family and community seminar. A formal thing for politicians and business leaders. I’ll walk up on stage while he’s speaking and introduce myself as the son he never acknowledged.”

“To what end? Do ye want him to give a fuck about ye?”

I considered it. “No. I want him brought down and disgraced. For all the things he’s done, but more for the fact he’s a bad person.”

“How about killing him?”

My breathing quickened. “I considered it, but I’m not bloodthirsty like your sister.”

He clucked his tongue. “She’ll be happy tonight once she and Shade have taken down the business partner.”

I swore softly. “I knew she’d be out with Shade but I didn’t ask why.”

Nor had she messaged me.

The knowledge tightened my stomach into a ball.

It was unlike Cassie to go long without needing to be in contact with me. I’d got used to her Velcro girlfriend act and had felt just as desperate myself. I needed her, too. At multiple points throughout the evening, I’d expected to see her pretty little face peering through a window, or for her to spring at me from a shadow. To have no contact at all worried me.

Struan prowled deeper into the mayor’s walk-in wardrobe. “I’m just going to say this. Your revenge isn’t enough. He’s scum. He shouldn’t be allowed to breathe for what he did to your sister. I’d end anyone who hurt mine. Think bigger. I don’t want ye to regret not taking the right action when ye had the chance.”

“What I’d really like is to understand the dodgy deals he’s putting in place and expose them. That would be killer. Maybeeven send him to prison. But I don’t know shit about financial dealings.”

He gave me a long-suffering look, his eyes in a slash of light from his torch. “As we speak, your girlfriend is hunting down the very person who can be persuaded to give up information. Stop being an island and ask her to help.”

My sister had accused me of the same thing, and yet I’d already confided more in Cassie than any other person alive. She’d do it in a heartbeat, but it meant tying her into my crimes, again, and I’d already put her at risk with the stolen painting. Then again, she was the one doing kidnap and murder tonight. I nearly laughed at the difference in scale.

Slowly, I nodded. “I will.”

“Good man. Do it now or else she might have got stab-happy already.”

I took out my phone, wincing at the lack of a message from her, but texted the request, taking pains to be careful with my words.

No reply immediately came.

Struan rifled through the wardrobe. “If we think he’s up to no good, maybe there’s something here that can help, too.”

He shone his torch into a filing cabinet, hidden in the back. I stared at it then approached and tugged on the top drawer. It was locked, but a sharp pull broke the mechanism.

Inside were stacks of paper. I leafed through then spotted something at the back. Letters. A thing of the past, because who sent handwritten letters anymore? They had to be old. I almost ignored them, but the stack slid.

The third in the pile stopped my breathing.

It was an ivory-coloured envelope, stamped and franked, and addressed to the mayor. But it was the handwriting that pulled me up short. My mother’s.

I knew it instantly. She used to leave me messages to read before school. Her shiftwork at the hospital meant she either worked nights or was gone before my sister and I woke, so every day, little love messages or enthusiastic go-get-them notes waited on the breakfast table to remind us that she cared.

I’d forgotten she used to do that, but I couldn’t be more certain it was in her hand. Pain rebounded inside me. I stuffed the letter into my back pocket.

From downstairs, a door creaked open.

I stilled. Struan did, too. From his pocket, he extracted his phone and unlocked it, then read something on his screen. My partner in crime gave a low chuckle.

“Piers Roache. His hunters aren’t far behind. Shade gives a one-minute ETA.”

My heart pounded.

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