Page 136 of Cruel Lies

Figuratively speaking.

I moved like an avenging angel in the night, clinging to walls so I wouldn’t trip the silent alarm. I slipped effortlessly past a group of guards responding to a strange radio call, around the corner, and down the hall to the end of the wing holding the Blackwood elder’s bedroom.

My step-father. My attempted murderer. The bane of my existence.

And now, future dead man walking.

There were two big, burly guards outside his room, and no doubt at least one more on the other side of the door to eliminate before I could get to him. But as fate would have it, theywere radioed a second before I moved in for the kill. In a minute and a half as I watched from the sidelines, they extracted Blackwood from his room, ushering him down the hall to the study staircase.

Dammit. The study is armed for his protection. Be a whole lot harder to get out of that place unharmed.

I wasn’t a planner like Rowan. I wasn’t a crazed psychopath like Nash. And I certainly wasn’t as graceful as Angel. Fuck, the way he moved in a fight made you think he walked off the set of The Matrix or something. That left the element of surprise, and that most people underestimated me because I was once a spoiled, wealthy socialite, and I was a small-ish woman. Surely I couldn’t cause much damage, right?

Lilly had made sure I could quell that biased stereotype with a quickness.

And now, she’d given me my test—if I wanted to stay with the Blackwood boys, I’d have to become what they were.

Killers.

And it just so happened she knew precisely the guy who deserved to go.

She said it’d be cathartic. That it would be freeing.

She was so right.

I was coated with blood, my hands covered from all the slit throats, my front messed up from dragging bodies around, but all in all, I thought it really added some aesthetic to the overall look.

Lilly sent the boys on a mission to allow me to leave the house without their knowledge. They wouldn’t have let me go if they knew. It was too soon since my injury, they were concerned for my well-being, I planned to kill their father?—

All valid reasons.

But it didn’t matter. I’d collaborated with Lilly and her ex-husband, the cop, to get a backdoor into his computer. And once I was in, the startling amount of dirt I managed to find on him was enough to lock in a hit of my own.

If I hadn’t been planning to kill him for my own mental health, I wanted to kill him for the things I found on his computer pertaining to the boys.

Secrets upon secrets. Proof upon proof that everything he did was with the intent to break them.

When he was dead, I would tell them. I promised myself that much. And if I didn’t survive . . .

Well, they’d find the folder of secrets I left with Lilly to be a bit eye-opening.

Two more guards headed down the hall in the direction of the office, and I grimaced in frustration as they entered the damn room, guns drawn. Of course, there would be something to happen that would derail the tentative vibes I had.

I had planned to kill him in the same bed that he let my mom lie in until the poison he’d fed her did its job.

Now, I’d have to settle for killing him in the same chair he sat in to torment all the children under his thumb.

I snuck around the corner and down the hall, barefoot and silent, hoping my good fortune so far would continue to hold until I was within killing range of him.

I wanted him to see my face as I ended his life. The boys might have their hands tied, but I had no such hangups, and I was tired of this man—any man—running my life. Dictating how I lived. Keeping me in fear.

I’d lived in fear long enough.

I wanted to be free. I wanted to beme.

Not some watered-down version of my former self, straight out of the discount bin, scared to leave the house because someone might be after her still.

That kind of life was no life at all.

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