Page 29 of Cruel Lies

"She’s ourtarget,"he spat, walking toward me slowly, almost like he was afraid I’d bite if he got too close. "We’re supposed to kill her and send the client a lock of her hair, not keep her as apet."

"She’s not supposed to bealive,either," Nash drawled, unzipping my bag slowly as I watched. "Oooh, what do we have in here?" His hand dipped in the bag and emerged clutching a pair of panties I’d hastily stuffed in there for later. "Oh, lookie here. See, Iknewyou were a slut. Only whores wear panties likethese."

That stung more than it should have, and I couldn’t stop myself from wincing as he tossed them at Angel, who’d rounded the island in the kitchen and was only feet away now. He snatched them out of the air and frowned at the back of Nash’s head, smacking him for good measure.

"You don’t bother to clean up anything out here, so take your wet-dog-looking ass to the shower and clean the fuck up before you make this whole place a mess."

Nash grumbled at Angel’s demand but did as he was told, slinking off with a little smirk for his younger brother.

When the door shut behind him, it sucked a lot of the fightout of me, and I turned to Angel, who’d always been the softest of the brothers, hoping for a kinder ear.

I should have known these weren’t the same Blackwood boys I’d grown up with.

"Angel?" I tried, looking up at his stern visage. Waiting for the cracks to show so I could weasel my way inside that stern outer cage he obviously erected to keep feelings and emotions at bay.

"Don’t give me those puppy eyes. I’m not your savior here. My temper’s worse than his." He jerked his thumb toward the room where Nash had disappeared. "And had he not brought you to us, I was planning to finish the job myself tomorrow night."

Hearing that Angel had plans to off me on his own made my heart sink to the floor. Somehow, in seven years, I’d learned nothing. My brain had glossed over the fact that these boys had killed me—or tried to—that night on the fucking bridge. They’d thrown me in the cold waters of the Dread and assumed the crocs would eat me, or that I’d drown. They walked away without looking back.

The thought that these fuckers would have some sort of remorse now was laughable.

How fucked up was I that I really believed I could convince them to let me go? And they were just the messengers, the people hired to finish the job. They didn’t want me dead; someone else did. And though I knew who that someone was, I needed someone to keep me safe.

I needed somewhere to hide that nobody would dare to step foot uninvited.

A building full of murderers and psychos was the perfect hiding spot.

Now I just had to convince them not to kill me.

I glanced around the rooms, noticing a door cracked just far enough to allow light into the pit of darkness beyond.

Angel must have noticed my train of thought, because he snapped his fingers and dragged my attention right back to him.

"You’re safe for the time being, but the second he wakes up, we’re having a little talk. We might not be hurting for money, but a job is a job, and as far as I’m concerned, you died seven years ago. So don’t go looking for mercy from us."

The wool lifted from my eyes, and I started to see these men for what they were—killers. Ruthless criminals who had been given a job—to take me out. I wondered if they knew who put the target on my back this time.

I wondered if they even cared.

TWELVE

ROWAN

I woketo the sounds of arguing in the living room, not an uncommon thing in this hellhole, but stillirritating. Angel sounded irate, and Nash?—

Wait. Nash was back?

Collecting my scattered thoughts was difficult, but I managed it somehow. The glass of water and the pills on the nightstand disappeared in a heartbeat as I let myself indulge in Angel’s brand of concern and care, and then I was up, steadier than before but still not as agile on my feet as usual. My whole body stopped in the doorway as I opened my mouth to yell, frozen in place by the presence of a third person in the room.

Her.

"Harper?" I murmured blearily, blinking a few times to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating. "How?"

Angel threw his hands in the air and stormed in my direction as Harper’s eyes lifted to meet mine. "Oh, you know, Nash somehow managed to fuck up stalking someone, and he says she made a break to run, so he thought it was smart to bring herhere.And what’s worse, the whole place probably knows about her by now because Jackal saw him come in with her, too."

"And we all know Jackal loves to run that cocksucker of his," Nash piped up from the couch, sitting there in nothing but a fucking towel in front of our step-sister,for fuck’s sake.

"Nash, put some fucking clothes on, you animal," I growled, holding onto my head as it tried to spin a little on me. The dizziness lingered, evidence of my earlier drunkenness, but the rest of the symptoms were mostly faded now. I could think clearly. I just maybe wasn’t so good on my feet yet.

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