Page 107 of Cruel Games

I never told anyone that I witnessed him being turned to shavings of flesh on the pavement of our driveway. I never told a soul what I witnessed that day. And I never would.

Never.

My hands shook as I lifted the notebook from the metal box it had sat in since my father’s murder, opening it like one would a book they’d forgotten about ages ago.

The handwriting was eerily similar to the page I’d seen in the office, but without a side-by-side comparison or a handwriting specialist, I couldn’t rule out forgery.

Deny.

I turned page after page, recognizing the familiar shorthand from the notes taken on the missing page.

Line after line, row after row, page after page, the names of flowers appeared on each listing, along with dollar amounts, dates, initials, and other notes at the end. Lilly, Dahlia, Peony, Tulip, and more and more, one after the other in that neat, compact scrawl.

And then I reached the end, and nothing was missing. No pages that had seemed to be ripped out, torn away in haste.

I flipped backward through the pages, feeling relief washing over me. I knew my father wasn’t guilty. Knew he hadn’t done the things they claimed he had. If that paper were real, there would be a page ripped out of this notebook, a sheet with remnants left behind in its wake?—

And then, as if hearing my celebration and deciding it was unworthy, a page flipped and caught on the wind, revealing a torn sheet’s shadow behind. Just a thin line of ripped paper, yellowed from age and missing the majority of its substance, lingering against the spine of the inside of the book. Mocking me, mocking my happiness, my relief.

Look again, bitch,it seemed to say, like it knew that it was single-handedly dashing all my hopes and confirming all my deepest fears. Like it was aware of itself, sentient, a ghost of my father and I’s past that had come back to haunt me for sport.

Did it know it was shattering me?

Did it know it was breaking my heart?

I shivered and reached into the box again, pulling the pin from my seventeenth birthday out next.

My mother insisted the thing was evil, a sign of allegiance to something I didn’t understand, but when my father handed me the pretty gem-encrusted infinity symbol, telling me one day I could wear it, too, she’d been silenced by his stern glare and the presence of his guards nearby. At the time, I hadn’t understood why she hated this little thing so much. Why it unnerved her to see her daughter pin it to her chest, wearing it proudly as if to say she was her father’s daughter, showing the world who she adored the most, who shebelonged to.

Now, the malice, the real, true meaning behind it sank in as I remembered his henchmen wearing a similar one on their own jackets. I remembered the day he gave one to Benni, his assistant, and his business partner, Tode. I remembered the glee in their eyes, the greed and unfiltered lust as they leered over the gems and preened when he slipped it on them. Like a king bestowing knighthood on his most trusted men.

Like a leader rewarding his lackeys for their unwavering loyalty.

I clutched the pin so hard in my hand, my fingers tighter with every second, that blood dropped onto the floor from my knuckles. Slipped between my fingers, ran down my palm like a river of betrayal.

I paid it no mind as I lifted my hands and pinned that fucking symbol to my dress strap, hating it and relishing the things it would witness in the same breath. I knew that fromhere on out, anything that happened could only be blamed on the men who’d broken me.

My father, for living a lie, and putting me dead center of it. His partners, his accomplices, for keeping his silence and allowing a man like that to raise a daughter when he was stealing someone else’s and killing them. Drugging them.

Raping them.

And the Neon Dogs, for allowing me to believe a lie for so long, and then ripping the bandage off, only to slap it back on when their lives were on the line, and let me live in denial. For hiding the truth from me when it would have been so easy just to shatter the lies I’d built up around me as the truth.

And for destroying my peace in the first place.

How dare they take my life from me?

Even if that life was a lie.

It wasmylie.

But . . .

I cackled and reached back into the box one last time, removing the final item with a low chuckle.

How ironic that the last thing I’d locked away was now destined to be the beginning of my new future.

With an unhinged cackle, I tucked the notebook into my bag, zipped it up, and strode out of the room, tossing the key to the waiting bank manager.

---