Page 121 of Cruel Games

Staring holes into a file that held the darkest, nastiest secrets you could imagine, about someone who’d been so close to you that you couldn’t imagine them hurting others those ways, twisted you sometimes. But it also gave me athingto focus on. Something to distract me when I didn’t want to be alone with my thoughts and feelings.

Only one person left alive could tell me who hated my father so much, who knew him well enough, intimately enough, to have the kind of evidence the Guild did. Who wouldn’t havethought twice about hiring someone to take him out. Whoever it was, they had to be so close to him that he would trust them implicitly.

The only person I knew who was that close with my father was . . .my mother.

And I hadn’t spoken to her in years.

I couldn’t wait for them to wake up. I had to go now, while I knew I was still brave enough to ask the questions I needed to close this door. If I didn’t walk out that door right now with the intention of confronting my mother for what she knew, I’d never have the gumption or the will to go to her again.

It needed to be now.

I threw Coyote’s leather coat over my shoulder as I lifted Jackal’s bat off the floor and grabbed Dingo’s bike key from the hook on the wall, stealing a part of each of them before stuffing the notebook, the contract file, and the pin and USB drive into the backpack and zipped it shut. And then, I opened the door, snuck out like a thief in the daylight, and rushed down the stairs, not daring to look back until I was safely in the parking garage, kick-starting Dingo’s dirtbike with a roar of protest.

I could have even sworn I heard someone yelling after me as I peeled out of the drive and sped down the street, one destination in mind?—

Home.

FORTY-FIVE

IVY

Lies.That was what came to mind when I pulled into the familiar driveway of the house where I’d grown up. Where I’dbeen groomed as Daddy’s Little Angel. Where I’d lived a lie, never knowing the sinister things that went on behind closed doors.

When I walked out years ago, I swore to my mother that I would never come back. Told her she was dead to me.

Now, I just hoped I didn’t have to kill anyone to get on the grounds and into her presence.

Guards at the front gate had stopped me, then waved me on when I said I was the young mistress Cullough.

I hated that title.

Growing up, it was alwaysyoung missthis andyoung missthat. Never my fucking name. But now, the title helped accomplish what my mere presence couldn’t.

Access.

I was stopped by a second set of guards at the front door, and without preamble, they demanded I disarm myself. I refused, knowing to walk in that house unarmed would be the death of me.

And that’s when all hell broke loose.

The first one charged me, so I took him out with a well-placed swing to the temple. Guard number two was a bit more reluctant to give in, so I gave him a little help and tagged him in the back of the head, feeling very much like a comic book villain come to life.

The third guard got the jump on me, but I was faster, and when I recovered from the hit to the back he’d delivered, I rolled and came up too close for him to swing, then slammed the end of the bat’s handle into the base of his skull.

Three guards out cold, and who knew how many more to go. Things were goingswimminglyso far.

“Stop right there!”

A man holding a pistol in shaky hands stoodin the front entryway, staring me down like he thought he could bluff his way into getting me to back down. I could tell by the way he hesitated, how his hands shook around that gun, that even if he did grow the balls to fire it, the damn shot would go wildly askew.

Something about him looked strangely familiar. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but I’d seen that face before.

And then I heard the voice I never thought I’d hear again.

“Ivy?”

Even after years, after all the things I’d done to change my appearance, the ways I’d altered who I was as a person, my mother could still pick me out like?—

Well, like she’d birthed me.

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