Page 1 of Cruel Games

PROLOGUE

IVY

Seven Years Ago

“Dad?”I peered around the door to the study, confusion tainting my sleep-slurred speech. “What’s going on?”

Our home was equipped with a top-of-the-line alarm system, which was currently going off likesomeone had tripped the damn thing. There was no telling what was going on–maybe one of the hired help accidentally tripped it. Maybe it was a malfunction. Maybe my mother was drunk and put in the wrong code–

My father turned his head and smiled gently at me, but something in his eyes made me hesitate. Something was wrong, but I wasn’t sure what.

Whatever it was, it had to be serious. Nothing shook my father. Nothing.

Never.

But as he lifted his hand and motioned me to his side, I watched the strange glint in his eyes, and suddenly, I was very much awake.

“Dad?” I asked again, leaning into his embrace as he hugged me with one arm and reached into the locked drawer of his desk with the other. “What’s wrong?”

“You shouldn’t be here right now, Ivy–”

His gaze flicked to the door, ears twitching as he waited for something to break the silence beyond his field of vision. I almost didn’t recognize the man looking off into the distance, and for a moment, I was convinced I was still dreaming up in my room. Dragging a hand down my face, I blinked a few times, and the same gentle, if now slightly alert father I knew and loved was back, like he’d never left.

“Get out of here?—”

The sound of shattering glass in the foyer echoed down the pitch-black hallway, and suddenly, whatever move I’d been about to make was cut off at the knees as my father puthis hand on my head and shoved me beneath his desk. When I protested, he held his finger to his lips and shook his head.

“Stay there and stay quiet. Don’t come out for anything, you hear me?”

I knew better than to disobey my father. But still, I nodded and motioned that I was zipping my lips as I watched the most passive, loveable man I’d ever known pull a pistol from his desk drawer and slide the top back, checking to make sure it was loaded.

The door to his study was still cracked from when I’d come in, but the splintering sound as it slammed into the wall, kicked open with a single booted foot, would haunt me forever. It was the first sound in what would become a recurring nightmare for me, though I didn’t know it, didn’t realize yet. I was shaking now, all the exhaustion chased from my bones as pure terror and adrenaline roared in my ears. Blood pounded through my veins as I wrapped my hand around the winding wires of the computer and tugged them to the side, freeing just enough space in a hole in the back of his desk to peer out at the room. And suddenly, one thing became very clear, even to my panicked mind.

This wasn’t a normal home invasion.

Three men in bright neon Halloween masks strolled through the door, as if this were their home and we were the intruders. Baseball bats were slung over their shoulders.

All three wore permanent mocking smiles on their masked faces.

And even though I couldn’t see their eyes, I knew they were dangerous.

Deadly.

And about to end life as I knew it right before me.

The one with the red mask moved first, his greasy black hair peeking out from around the edges as he pointed his bat at my father, eyeing the gun with little concern. “Well, well, looks like Dannyboy came prepared.” he cocked his head like a dog and chuckled like some unhinged B-movie villain. “You gonna use thatto end your own life, Danny? Cause I hate to break it to you, but bullets don’t do much to me anymore.” He tapped a scar on his arm, another on his bare chest, then a third on his shoulder. “Shooting me doesn’t seem to keep this dog down. So if I were you, I’d turn that gun on myself, Dan, and make it quick.”

The one to his left stepped up next, curly brown hair bouncing as his hood fell from the top of his head. The blue of his mask set him apart, marked him as unique but still one of the crew. His moves felt softer, less edgy, no less dangerous, but perhaps compassionate in their own way.

“You know why we’re here, Dan. Someone put a target on your back, and we’re just the bastards they’re paying to get the job done.”

My father straightened his spine and fired a warning shot in their direction–but Daddyneverfired guns. Until now, I’d never even seen himholdone. He was abusinessman, not akiller.

The bullet missed its intended target by a mile, and I witnessed the pedestal I’d always put my father on begin to crack at the base. To me, he’d always been this unshakeable guy, a pillar of the community and the strongest man I’d known.

Now, he shook in his slippers, wrapped in a bathrobe and some fancy silk pajamas like the rich man he was, the gun hanging limply as the third man in line stepped up and kicked it from his hand.

Don’t just give up,I wanted to tell him, but he made me promise not to say a word. I knew now that he knew these men were coming for him. He’d always known. That was why the security had been doubled lately. Why he always sent me to school with a bodyguard. Why I wasn’t allowed out at night anymore.

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