Page 25 of To Catch A Rook

I wanted to trust Aaron now, like I could when we were children. Granted, trusting him would mean I wasn’t using my underground sources to investigate him and just take him at his word, but I was finding it hard to do that.

I’d had to make a choice, many years ago, about who I would stand for. I had risked the wrath of Camden and chose myself. Aaron pretended to be in control of his empire, but he was a pretty mouthpiece for his parents. This merger was meant to get him out from under the Vs influence, and they were clinging to him like vicious little spider monkeys. It was time for his choice.

Regardless, I would need to make tactical moves against Alvarez, and quickly. First, I would need to know which player mattered more—Marco, Daniel, or Diego. We were all pawns in our parents’ pockets, and it would shock me if Alejandro didn’t have his sons running the day-to-day dirt. Drugs and weapons were someone else’s problem—let Kellan take on those battles. I could only give myself to the girls.

It wouldn’t take long before the pervasive claws of darkness overtook everything in its path, and I’d sold my soul one too many times to have another power-hungry asshole bulldoze my sanctuary of safety.

Blackbird, completely unaware of my inner turmoil, continued.

“A woman has been visiting your father for a few weeks now—every Sunday evening. He met her online. His profile states that he has agoraphobia. I’ll spare you from the details of what they’ve been up to.”

The snort escaped before I could stop it. Trust Camden Lane to pretend to have a debilitating fear of leaving his home to get the sympathy card and his dick wet, rather than owning up to being under house arrest for the rest of his life. You couldn’t make this shit up.

“But you want to hear the juiciest part?”

I rolled my eyes to the ceiling. “Yes. Out with it.”

“Okay, so Lauchlan O’Donnell.” She paused dramatically, which meant it truly was a juicy piece of information. “Lauchlan O’Donnell is an enigma. He has a very legitimate online profile, but it's all fake. Fake phone records, fake birth certificate. The Lauchlan you know doesn’t exist.

“But, using facial recognition software, there is an Irish man matching eighty percent of the mystery man’s facial features, which suggests a family member. His name is Liam Donovan. The obituary was in the Connacht Tribune last May.

“What’s interesting is that Liam was featured in a European expose after his death. Apparently, he was one of the most successful, uncaptured con artists of his time. And he had an unnamed heir—a son in his late-twenties. Sound familiar?”

Huh. So Lucky O’Donnell—definitely not his real name—came from a family of Irish con artists, had just moved to America, and had suddenly taken an interest in me, one of the wealthiest women in the country.

How coincidental.

Was I naturally suspicious of anyone trying to get into my skirt? Undeniably, it wasn’t the first time I had put my hacker on a digital recon mission to check out my men of the hour, and it wouldn’t be the last—but with my security, training, and my need for a great orgasm, it wasn’t something I spent much mental energy on.

Being rich and successful made me a target. For overenthusiastic affection, or vitriol. It just depended on the day and the flavor of the week. This news was surprising, surely, but not shocking.

Lucky intrigued me in a way most men didn’t. You could read most people’s motivations within the first five minutes of meeting them. For men in my circles, their readings were very predictable: power, wealth, dominance, control. Usually, a combination of the four. Lucky was evidently playing me, but I had read none of those motivations in his words and actions.

What was his end goal?

Anger was probably the appropriate emotion to be feeling, but the fluttering tingle of excitement in my belly overrode any sense of indignance. It had been a while since I’d played a proper game of chance.

If Lucky thought I was his prey, he was sorely mistaken. It was time for the hunter to become the hunted.

I caught the time on my monitor—Marty would be here any minute with our afternoon schedule.

“Great work, Blackbird. I’ll send your next batch of tasks at the first of the week.”

“Thanks, boss.” She smirked her apple cheeks and the blue screen went black.

I stood, smoothed my skirt, and locked up my fortress. With an extra bounce in my step, I walked down the hallway to brew a fresh cortado.

I loved games. And Lucky was about to learn just how much.

“Absolutely not.”

I couldn’t mask the sneer of disgust as I stared through my father to the ornate wooden cabinets behind him; we were locked in a barely civil standoff in the confines of his pretentiously luxurious office. The warmth of rich burgundy curtains and thick oriental rugs could do nothing to temper the ice in my veins.

Father’s frown at my outright disagreement betrayed the simmering rage beneath his skin; the wrath that boiled his blood and blistered his soul was never far from the surface. He was a tempestuous, tortured beast, but Mother—Motherbasked in her brutality with a well-tailored cloak of indifference.

They were a dangerous pair and had raised me to be the same. I held one small part of me away from their greedy claws; my heart was still intact, save for the many sins that marked it. Battered, but not broken. But bitter—so very bitter.

The depths they were willing to dig for power was of no surprise; from their Colombian roots to their American dreams, Veronica and Vicente had no qualms crushing their competition and burying whichever bodies got in their way.

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