Page 375 of Hell Hath No Fury
It fucking terrified me.
I’d made my entire existence for the last twelve months about finding my mother’s murderer. What happened when I had the answers? When the quest was finished, what did the hero do in the aftermath?
Most of them didn’t live long enough for a happily-ever-after, a little voice whispered at the back of my mind. Most of them died to see their plan play out.
Was I willing to gamble with my life just to find out the truth about what happened last Christmas? Nothing could bring Crystal back. I knew that. I was faced with that reality every fucking day when I woke up alone in a colossal home filled with expensive things that was so much worse than the cramped bungalow I’d shared with Mum.
Suddenly, a POS system was placed in front of me.
When I looked up, both the bartenders were on other sides of the bar.
I opened my fist to reveal the note the orange-haired server had passed me. Another receipt, this one with that same swan design and a four-digit number.
7926.
SWAN.
I entered the sequence into the machine and pressed enter.
The letters flashed across the small green lit screen.
Chills trickled like ice down my spine.
There was a long delay. I pressed the enter button in confirmation, my eyes darting around the club from my seat, trying to figure out which angle they might be watching me from.
Before I could curb the impulse, I typed out a response onto the keypad.
“She’s always liked games,” a low voice spoke behind me. “Finds ’em equalizin’. There’s a winner and a loser.”
I swiveled on my stool to see a tall, built guy covered in tattoos with an open, grinning face under a flop of brown hair. There was a black swan inked onto the bare skin of his shoulder.
When I opened my mouth to question him––0Bs1d14n Sw4n was a woman?––his grin widened a split second before he cocked a powerful arm back and swung it straight at my face. The meaty fist impacted with my chin, knocking me back. I scrambled to right myself against the slick bar top, but before I could brace, he was back, angling an elbow down on my temple.
And I was out.
CHAPTER THREE
Finnegan
I blinked groggily, but the sight remained.
The arcade was lit only by the flashing, luminous lights from the various games stacked along the walls of the room. There was a vague Christmas theme, an enormous plastic Santa who looked vaguely Satanic looming in the corner closest to me that emitted a mechanical, fairly ominousho ho hoevery twenty seconds.
It took a moment for the fog to clear from my brain, my temple and chin pounding from the bruiser who’d attacked me at Club7 and, apparently, dragged me to an abandoned arcade.
When I tried to stir my stiff body, I found I couldn’t move.
My elbows, chest, and ankles were secured to the uncomfortable gaming chair I sat in before the dark screen of an old arcade machine.
“What the fuck?” I whispered, the words drowned from Santa’s chortle and the tinkle of Christmas music from some old speakers.
