Page 3 of Twisted Empire

The blindfold gradually loosened and slid upward on my face. In a few minutes, I’d lifted it right off my eyes.

I squinted around me in the dark space. I couldn’t see a whole lot more than before, but a slit of light showed beneath the door.

I’d been right about it being a walk-in closet. Shirts and pants and dresses hung on hangers on three walls around me. I’d been rubbing my face on the doorframe. Shoes stood in rows beneath the hanging clothes with more on the shelves overhead.

I hadn’t heard Logan’s mom lock the door, and it’d be pretty unusual for a closet to have a lock on it anyway. But that didn’t mean that bursting out into the apartment was a good idea. Her footsteps filtered through the door, moving from one room to another. She was still out there, and who knew who else was with her.

And the gun. That was the biggest problem. I had to play this smart, not run out and get myself into an even worse predicament.

Swiveling around again, I leaned toward the door. If she walked right out of the place, I wanted to know. And it’d be good to figure out if anyone else was in the apartment with her, and if so, how many people there were.

A sudden, heavy thump from somewhere ahead and to my right made my nerves jump. That had sounded like an outer door. Had she left me completely alone already?

Before more than a tiny flicker of hope could light in my chest, a male voice boomed through the space, diffusing it. “What are you doing, Yvonne?”

There was no mistaking the irritation in the man’s tone. Footsteps hustled over to him, and Logan’s mom—Yvonne, I’d forgotten that was her first name—answered in a rush.

“I was just fixing our little problem, darling. We have leverage now—Logan won’t dig any deeper while he’s worried about the girl.”

The man snorted. “You’re creating a new problem, more like it.”

Her voice dropped too low for me to make out whatever she said next. She didn’t want me overhearing their conversation.

What I’d already heard had only bewildered me more. Who was she callingdarlingand why did either of them care what Logan had been digging into?

As the man responded in a similarly low voice, I pressed my ear right against the gap by the doorframe. The solid edge bit into my skin, but I could just piece together most of the words when I focused all my attention on them.

“—know my son. It will work.” That was Yvonne.

“I can’t afford to have a bunch of damn kids messing up my business,” the man muttered in return. “I don’t care if one of those kids is yours. There are consequences, and you know that.”

“They don’t have any idea what they’re really getting into.”

“They should by now. Digging into buried history, sticking their noses where they don’t belong—taking up my time when I’ve got more important things I should be dealing with. I can handle them once and for all, and this will be over.”

Yvonne’s next response had an almost frantic breathiness to it. “Darling, no. This is enough. I’ve watched Logan, and I’m positive he won’t risk the Silver girl’s life over his silly hobby. And she can’t do any more harm while we’ve got her either.”

My stomach sank as the pieces clicked together in my head. The only person’s business we’d been digging into was the crime lord who’d framed Beckett, the one who was a fellow member of the powerful underground organization Beckett called the Devil’s Dozen.

Doom’s Seed.

Could that really behimout there—the man whose worst crimes we’d gradually been uncovering? The one whose men had tried to massacre Beckett’s people just this afternoon?

My stomach knotted. I couldn’t think of any other explanation. Who else would have been tracking us so closely and known enough about the situation to realize we’d be at that building today?

And Logan’s mother was calling him “darling.” Was shedatinghim—the man who’d orchestrated my dad’s murder?

How the hell would they even have met?

The man I was increasingly sure was Doom’s Seed let out a growl of frustration. “We should kill her and all the others and wash our hands of it. Simple and straight to the point.”

A few footsteps rapped toward the closet, and my heart lurched. Yvonne hustled after him.

“No,” she said. “You promised—you said once I left him behind, we could leave him alone to live his life.”

“Not when the way he’s living his life is fucking up my plans. You knew how my world worked when you signed up for this. He’s already gotten the second chance you bought for him—it’s not my fault he’s throwing it away with this stupid quest.”

I froze, my pulse skipping a beat.The second chance you bought for him.

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