Page 40 of Tempting Little Thief

He pushes me but pacifies my sister.

My girls don’t know this, but I’m “not allowed” to rank below them. When I was forced to walk away from swimming,he was angry, as we all were, but his anger went beyond the situation. He suggested we find a “nonviolent” way to make Delta stop playing piano and to get Bronx to retire her paint brushes, so we girls would remain “equal.”

I guess my Olympic gold medal, literally topping me out in the sport, my perfect GPA, and my role as captain on both the fencing and the skeet shooting team doesn’t mean much to the man who has the Mafia in his back pocket. Without him, they would have a quarter of what they do.

He’s indispensable and he wants that for me, but it’s never enough, not for the man who took over the northern district organizations as a whole at the young age of twenty-one. Took downhis competitors before he turned twenty-two, and after that, men twice his age traveled from across the nation to kneel at his feet. Literally, I’ve seen the photos.

Ignorant people believe I have it easy, but they couldn’t be more wrong, and now, as if I don’t have enough on my plate, my sister’s problem has become mine, but that’s how it goes, right? The strongest cleans up the weakest’s mess.

Not sure how exactly her royal fuckup can be “cleaned,” but I’m sure Rayo Revenaw has a plan.

A plan he won’t include me in.

He can’t risk her being seen at our childhood home in the city, and he can’t stay home to make sure she’s not, even if he does have a dozen guards on-site at all times. It’s bullshit to put those of us at the manor in this situation, but I can’t say I don’t understand his reasoning.

Still …

Fuck her, fuck him, and fuck this.

Chapter 8

Rocklin

When a hunter explains such a sport to her class, she will say something along the lines of “you have to block everything else out” or “a clear mind is key.” She wouldn’t be wrong. That is the easiest way … andthatis precisely why we teach things differently at Greyson Elite Academy.

We focus the chaos in our minds on our problem, envisioning the prime frustrations long before the target is released. We teach them to let the noise take over, to drown in it to the point of desperation, where the only way to find the air they need to survive is to take out the person threatening it.

Mine takes the shape of the person I see in the mirror every morning, her blonde hair a single shade darker than mine.

I mount my shotgun, drawing the stock close to my cheek and blow out a long breath.

“Pull.”

The first target is released. My weight is focused on my front foot, my eyes tracking the target, the muzzle of the gun following. I gently squeeze the trigger so as not to disrupt my shot, and the clay pigeon shatters in the air, as does the second and each one after that.

My body shakes with anger and I lower the gun to my side, staring up at the final smoke spot in the sky.

“Perfect, as always,” is spoken from about ten feet behind me.

My lips press into a tight line and I blow out a harsh breath, annoyed even more than before. “You really shouldn’tapproach me when I have a gun in my hands. I might pull the trigger by accident.”

“And allow a single mistake on your perfect record? Not like-likely,” she stutters over the word when I whip around to face her, small creases forming along her temples.

“Watch yourself,sister, and get the hell out of here before I humiliate you more than you’re humiliating our family.”

I shoulder past her, handing the gun off to Dante, the roundsman who handles the skeet-shooting training zone both behind the manor and on the academy grounds.

“What do you care about family?!” she shouts in anxious urgency. “I’m the one who—”

I spin, step into her, and have her by the throat, shoving her into a pillar before the next word can leave her mouth. My nails dig into her trachea, pinching and drawing small beads of blood to the surface.

Alarm widens her eyes, but she doesn’t even attempt to get free. She’s not as physically weak as she is mentally, but sheisweaker than me, and we both know it.

Everyone knows it.

I don’t feel bigger or better because of it.

I just am.

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