Page 101 of Reign By Wrath

I escaped into a hallway, Everleigh hot on my heels. I did hear something behind me.

“Hey, bitches,” Saylor belted through the speakers all over the house. “You’re gonna want to go with the confess option because I’ll tell you right now, I’ll be using Sinclair’s services to make each and every one of you ungrateful bastards pay for turning your backs on me. Did you really think you could be free of the Burkhardts? What kind of dumbasses are you?”

I tuned Saylor out. She was gearing up for a long rant.

I didn’t know where I was going. Saylor gave me a rough layout of the mansion, but all that went out the window when surrounded by more rooms, floors, and living areas than a family of three needed.

“Don’t run away, Sinclair! I want to hear all about how you bawled and snotted your heart out when Daddy died in your lap!”

I zipped around a corner, taking a staircase up two steps at a time.

“I heard bachtraxin poison shreds your lungs, squeezing the air and life out of you. Did he beg!”

A hurricane of wild eyes, messy hair, and wicked delight haunted my heels. She was gaining on me—fast.

“Did his eyes bulge as he desperately clawed his throat, begging for you to save him?”

“You’re insane! You evil, soulless monster!”

“I’m soulless?” She swiped at my back, claws snagging my pajama bottoms. “You just advertised your murder-for-hire club to the whole town.”

Ripping free, I lit on an open door at the end of the hall.

“What... were you playing... at?” she huffed. A lifetime of rich-girl pampering didn’t prepare her for this hundred-yard dash, though she was keeping up scarily fine. “I’ve got Wolfgang in my pocket... idiot. I’ll have that website shut down... in an hour!”

“I have a better idea!”

I darted inside and found myself standing in a guest bedroom if the lack of personal touches was anything to go by. A modest queen-size bed took up the middle of the room, the end side facing the balcony. I darted around it, putting that flimsy excuse for a barrier behind us.

“I’ve got an offer for you, Everleigh, and it’s the same one I’ve got for everyone else. Confess.”

Everleigh lunged over the headboard. Whipping around, I snatched a lamp off the nightstand and lobbed it at her head.

“Ahh!” It shattered on her skull, dropping her like the flat-back evil skank she was.

Everleigh moaned and rolled on the bed, clutching her forehead.

“As... I was saying,” I huffed. “You and I both know it doesn’t matter if Wolf shuts down the site. A hundred more will go up in their place. It also doesn’t matter if you kill me. I’ve got my father’s laptop. I know every Rogue in the world, and I told them all what you’ve done.”

Rage bled into her eyes as fierce as the blood dripping through her fingers.

“They’ll all come after you one after the other until you’re sleeping under spotlights because you’re terrified of your shadow.” I stepped back, climbing a raised platform that housed the sitting area. “Or you can confess what you’ve done. And I mean all of it. Tell the police that you framed my guys. Force Wolf to give up Victor.

“Do all of that, and we close the chapter on the sad, sorry period where we ever knew each other. You go your way and I’ll go mine. Neither of us will chase revenge.”

She laughed. “What bullshit are you spouting, Sinclair? I’m not confessing anything to anyone. Maybe those brainless morons downstairs believe an eighteen-year-old girl took over the largest criminal organization in the world, but I’m not that stupid. The second you open your mouth and tell people like Leon Dumont that they have to bow to you, they’ll stick a gun in it.

“Besides, even if it is true,” she said, grinning. “I can afford bodyguards. I’ll be just fine.”

If she thought that’d upset me, she was wrong. I smiled back.

“Is that your final answer?” I said softly. “Before you reply, I’d like to give you one last chance to do the right thing—confess your sins. Because if you don’t, Everleigh... I’ll break you.

“I’ll take apart everything you know. Destroy all that you love. Reduce you to the weakest, most pathetic simpering version of yourself.”

Her grin dimmed.

“You’ll look back at this moment for the rest of your life and remember that you had a choice. And you chose so wrong.

---