Page 151 of The Secrets That Kill

“Enough. Jax, take her, put her somewhere safe,” says Mercer. “I’m going to sort this shit out.”

“I don’t know ifI’mfucking safe, man. C’mon, if they have shit on you, then what do they have on me? They don’t have to know who I was in the past. Just what I’ve done for the Knights.”

“Who,” I say. “Are the fucking Knights?”

Mercer looks at me. “We?—”

“Dude.” My brother glares at him.

“She has a right to know the truth.”

“Our lives are in danger, and you want to shove her in deeper? I’m pretty sure Cara was killed as a warning. Because they hid that from me until yesterday when her body was found. So tell me again how you want to hand my sister over to them, and I’ll really pump you full of lead.”

I breathe in. Through the pain and fear and rage and floaty disconnect that’s happening inside of me, reason floods my mind.

These two work together for some organization. And I think they’re working on this Henderson thing together. Because of that, my friend was taken, murdered as a warning, and now their lives are in danger.

I might hate them both, but I’m still important to this plan. They need this blackmail book or whatever the hell it is. I bet it’d be on a hard drive, a thumb drive, or in a book. Something small and contained so it can travel undetected. Easy to hide, to carry.

This Henderson scumbag is toying with Mercer. Using me. The card the other man—no name on it, just a number—gave me is proof of that. And Mercer said they like girls like me. Girls broken down, broken in. To use and abuse.

It makes me want to throw up.

It makes me want to kill.

I might be the one who can get that information, the only one who can save them. Henderson won’t expect me to know any of this. I have the poison, the gun, and I’ll do what I need when I’m in that sanctum. I have an invitation, courtesy of the business card. That sleazy guy Jeremy, and, based on what I’ve been told, Henderson himself.

I look at them both, glowering first at my brother, then at the man who’s decimated my heart.

“I never want to see either of you again.”

Then I turn on my heel and stalk out of the warehouse.

Jaxson and Mercer don’t deserve to be saved. They deserve to burn in hell. To rot.

But someone needs to end it.

Someone needs to avenge all those innocent lives and make sure no others are lost.

And I’m the one with the ticket in.

I just hope it doesn’t turn out to be a one-way kind of thing.

I can’t believe I left my freaking wallet back at Mercer’s. Thank God I stole a credit card when I took the poison and his gun.

I pull out my phone and call the number on the business card that was pressed into my hand last night. My lips quiver, and I hope I can pull off the performance of a lifetime with this call. Luckily, it’s really easy to sound distraught and near tears when you actually are.

“Peters.”

“Oh, Mr. Peters.” I choke out a sob. “I-it’s Ivy…the girl Mr. Vale calls Pollyanna.” My voice catches for real on that. I hate the name now and all it means. “Are you at Broken Angel? It’s over with Mr. Vale and I’m so sad…so hurt…can you and Mr. Henderson help? You said you’d be nice to me.”

I practically gag at the words that tumble from my lips in the back of the cab headed back into Manhattan.

And Peters. I can almost see him drooling at my disgustingly stupid girly act. “But you don’t want someone to be nice to you, do you, cunt?”

I gasp.

And he laughs. He thinks I’m turned on, not repulsed.

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