Page 158 of The Secrets That Kill

I’m not going after her. It’s been two days, and I’ve stuck fast to that. In the blackmail documents I collected, I found a file on Malone, and one under the moniker Dave that’s all Orion. There’s one on me, too. I copy and delete the ones on Orion and Malone for them and delete every image and scene with me and Ivy.

And then I head to the Obsidian Knights club with all the information collected on a drive and a book of other, damning evidence.

There’s a hole in me that seems to get bigger by the minute. It numbs around the edges and sits in the center of my chest, impervious to time, booze, sleep. It’s always there. I’m not sure what it is. But I fucking hate it. Empty, lonely, bereft—that’s what it feels like.

I hand the case over to Smith when he appears. I don’t really talk, I don’t need to. He’ll take care of the rest, and whoever it is on the drive who hired me. Fuck, it could even be him or Jones. I don’t know. I don’t care. The upper echelons of the Obsidian Knights aren’t of interest to me. Ivy is safe, and she got my revenge for everything.

She avenged those innocent lives.

Her alone.

I didn’t hand over everything. The second book from the leather case is odd. It’s old, but there are entries in it I don’t understand. More than that, I could tell that pages were torn out. And I also found a name in it. One I know.

So that book I keep, though I’m still not sure why.

I get a glass of thirty-year Lagavulin, playing with it as I take in the others congregated at tables around the room.

Gisella, a crime scene cleaner, someone who can disappear a body or frame someone with deft work, sits at a table in the far corner. Her head is bent as she talks quietly to Cal Quinn, an assassin who’s cold and hard, and one I know through prison.

There’s Malone, Orion, and the Black Widow, a terrible name and one earned for unleashing a killing spree on bad men, including her father and uncle, when she’d been eighteen. She sips champagne as she talks to Liam, a world-class mercenary.

I sip the single malt like I’m tasting Ivy. With reverence and need.

Ivy hasn’t left yet. But her flight leaves tomorrow. First class.

“Why the fuck are you smiling?”

“Fuck off, Orion.” I don’t look up from my glass.

“I should kill you for fucking my sister so publicly.” He shrugs, pulls on his beer. “Word travels, asshole.”

He looks moodily around.

“However…”

I frown at him. “What?”

“I can see through the smile. You’re like a fucking clown. Sad on the inside.”

“Oh Jesus, can you just get the fuck away from here?”

“Nope.” He puts a boot up on the low, round table in front of us. “I’m pretty fucking sure you’re making yourself suffer because you’re lovesick.”

“Don’t be stupid. Are you trying to bond?” I ask. “Don’t. Not interested. I’m thinking of going to O-Ring and finding a girl. You’re not invited.”

“No, you’re not.” This is pure smug Jax, and I don’t want to be around him. “You don’t want a girl. You want that pretty one I once told you to keep your hands off of. You didn’t, so now you face the consequences.”

“You being in my life more than you are?” I take a deep swallow. “No, thanks.”

Orion bounces his foot. “I do care about my sisters, you know. It’s why I didn’t go to them after I left Black Ops. If they thought I was dead, they’d be safe. But Ivy knows now, andOrionputs her in danger. Elise, too.”

“Your problem,” I say. “Not mine.”

“Yours, too, I’m thinking.”

“Why are we talking?” I fucking hate this guy. “Maybe I should kill you.”

“You can try. But out of everyone here, I know how you prefer to kill.”

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