Page 4 of The Secrets That Kill

That’s not my reason either.

No. My reason is simple.

Revenge.

A finely spun web of revenge I’m finally ready to serve.

And timing?

It’s everything.

I excuse myself from Malone, move through the partygoers, and catch Cara’s eye.

Her little gift, in exchange for taking care of a debt, looks like a favor to me. It isn’t. At all. It’s pure manipulation on my part.

Information is an important commodity. One I horde. And when another Knight—the one I’ve known the longest, Orion—started sleeping with a college student, I got curious.

Cara isn’t his type. But she has family issues, gambling debts I’m not even sure Orion knows about.

I made it my business to run into her, to help her. Especially when I discovered who her friend at college is.

That’s around the time I decided to say yes to the Broken Angel job, for two reasons.

One is directly tied to Henderson, that rat fuck.

The other? Well now, that type of revenge is very different.

The honeypot.

The pretty girl with the hair like dark caramel. The one who shifted the energy in the room just by walking in.

Ivy Gardner.

She’s no longer the skinny annoying kid sister of my long-gone best friend. No longer the little fourteen-year-old with the crush on me. No longer the girl I rejected when she tried to kiss me all those years ago.

Ivy is all grown up now. Gorgeous face, body filled out like a porn star. She’d snag my attention now, even if I’d never met her before. She looks sweet, innocent. Vulnerable. And with all the investigations I did into her, she’s exactly that. A fucking Pollyanna.

But what she is now and always has been, is the girl who put me in prison.

It’s time for her to pay.

Ivy’s a walking wet dream for the man I’m going to kill.

I’m going to bend her to my will. I’m going to take her, own her, defile her. And when the time is right, I’ll use her to get me close to Henderson, the semi-recluse behind Broken Angel.

I’m going to get all the information I need, punish and kill Henderson, and then I’m going to crush Ivy.

And she’s going to take part in her own destruction.

Willingly.

Because there won’t be anything she can do to stop it…or me.

TWO

ivy

I shouldn’t be here.

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