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We’re not exactly the hugging types, Antony and I. Our idea of bonding is gruesome horror films or a knife-throwing session. My cousin’s arms were built for pounding people’s faces into pulp, not offering tenderness. When he strokes my hair, it jiggles the lock on that box, and I whip the knife from the table and thrust it at his throat.
Antony grabs my wrist, twisting the knife out of my grasp. He’s been down this road with me before. He’s the only one who knows what’s inside that box. “You can’t try to stab me every time you think about it, Claws. One of these days you won’t miss.”
“I know.” My hands clench into a fist. “Fuck.”
Antony grabs my shoulders, shakes me hard. To anyone watching it might have looked violent, but I need it to push the box into the depths again. “We knew this might become an issue when you moved into the house. But we’re so close. The most likely culprit is Brutus or the senator. One of them will show his hand, and we’ll slice it off. I promise.”
I don’t believe him, but I nod.
“I noticed you didn’t tell your friends about him. Or about your little adventure in Lazarus’ tomb.”
I snort. “They just found out I’m not who I said I was. Now’s not the time to delight them with the story of my resurrection or…”
Words dry on my tongue. I can’t even speak it aloud.
Antony cocks his head and gives me his monstrous smile, the one he uses before he cracks skulls together. “You know you’ve just made it infinitely more difficult to keep what we’re doing here a secret? Before, only two people knew about your true identity, now we’ve got the whole Scooby Doo gang, and probably Pretty Boy’s social media followers if you don’t get his shit under control.”
“The guys don’t know everything. And they won’t tell. I’ll make sure of it. What can I do?” I ask. “I need to be part of this.”
“Nothing. You’re still our ticket out of this mess, remember? You’re no good to anyone dead.” Antony squeezes me one last time, then drops his grip. “First, we need to figure out if it’s Brentwood or Brutus behind this.”
“Who else can it be?”
The box bobs to the surface again.
“We’ll deal with that if it comes up. If we play our hand too soon with the Triumvirate, we could lose more than just the battle. I’ll put some men on your friend Alec, in case he wants to cause more trouble, and we’ll need a presence at your school.”
“So we should keep going to Stonehurst and pretending everything is normal?”
“Right now, Mackenzie Malloy is your biggest ally.” Antony gives me a stern, fatherly look. “As long as she’s alive and kicking, you’re safe.”
Antony and Tiberius turn Howard Malloy’s office into their war room. They go through every one of Antony’s men – the guys he trains at his gym who he recruits to be runners and soldiers for the Triumvirate – and choose three they’ll employ to watch the guys and their families. Antony and Tiberius will watch out for me themselves. This means they don’t have to bring anyone else into their confidence about my secret. If our muscle connects the guys to Mackenzie Malloy, Antony can just say she hired him to protect her crew. Nothing should get back to the three families about what’s really going on here. Antony’s grown to be pretty notorious in Tartarus Oaks – no one will dare fuck with him by breaking their oath.
I offer suggestions, but they talk over me like I’m not there. They may be the closest thing I have to family, but they were raised in a criminal underworld where men run the show – they still see me as the king’s daughter who needs protecting, a piece to move around the board with no agency of her own.
Daddy prepared me for this. He said my greatest weapon would be people underestimating me, and as long as I’m prepared to be twice as clever and ten times as brutal, I’d triumph over them all.
I get sick of their macho bullshit, pick up Queen Boudica from where she’s scratching the hell out of a table leg, and head for the ballroom to blow off steam.
Sunlight streams in through the French doors as I settle Queen Boudica in her cat castle and unfold my knives from their leather pouch. After that night when I was ten, when a shadowed stranger poured hatred into my veins, Antony said he’d help me make sure no man would ever hurt me again. He spent his nights learning to fight at the club and his days at our house teaching me everything he knew about killing. I can throw a decent punch, and I love a good groin kick – as Noah well knows – but I have a particular aptitude for knives.
I love the weight of the cool metal in my hands, the way the blades balance in my fingers, the almost imperceptible slicing sound they make as they cut air. I keep a small arsenal of cheaper knives I use for throwing, and a few precious blades – like the one Antony gave me – that will only be pried from my cold, dead fingers. I’ve even pulled three swords down from a display in Howard’s office and am learning some techniques with them through YouTube videos.
It’s a sword I pick up now, feeling the hilt settle into my hand. This is a German double-handed sword, heavy and powerful – an original purloined from the Hohenzollern family armory and sold to Malloy, quite possibly by my father. It’s strange to think the two men who’ve most defined my life might’ve met, might even have bonded over their shared love of old crap.
I see so much of Daddy in Howard Malloy that over the years the two of them have become one in my mind. The easiest part of wearing the mantle of Mackenzie’s life was believing the evil things her father had done. I’ve sat in the closet while Daddy hammered a guy’s hands to the wall and carved his crime into his stomach. But there was love in Daddy’s cruelty – everything he did was to train me to be a ruthless, effective ruler. To honor his legacy. To surpass him.
There was no love on the pages of Mackenzie’s diary.
I take up my position on my practice mats. The tutorials online teach different stances – one foot forward, light on your toes so you can move easily in any direction. But I like to begin with my feet turned inwards, my head bowed, my sword-arm limp and lifeless. My greatest weapon is that people believe I’m a helpless little girl. I picture my attacker coming for me, convinced of his victory. I launch into action, swinging the sword up to catch him in the jaw. The heavy blade doesn’t slice the air so much as pummels it into submission.
The power behind this swing will crush his jawbone. As he keels forward I step in, slicing the blade to open his belly before winding the weapon back to punch the pommel into his nose. He drops, and I punch the tip of the blade through his ribs, pinning him to the floor as he writhes in his death throes.
I am my father’s daughter.
“Nice work.”
I don’t even think. At the sound of a voice, I flick a blade from inside my wrist and send it flying. Noah yells as he dives for the floor, crashing over Queen Boudica’s cat castle as the blade embeds itself in the wall right where his head used to be.
