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“I thought it would be a place for us to meet that wouldn’t be known or found out, but now, I’m not so sure. Let’s get this over with.”
“Okay,” Ginny says, plopping down on a dusty couch left in the middle of the room. It looks like the one unclean thing in here.
“I’ve been in contact with Dahlia at the gentleman’s club, and she has agreed to supply the men with whatever I give her the night of the charity gala. I’m of the opinion that I won’t be invited to join them—”
Lucas snorts, cutting my sentence short, but I ignore him.
“But I plan on showing up to distract them. They will be suspicious of me, not of what they’ve already been given. Hopefully.”
“You are going to poison them?” Dean asks.
I shake my head. “No, drug them. We are going to bring them here afterward and—”
“Murder them,” Ginny says, and her words hang heavy in the air. It sounds morbid and dark, coming from her lips.
Up until now, I’ve been able to think of them on a merely clinical level. I have a job to do, and I will do it. Now, only the sounds of shuffling feet fill the silence as we all look uncertainly at each other. It will take out an entire generation of power and insert new leaders. Ginny, Dean, and Lucas will take over. Geo will have to decide what to do about his brother. He’s a loose end that we haven’t talked about much.
“This life isn’t for the weak,” Arie says softly. “It’s what my father always says. I guess he was right about some things.”
“It’s not like there will be any love lost between us and our old men,” Dean says, trying to make sense of what we are doing.
“You murdered yours, didn’t you?” Lucas asks, and everyone’s eyes snap to me.
I could tell the truth—that it was a joint effort. I could blame it on Wryn. But in all honesty, she might have started it, but I finished it. It wasn’t a compulsion, but a choice on my end, and I did become the murderer. I killed my own father.Idid.
“Yes,” I say, leaving it at that.
I don’t think they think horribly of me. We are all ultimately planning the downfall of our fathers, but there’s a comfort in a group effort, and I didn’t have that. They weren’t involved. That’s on another level. No one says flat platitudes, and for that, I’m grateful. They don’t matter.
“Will any of you have issues with what we are going to do?” I look around at the faces peering back at me.
It’s almost an out-of-body experience to be this close, to taste the freedom in the air. I know we will have Joey as a loose end, but that’s up to Geo at this point. Maybe we will be able to sway Joey to our side; it’s not likely, but anything is possible.
“Arie, you and Ginny won’t be involved at Dahlia’s,” I say.
Ginny’s face screws up with anger. “What the hell, Connor? I’m in this with you. I’m an heir, and I will do my part.” She jerks up off the couch, and I watch a cloud of particles rise with her, floating in the light streaming in through the windows. Definitely an old couch. “You can’t push me to the back and not allow me to avenge myself. My father has always denied me what’s mine. Has viewed me as less than because I’m a woman. No more. I’m a person, and I will join your ranks on my own merit and not because I let themendo the work.”
By the time she’s done talking, she’s standing in front of me, squaring off, and I stare down at her, my arms folded across my chest.
“I hear what you’re saying, and I understand where it’s coming from, but the fact of the matter is, you haven’t been raised like Geo, Dean, Lucas, or me. You haven’t been tested, and I don’t want you to throw up at the first sight of blood.”
Not like I did.
“I might not have killed anyone, and I might be untested when it comes to pointing a gun and pulling the trigger when it’s aimed at real flesh, but I want to be the one to look in my father’s eyes as his life is extinguished and let him know that he didn’t win in the end.Idid. I persevere, even as a woman, and his archaic ideas can go fuck themselves.”
I might have underestimated the anger that fuels Ginny. I think she might have some secrets of her own. Things that eat her up inside, like we all do.
“Arie, do you feel the same?” I ask, raising my eyes from Ginny to look at the smaller woman.
“Do what you have to do, but it doesn’t have to be me behind the trigger,” she says, shaking her head. “I only want out.”
“Have you been betrothed already?” I ask.
I need to know what I’m up against. Another man or even family in this will require a whole new level of safety measures. If someone will be coming after her, I need to be aware. She glances away from me, and my stomach sinks. This won’t be good news.
“I believe so, yes,” she says, her voice barely a whisper.
“I’m surprised it didn’t happen sooner,” Ginny says.
