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Ace smirks, “Not with a very precise and small charge that only blew up the lock and not the whole door.”
“I think there’s something wrong with me. I find it incredibly sexy when you talk about blowing shit up,” I suddenly announce, my exclamation making Ace drop one of his tools as he turns to face me, his eyes wide.
“I think you should start warning us before you say shit like that,” Rip smirks as Ace picks up his lock-picking tool and gets back to work.
I shrug and reply primly, “It is what it is. I can’t help the way I feel.”
The guys all chuckle but anything else that they might have said is forgotten when Ace yells, “I fucking did it.”
“Well done, dude,” Rome congratulates, and then sounding more cautious, he adds, “Be careful opening the door. We have no idea if Jynx’s grandmother rigged it with something to ward off intruders.”
Ace pulls out his phone, turning on the flashlight, and shining it all over the door as he checks it thoroughly and then turns the handle, motioning for us all to be quiet as he leans closer and listens to it. I have no idea what he’s listening to, but when his shoulders relax, I figure whatever it is, he hasn’t heard it. He then pushes the door open but only a couple of millimeters as he once again uses the flashlight function on his phone to check through the small gap; I’m assuming that he’s looking for trip wires or something like that.
“Looks all clear,” Ace tells us and then opens the door wider. When nothing explodes, he grins at us looking proud. “I don’t think there are any lights in here, but that’s okay because I put flashlights in the bags, and they’re pretty strong, so they should work pretty well.”
I’m so damn impatient that I’m already moving past him with the flashlight in my hand as I turn it on and shine it around the room.
“It’s not as big as I thought it would be,” Rome says from behind me.
He’s right; it’s not tiny, and the room would fit us all in, but it’s certainly smaller than I thought it would be judging from the outside, and it doesn’t have a lot in it, just a large filing cabinet and what looks like a few paintings covered with dust sheets and leaning against the wall. As the guys look around the room more thoroughly to see if there’s anything hidden, I head straight for the filing cabinet. I literally have everything I can crossed in the hopes that there is something in this filing cabinet that will answer at least one of the questions I have regarding my grandmother.
My heart pounds in my chest as I pull the top drawer open and find a single thick file. Kind of like the files that we found in her safe and a similar shape to the marks that were left in the dust in there as well. This one is a lot thicker than the files she had on the people that she’s stolen from. There’s nothing else in the drawer, and a quick check of the other drawers shows me that they’re empty as well, so with anticipation thrumming through my veins, I open up the folder. The first thing I see is a picture of my grandmother and a little boy that has to be my father. I continue to flick through the stack of photographs in the front of the folder. The last one is of my father at about fifteen years old, I have his eyes, and I feel overwhelmingly emotional at finally seeing a photo of my father after years of wondering what he looked like and if I looked like him, it’s quite a shock if I’m honest.
I don’t get too far into the file before I’m interrupted.
“Fucking hell, that’s not who I think it is, right? Please tell me I’m fucking seeing things?” Mason exclaims, and I look up to see them all staring at one of the paintings that they’ve turned around. It seems to be of a group of teenagers, I only recognise one of them as being my dad because I’ve just found his photo but I have absolutely no idea who the others are.
Moving closer, as I close the folder and hold it tight, I ask, “What? What’s wrong?”
Rome’s eyes meet mine looking confused, and unsure as he replies, “It would appear that this is a painting of our parents. It has all of the heirs on it, my father, Ace’s mom, and Rip, Mase, and Mal’s fathers. It also has my mom, who met my father in school, and then the last guy is the son of the family that disappeared. The thing is, I don’t know why your grandmother has it. I mean, she had my father's pipe, so it’s possible she stole it, I guess? I just don’t understand why.”
His words have me rooted to the spot as my mind tries to connect the dots, and my eyes widen as a missing puzzle piece slides into place, looking around at my frowning men, I say, “I think I know why she had it.”
“Why?” Rip asks, sounding skeptical.
Pointing to the painting, I say, “That’s my father.”
Silence greets my announcement as they all turn to stare wide-eyed at me, shock practically saturating the air.
Ace shakes his head, “He can’t be because that means that your grandmother is the matriarch of the last family, the one that we thought had either abandoned the town after the feud or been taken out during it, and if that were true, then that would make your father who is dead, the heir and since he’s dead and your grandmother is dead, that would mean that you are the heir and current leader of the fifth family.”
As Ace talks and puts it together I just stare at him in increasing shock, what the fuck is going on.
Mason continues when Ace pauses to just look at me, “Which would explain your grandmother's affinity with poisons. I think that was their specialty, but I’m not entirely sure, which is why it never occurred to me before. So much makes sense, and yet nothing makes sense at the time.”
“Fuck,” I mutter. “What the fuck is going on? You know, I think she knew that you guys were at the school and wanted me to get to know you, remember her letter?”
“I’d completely forgotten about that, but I don’t know why she’d want you to know us. We’re a complete disgrace to our families because we get along, and we refuse to fight or one-up each other,” Rome questions.
“We’re never going to find out now that she’s gone,” I reply, feeling frustrated.
“Fuck, do you think our parents know? Is that why they’re trying so hard to get to us?” Mal asks.
Rip shakes his head, “I don’t think so because they had the opportunity to get Jynx, and they didn’t. Even in the last attempt, Jynx said the woman she was fighting said that they weren’t there for her, but I agree that it's definitely concerning. We don’t want them to know that Jynx is the last heir to the fifth family. That would immediately put her in danger.”
“But I think now more than ever we need to know what’s going on with our families and do something about it so we can be assured that they never find out about Jynx and her connection to our town,” Mason suggests.
“You realise that means that we have to go back there? There’s no way to know for sure what’s going on unless we go back there,” Ace adds.
