She nodded. “Yes.”
“So you’re finally ready to begin?” I asked, pouring myself a glass of bourbon.
But she just turned around, looking back at the wall of weapons. “The game has already begun.”
My pulse throbbed harder in my neck as I carried my drink to the table. I lived for this shit.
But while I liked my games, intrigue, and going wild, I didn’t like doing it alone. I wanted someone on my side. I wanted her on my side.
“All of this is mine,” she said, gesturing to the wall of weapons and turning her head to meet my eyes. “It’s only taken me a few months to gather it. Some purchased, some traded, and some borrowed from private collections.”
She turned back around, studying it again, and I stared at the back of her head as I took a swig of the alcohol.
“The curator of the Menkin Museum would love to have this for her weapons exhibit next summer,” she explained. “And I’m prepared to let her have it in exchange for a favor from her husband, whenever I choose to call it in.”
A favor? Who was her husband?
She paused and then clarified, “Her soon-to-be police commissioner husband, Martin Scott.”
I blinked long and hard, anger winding its way through my stomach.
Martin Scott.
As in Emory Scott.
The girl with the abusive—police officer—older brother whom Kai and Will were sent to prison for assaulting as payback for beating up on his little sister.
The little sister who wasn’t little anymore and who Will was still obsessed with.
He hated us, and was now more powerful than ever.
Rika shot up, grabbed a sword off the wall, and whipped around, holding it at her side and pinning me with a stare. “And guess where he plays billiards every Friday night?” she taunted.
Goddammit. My hand tightened around the glass.
“See, the thing I always wondered about was,” she said, circling the table, and I did the same, glass in hand. “Kai and Will served time for assaulting Martin Scott, but…” She eyed me. “They weren’t the only ones there. Someone was filming.”
You little shit.
“And that’s like… aiding and abetting, right?” she asked.
The glass shattered in my fist, and I felt the sti
ng of a cut as the liquid spilled and the shards fell to the ground.
She just smirked at me, a glint in her blue eyes. “Queen takes rook.”
You fucking bitch.
“Fucking little monster,” I muttered, breathing lava out of my nose.
“Kai and Will protected you,” she stated, fighting not to smile. “That charge along with the statutory rape charge? You would still be in prison. If Martin Scott were to find out…
“There’s no proof.”
“There’s Kai and Will,” she fired back. “And they’re mad at you right now.”
Goddamn her. Martin Scott knew it was me filming his much-deserved beat-down, but without a reason for Will and Kai to be silent about my part in it anymore, all I had was Rika. She pulled the strings.