It's possible the drills wouldn't have worked either. It's Annex's after all. He's a tricky bastard, so he might have a booby trap set up that would make the safe even more inaccessible if I had drilled wrong. Considering I haven't done anything like that since I was twelve, I definitely might have messed up. Drilling safes was only ever a pastime thing for my dad and me. It's not like I'm a pro.
I drop the heels to a table on my way over to the painting with a secret. I smile when I remove it and find my salvation. I know that will is in there. It has to be. Kade might hate me, but at least I'll be able to give him one hell of a parting gift to remember me by.
Taking a weary breath, I go to type in the first, most obvious code. The annex is designed to accept numbers only, so I count the placement in the alphabet for Kade, along with 1993, but before I can press enter, I hear something I never in my life thought I'd hear so close to my head... the click of a gun.
"You should have stayed away from here," a familiar voice says as the barrel of the gun presses against the back of my head, making me visibly tremble.
Where have I heard his voice before? It isn't Harry... or Harold, rather, and it isn't Leonard either. Obviously this manly voice isn't Henrietta. I guess we weren't the only ones with a four-man team.
"I... um... got lost?" I stutter out like an idiot, slowly raising my hands in the air as a show of surrender.
A heartless chuckle taints the air when he finds humor in my poor attempt to come up with a lie. I'm actually much better at lying when I'm not in the middle of a con... ironically enough.
"Sure you did. At least now I know where the old man is keeping the will. Thanks for that," the grizzly voice says, and suddenly it dawns on me who it is.
"You're the... judge," I gasp, keeping my eyes on the safe as the gun presses harder against the back of my head.
"And you're the trailer-park trash that should have run back home to mother when Kade's friends bulldozed your house." He sighs out heavily, and then mutters, "I really hate to do this, but you brought it upon yourself."
I need to keep him talking and figure out a way to disarm him, but I have no clue about how to do that. Unfortunately, my father isn't a fighter, so he never taught me any of those skills. Damn it.
"You're going to..."
I can't get the words out. I can't cry, gasp, or even feel anything besides helpless. Surely a judge wouldn't-
"Kill you?" he laughs, finishing the words I couldn't. "What other choice do I have? I've been waiting twenty-three years to get revenge on Paul Colton. Twenty-three. Long. Years."
Keep him talking, Raya.
"Paul Colton? This is Kade Colton's inheritance, not Paul's."
"Ah," he says, leaning down closer to my ear. "And Paul loves his boy. I've tried and failed many times to ruin Colton Fashion industries. He has that pretty little business packaged too well to be brought down. But this place... he didn't lock it up as well as he should have, and bringing it down is even better than bringing down his own empire. This is his father's - the man he adores. This is his son's - the boy he never knew how to relate to. This is the only thing that connected the three of them. Now I'm taking it."
Breathe, Raya. Breathe.
"So all of this is because you have beef with Paul?"
"Beef," he sniffs. "It's more than that. Paul Colton married the one and only woman in this world I've ever loved, and he didn't deserve her. He still doesn't. She and I had just planned a date when he met her. He didn't give a damn about me or the fact I had been desperately trying for months to get that date. I had to go through her father just to set it up.
"My family had money, my life was on track, and Paul was the poor boy who should have never crossed paths with her. All he did was use her and her con
tacts to build his father's business into something ridiculously wealthy. Used her," he says, repeating the last two words with a snarl. "Then he trapped her with a kid, just to ensure that she didn't wise up and leave him. That son of a bitch."
I've heard of women going crazy after being scorned, but I didn't realize men were just as bad. Frigging psycho.
"So then... you decided to get a group of cons to do this job? To steal this vineyard and exact revenge?" I ask, sounding stupid. But I have to stall, damn it. Where the hell is Brody?
He chuckles... again, managing to make it sound even eerier this time.
"Sorry, sweetheart. That's all the divulging I'm willing to do."
I tense up. "Are you sure?" I ask in an unusually high octave, rushing the words out so fast it almost sounds like one word. "Because it really sounds like you need someone to talk to."
The second click of a gun strikes me with more fear before I have time to register it as curious. How did he cock it twice?
"Actually," a saving voice says from behind, making my whole body almost jitter with relief, "I think Judge Higdon will have plenty of people who want to hear his story."
"Fuck," the judge says as the gun pulls back away from my head. But then he quickly starts trying to dig his way out. "This is Henrietta's property, where I too live, and this girl is trespassing. I was simply defending myself. You have nothing to prove otherwise."