Fraud (Antihero Inferno #2) - Lily White Page 0,100
suspicion why.”
They’re still after the servers, I realize, which means we’re right to want them as well.
Curious, I lie like I have no idea and ask, “Who is Jerry Thornton? What relationship does he have with Governor Callahan?”
Green eyes pin me in place.
“That’s not important. What’s important is you get me everything you can find. Make it happen, Gabriel. Time is running out on this bullshit.”
It’s the second time our fathers have mentioned a specific timeline. William Cross warned Tanner when he said tick tock and now Warbucks has hinted to it as well.
“Why is time running out?” I ask, but the video feed ends to leave me sitting with my marching orders like the good son who does as he’s told.
My jaw grinds at the thought of it, my fingers tapping again when I realize I still need Ivy to get information out of her father.
Unfortunately, she’s only agreed to ask her dad what he knows. But beyond that she won’t give us anything else. She’ll refuse to do anything that might hurt her father.
The game has to change again, apparently, and with time running out - whatever the hell that means - I have to be willing to play it as dirty as fucking possible.
The ceasefire might be ending sooner than Ivy knows.
I run my hands through my hair hating what I know I have to do. Hating that no matter how Gabriel feels about her, Fraud has to step in to finish this.
With that thought in mind, I push to my feet and walk from my office to go check on the little prisoner.
Ivy
Gabriel is a dead man.
Oh, sure, he walked off smiling and laughing about what he’d done. And I’m sure he’s confident in his thinking that he’s winning this war I didn’t realize he’s still playing.
But I know it now, and I’m willing to play just as much.
Apparently, it’s true that when you think of the devil, he appears, Fraud gliding through the door with his smooth peacock strut as my eyes lift to stare at him.
His hands are tucked causally in his pockets as he leans back against the wall opposite me, his emerald green gaze sliding down my body and back up again because he likes what he sees.
“You look good like that. Although I’m sure it would be a prettier picture without any clothes on.”
His heated stare lifts to mine.
“I surrender,” I lie.
He laughs. “And I believe that about as much as I do that you weren’t the person who burned down the memorial pavilion your father had just finished dedicating to the city that afternoon.”
Stilling at what he said, my thoughts race back to the mistake I’d made in high school. The same one that sent me running to Tanner to fix what I’d done.
Gabriel grins to see the expression on my face. He’s Fraud when he speaks to me next, his voice smooth as silk and soft as satin.
“What would your father’s reaction be to find out that the symbol he’d planted in the middle of the city to commemorate his fight to clean up crime was burned to the ground by his very own daughter?”
Smiling at my silence, he asks, “Why did you do it again? I forget the details.”
I’m not surprised at all that Gabriel knows what I did. What does surprise me is that he finally admitted it.
I refuse to break a sweat over it, though. I don’t panic until I have to.
“Probably because I was set up,” I answer in my saccharine voice.
“By who?”
“That, I don’t know.” Grinning back at him, I ask, “Was it you?”
“I wish it was, but I can’t take credit for that.”
“Liar.”
The truth is written all over the crooked line of his grin.
In our last year in high school, my father won his election bid for Mayor. It was a step up for the family, but mostly my father’s official entry into the world of politics. In celebration, he vowed to curb the crime that went on in the city and spent several million dollars on a large pavilion to stand as a symbol of his promise.
The only problem with that was that almost every family of our social circle was involved in the crime he swore to expose. I was ostracized at school for a week after the pavilion was built, a rumor spreading that I was a snitch just like my father. I became a pariah, and the only people who didn’t treat me differently were Ava and Emily.