confidence about my secret. If our muscle connects the guys to Mackenzie Malloy, Antony can just say she hired him to protect her crew. Nothing should get back to the three families about what’s really going on here. Antony’s grown to be pretty notorious in Tartarus Oaks – no one will dare fuck with him by breaking their oath.
I offer suggestions, but they talk over me like I’m not there. They may be the closest thing I have to family, but they were raised in a criminal underworld where men run the show – they still see me as the king’s daughter who needs protecting, a piece to move around the board with no agency of her own.
Daddy prepared me for this. He said my greatest weapon would be people underestimating me, and as long as I’m prepared to be twice as clever and ten times as brutal, I’d triumph over them all.
I get sick of their macho bullshit, pick up Queen Boudica from where she’s scratching the hell out of a table leg, and head for the ballroom to blow off steam.
Sunlight streams in through the French doors as I settle Queen Boudica in her cat castle and unfold my knives from their leather pouch. After that night when I was ten, when a shadowed stranger poured hatred into my veins, Antony said he’d help me make sure no man would ever hurt me again. He spent his nights learning to fight at the club and his days at our house teaching me everything he knew about killing. I can throw a decent punch, and I love a good groin kick – as Noah well knows – but I have a particular aptitude for knives.
I love the weight of the cool metal in my hands, the way the blades balance in my fingers, the almost imperceptible slicing sound they make as they cut air. I keep a small arsenal of cheaper knives I use for throwing, and a few precious blades – like the one Antony gave me – that will only be pried from my cold, dead fingers. I’ve even pulled three swords down from a display in Howard’s office and am learning some techniques with them through YouTube videos.
It’s a sword I pick up now, feeling the hilt settle into my hand. This is a German double-handed sword, heavy and powerful – an original purloined from the Hohenzollern family armory and sold to Malloy, quite possibly by my father. It’s strange to think the two men who’ve most defined my life might’ve met, might even have bonded over their shared love of old crap.
I see so much of Daddy in Howard Malloy that over the years the two of them have become one in my mind. The easiest part of wearing the mantle of Mackenzie’s life was believing the evil things her father had done. I’ve sat in the closet while Daddy hammered a guy’s hands to the wall and carved his crime into his stomach. But there was love in Daddy’s cruelty – everything he did was to train me to be a ruthless, effective ruler. To honor his legacy. To surpass him.
There was no love on the pages of Mackenzie’s diary.
I take up my position on my practice mats. The tutorials online teach different stances – one foot forward, light on your toes so you can move easily in any direction. But I like to begin with my feet turned inwards, my head bowed, my sword-arm limp and lifeless. My greatest weapon is that people believe I’m a helpless little girl. I picture my attacker coming for me, convinced of his victory. I launch into action, swinging the sword up to catch him in the jaw. The heavy blade doesn’t slice the air so much as pummels it into submission.
The power behind this swing will crush his jawbone. As he keels forward I step in, slicing the blade to open his belly before winding the weapon back to punch the pommel into his nose. He drops, and I punch the tip of the blade through his ribs, pinning him to the floor as he writhes in his death throes.
I am my father’s daughter.
“Nice work.”
I don’t even think. At the sound of a voice, I flick a blade from inside my wrist and send it flying. Noah yells as he dives for the floor, crashing over Queen Boudica’s cat castle as the blade embeds itself in the wall right where his head used to be.