Page 72 of Reckless Seduction
My silent feet lead me to his office.
The place I have come to fear over the years. His office has never been a safe place in this house. The well-oiled hinges barely make a sound as I inch open the heavy door and creep inside, quietly closing the door behind me. The safe is in plain view. He doesn’t bother hiding it. There is no need in this house. Not when everyone follows your orders without question. He has curated a carefully crafted team of devoted sycophants. Men who would do anything for him. Men with both power and means.
There are no buttons on the safe. Instead, it has a scanner for an encrypted barcode that very few people have access to. The problem is recreating the barcode. You can’t. Although barcodes aren’t unhackable, encrypted barcodes are hard to simply copy. The barcode itself contains specialized data that the reader readily interprets. Without that specific data, the safe won’t open.
Unless you are able to short-circuit the entire system.
Which I can, thanks to a handy device I managed to sneak in with my luggage. The Kavanaughs’ hacker, Bridgett, rigged up a small device that resembles a button cell battery. I fetch itfrom the pocket of my pajamas, running my fingers over the soft metal.
Reaching out, I go to attach it to the safe’s interface when a pair of loud voices filters into the room from the hallway.
Shit.
Panic rises inside me as they approach. I need to find a place to hide.
Fuck.
My gaze whips around the room, heart beating rapidly in my chest.
Thump.
Thump.
The door handle rattles as I dive into the coat closet to the right.
“You should have kept your mouth shut, Sarah,” my father hisses as he steps into the room. “She isn’t as stupid as you think she is. Did you honestly think she wouldn’t catch what you said?”
Sarah snorts mirthlessly. “Please.” Her voice is full of derision. “She’s more gullible than her mother and look how that ended.”
“Killing Elizabeth was a mistake, and you know it,” he hisses. “Your petty jealousy almost ruined everything for me. If Elias hadn’t been able to have Ford cover it up, you’d be in jail.”
A sudden longing skates through me at the mention of Elizabeth’s name.
Who is she?
Why does her name sound familiar?
“Lin is the one who started it,” Sarah practically whines. “You know that. She’s the one who changed her identity and inserted herself into everything. Which is your fault. If you hadn’t spilled your fucking guts about Elizabeth and Toph Eriksen, she’d never become fixated.”
My father grumbles something under his breath.
“You still need to be more careful,” he warns. “If Bailey finds out the truth before Kenna comes to train her, it could be a problem. It’s bad enough she’s here now. Barret was supposed to track her after she left the body shop and snatch her up for holding at Wonders. We aren’t going to get that chance now. Knight isn’t happy about that. He wants her to be trained before his son’s upcoming nuptials.”
“We should never have sold her to the Knight boy,” Sarah sneers. “She should have gone directly to auction.”
“Then we wouldn’t have been able to control Eriksen.” My father’s tone is reprimanding. “We need her as leverage, but now that has come to an end. Eriksen and the Iron Horsemen will be wiped out just like the Vixens, and we won’t have to worry about Bailey any longer.”
Sarah releases a long sigh.
“All right.”
“Good.” Feet shuffle outside the door, and I clutch the items in my hand tighter as tears stream down my face. The sound of the safe opening fills the room.
Please don’t be taking the laptop.
Please don’t be taking the laptop.
The safe beeps, the locking mechanism engaging.
