Twisted Love (Twisted #1)(71)

I’d kept the knowledge of their true motives to myself though. I’d been young, but old enough to know the criminal justice system wouldn’t deliver the type of justice I craved: total annihilation.

So I’d waited.

11:57 p.m.

My uncle was the only person I’d told. He, too, hadn’t believed it was a simple invasion.

But the police caught the culprits a few days later thanks to street security footage that ID’ed their license plate, and they’d confirmed it was a home invasion. The “burglars” said they hadn’t wanted to leave witnesses, so they’d killed everyone. They also hadn’t made it to trial before they “mysteriously” died in jail.

My uncle did some digging and found the man who’d hired the killers’ killer. Apparently, he was one of my father’s business rivals and had a history of shady dealings and ruthless practices. By logic, he had to have been the one who’d ordered the hit on my family too.

I’d spent every second of my life since plotting his downfall.

11:58 p.m.

I’d been a kid, and I’d trusted my uncle, but what I’d read in the library threw everything I knew about him out the window.

Ava was right—I’d been distracted this past week, busy with my chess game. Not the unfinished one with my uncle in the library, but the one playing out in real life.

I’d had my tech guy hack into Ivan’s financial records dating back to my family’s deaths and paid him a hefty sum to work day and night until he found what I’d expected to find all along. A large sum of money had been wired from one of my uncle’s secret offshore accounts to an anonymous account two days before my family’s death, and another equal sum had been sent the day after. An even larger amount had been sent to a second anonymous account the day after the “burglars” died.

I’d paid the hacker another eye-watering sum to track down the second killer. He’d contacted me when I was on my way to meet Ava, saying he’d located the person, a notorious killer for hire who went by the name of Falcon. They’d apparently retired, but I didn’t need their “skills.” I only needed a name.

As a gesture of goodwill, I’d wired Falcon twenty-five percent of the fifty grand I’d promised them if they would confirm who hired them to kill the burglars.

Now, I waited.

11:59 p.m.

I stared at the blank black screen of Vortex, a fully encrypted messaging site popular amongst those in the criminal underworld. Unhackable and untraceable, it was where most of the world’s seediest transactions took place.

A chill whipped around me.

I hadn’t bothered to turn the heater on. I’d bought this house in D.C. under a shell company name because I wanted a place where I could carry out my more illicit activities without anyone knowing, not even my uncle. It boasted a security system the Pentagon would be jealous of, including a hidden jammer that disabled all electronic devices inside the house unless you had the code, which only I knew.

12:00 a.m.

A new message flashed onscreen.

Midnight on the dot. Gotta appreciate a punctual killer.

I read the message calmly, my blood colder than the chill creeping along the floorboards and bare walls.

No greeting, no questions. Just a name, like I’d requested.

I wired the rest of the money to the Falcon and sat there in the dark, mulling over the news.

I knew. Of course I knew. All the evidence had pointed to it, but now I had my confirmation.

The man responsible for my family’s death wasn’t Michael Chen, Ava’s father.

It was Ivan Volkov, my uncle.





34





Alex





I made pancakes.

I rarely cooked—why waste my time doing something I didn’t enjoy and which I could pay other people to do? But I made an exception today. I was waiting for a visitor, and I didn’t want to miss them by eating out.

The doorbell rang.

9:07 a.m., according to the clock on my microwave. Earlier than I’d expected, which meant he was eager.

I shut off the stove and sipped my tea as I answered the door. When I did, I had to mask my surprise.

Not who I was expecting.

“What are you doing here, Sunshine?”

Not the warmest greeting, but she needed to leave before he arrived.

Mild panic shot through me at the thought of them meeting.

Ava frowned. She looked exhausted, and I wondered if she was having nightmares again. They’d eased since she recovered her memories, but they still popped up from time to time.

Worry and guilt washed over me. We hadn’t spoken in days. She was still angry with me, and I’d been caught up in my plans. It was hard to convene a corporate board the week before Christmas—in secret, no less—but I held enough blackmail info over every member that they’d acquiesced to my request.

“We need to talk. About us,” Ava said.

Not words any man wants to hear come out of his girlfriend’s mouth, especially when he and said girlfriend were on rocky ground. I couldn’t wait until this mess with my uncle was over so I could give her the attention she deserved.

As for my twisted and apparently ill-placed revenge plan against her “father”…that was a confession for another day.

If I ever confessed.