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Wicker stops digging to say, “Other pieces?” Glancing at Lex, he reaches into the soil and pulls something else free.

A second skull.

“That might take a while.”

I look around the solarium, the revelation hitting me like a sledgehammer. “He told me to stay away from that corner of the garden.”

Pace spits a low curse, tucking me into his side. “This is why cameras have never been allowed down here.”

But it’s Wicker who says what we’re all thinking, his expression a twisted, gnarled thing. “This is his fucking trophy case, isn’t it?”

Lex drops the skull back into the dirt, the line of his jaw tense. “Verity, make the call.”

“What are you going to do?” I blink at him, sensing the ominous danger in his voice.

He dusts off his hands, looking between his brothers. “What we do best.”

30

Lex

“Second thoughts?”Pace asks, wrapping his knuckles. Neither of us looks away from the sight in front of us. It’s not the first time I’ve been on this side of the glass, looking at a mark with his arms strapped to the chair.

It is the first time the mark is my father.

“No,” I answer.

It’d been easy enough. The first question he asked Father after we’d barged into his office, lips pulled back in a snarl, was, “Did you bury her there? Did you even let her see me before you killed her?”

I now know he was referring to his mother.

Father’s biggest mistake was answering with a smirk. Pace didn’t waste muscle on him. He just brought him down with the sharp zap of a Taser. We’d secured Danner up in his quarters, and Thad…

Well, he’s off having fun with some hungry DKS attack dogs.

Despite the annoyed expression, Father looks small in the dungeon. Less threatening in our domain than up in his own.

“Do you think he’ll talk?” Wicker asks, standing to my left. Pace is on my right. Verity is somewhere upstairs, coordinating with the Lady on this meeting we’re supposed to attend in a few hours.

But not before we have a small token of our seriousness to take them.

“Not without a little motivation,” Pace says, handing me a pair of gloves and a wooden box.

The one with the whip.

Ever since this became my role in the family, I’ve made a promise to myself to never gain enjoyment from it. All those people when I was small—the ones who said I was empty and evil—knew then what I know now.

It's in my DNA.

It’s the reason Ashby took me away that night, in the midst of blood and flashing lights. He didn’t want a son. He wanted his own little purebred psychopath. Someone who could cut and hurt and maim, and feel nothing while doing it.

Just like myrealfather.

With one last glance at one another, Wicker opens the door, the three of us filing through. I haven’t been down here in a couple of weeks. Our last mark was some bookie who’s been threatening the son of a bureaucrat.

He’d cried.

And I’d felt nothing.