Page 73 of Run, Little Rabbit

The room descended into silence as Cillian sat back down, everyone very much aware that the twins were as mad as a box of frogs.

I, however, had no such fear, and I was fucking bored myself. I had a blackmail plan to execute and a deal to make with a devil. “Well, this has been fun and all, but if you don’t mind, I’ll be off.”

Twenty—well, nineteen now, sorry Seamus—pairs of eyes turned towards me. A flicker of confusion swam through my dad’s as he remembered I was actually in the room.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Dad asks, his face still flushed with rage.

I look my father dead in the eyes. “Out. I don’t even know why I’m here. You don’t want or value my opinion, and I’m sick of listening to you men swing your dicks about.”

I casually glance around the room and notice the various looks from around the table. The twins are smirking; Kai looks torn between concerned and impressed, and the rest of the men display various expressions from anger all the way up to sheer disbelief. But my father… well, his face takes the fucking cake, and I preen a little becauseIput that expression of rage there, and I am past giving two shits.

So, with my head held high, I turn to leave the meeting room, knowing it’ll be the last time I’m ever in there with my dad in charge. There’s something quite cathartic about that particular thought. Like a weight has been lifted from my shoulders as the mask of the dutiful daughter falls from my face and I crush it beneath my pretty stiletto shoes.

“Echo,” he yells. “Don’t you walk away from me. Echo!”

But do you want to know the best part?

I pass a guy walking towards the meeting room with a manila folder in his hand, and I can take a lucky guess as to what’s inside it.

A few moments later, my dad’s roar of outrage echoes through the entrance hall as I leave the family home behind me.

I down another shot of tequila and wince as it burns the back of my throat. My hands are still shaking from the adrenaline of walking out in front of my father. I feel good, alive, fuckingelectric.I want to dance, scream, and jump for fucking joy at the release I feel from what I just did.

“I’m never going back.”

Just saying the words out loud has a gurgle of laughter escaping my throat.

Thank fuck I have the trust fund my mother left me. Plus, I occasionally earned a little on the jobs Sphinx sent my way from the dark web. I didn’t always find my own targets, but Sphinx had found this page on the dark web that was literally like a job ads page. It was called St Olga’s Lost Causes and it was a page dedicated to revenge. A person could list a hit under the guise of a job, and someone would put in an offer for it and hopefully get paid at the end. I only went for the ones where people should have been caught by the police for something despicable but got away with it. I might have a shady moral compass, but I at least tried to have rules.

Huh, I wonder if I could find Larke on there.

I grab my phone and text Sphinx.

ME:

Need your help with something.

SPHINX:

My car won’t fit a dead body.

ME:

Not that kind of help, dick. I need you to list a job ad.

The three little dots appear and disappear a couple of times before his name pops up on the screen with an incoming call. I hit answer, and his smoky voice rumbles down the line.

“If you’re about to ask me to help you find Larke, who I might add is one of the most notorious hitmen in the criminal underworld, then you can fuck off.”

“Well…”

“Nope. Absolutely not.”

“Hear me out,” I start, but he interrupts before I can argue my case.

“No. Echo, it’s madness. He’d kill you before you even saw his face.”

“You don’t know that, Sphinx. Besides, he might not even respond.” Although, I hoped he did. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to kill the guy. He was hired to kill my mum, and I’m sure it was nothing personal, but—fuck. Who am I kidding? I want to put a bullet right between the fucker’s eyes.