Page 70 of A Lethal Game of Trust

She’d already been through so much. Yet, she let him keep a hold of her.

“You do realise if Firdman does get released, he’s dead, right?”

She turned to me with the driest look. I wanted to rip her clothes off in the back seat. Her anger turned me on like nothing else.

“I don’t want anyone else killed,” she sighed. “But if someone gets to kill him, it’s me.”

Correction: Murderous Leonie turned me on like nothing else.

“I’ll help,” I said with a determined nod. “I’ll hold the gun, you pull the trigger.”

“I don’t need help with my aim, thank you. If you remember, I was often better than you at the shooting range,” she reminded me with pride, shoving another sweet in her mouth and then chucking one into mine.

“When was the last time you shot a gun?” I asked with a laugh. She was meant to take over her father’s side of the business. The jewellery smuggling of our joint families. Luís, her father, had been creating a more legal side for her before he passed.

She would have taken on the world.

“I’ve gone at least once every week since the kidnap attempt,” she assured me. “The month Dad died, I went every afternoon after school. Anton took me.”

And I hadn’t known.

Because I kept my distance. Because I would hurt her worse than she could imagine if she ever knew the true extent of what I had done.

Luís Castillo was dead because of me.

24

AShot

Minutes before Luís Castillo’s murder

Dom

I was outside Leonie’s house. For the last year, this was my secret way in, over the gate into their garden, narrowly missing the pool and climbing the trellis to her balcony.

She should be expecting me. Apart from our very short and angry confrontation at school that day where I’d said I would come over, we hadn’t spoken all week.

For the last six days, I couldn’t get the pictures Leonie had sent Sam Yun out of my head.

She’d sent them tohim. She wantedhimto see her like that.

Since our stand-off, I’d gone home and spent my afternoon researching universities and their cybersecurity courses. I’d already been accepted to the most prestigious university in England, but there was one at our local campus, Drakon University, but my course, the best course, was a six-hour drive away.

And I didn’t have to wait for my grades to know I was getting in.

But something held me back from confirming my acceptance.

What if I came back and she had fallen in love with someone? What if this bicker became larger if we left it to fester? What if Sam Yun got more than just pictures next time?

So, after Dad and Uncle Anton’s encouragement an hour ago, I was climbing the tree beside her gated garden, ready to confess my love.

When I heard the shot.

I froze. Then pulled out my gun. I hadn’t been without it since the girls had been taken.

For Leonie, I’d already killed. I would happily do it again.

I threw myself over the gate, landing at a crouch beside her pool as I often did when I picked her up for our midnight drives.