Page 48 of A Smile Full of Lies (Secrets of Stonewood #1)

I took them over the course of two nights, fulfilling my promise to myself, wearing the Nox Obscura mask, watching their fear when they saw it, drinking it in.

Eli was first. I slipped a sedative into his beer at a Mobile dive bar, and when he passed out trying to unlock his truck, I loaded him in the back seat of my extended cab and drove him to Chad’s deep-sea fishing boat where it was docked in Orange Beach.

I chained him up, gagged him, and locked him in the hold.

Caleb was next. I snatched him from his truck in a dark lot behind a strip joint in Pensacola after disabling their exterior security cameras. I went through the same drill with him as I did with Eli, gagging him and chaining him up in the hold of Chad’s boat, the Gulf Reaper .

Chad was last. I snatched him from his house in Robertsdale at 3:00 in the morning.

I disabled his security system, chloroformed him, gagged and bound him, and drove him to Orange Beach to join his brothers.

By dawn, all three were chained up in the hold of the Gulf Reaper , which was a 40-foot sport fishing boat with a history of electrical faults I’d confirmed through hacked marina records.

I let them sweat in the hold all day long, waiting until well after midnight before I eased the boat out of the marina and headed for Perdido Pass.

I piloted us twenty miles offshore under night’s cover, the Gulf’s black waves swallowing sound, their muffled pleas from the hold a grim chorus.

The air reeked of salt and diesel, a sky full of cold stars twinkling in the sky above us.

The moon was full, giving me plenty of light to see by as I set the GPS lock on the trolling motor and cut the engine, letting silence fall like a guillotine.

Then I slipped the mask back onto my face – it almost felt like I was dirtying it by using it for this, but…

wasn’t that why I’d started with the mask in the first place?

Dragging them topside, zip-tied and gagged, I started with Eli.

I tore off his gag, pressing my knife to his tattooed throat.

“This is what masked vengeance looks like. It’s your turn to taste the fear and hopelessness.

Stonewood Manor. You chased my mother, Victoria, through the foyer.

You gunned her down after Thayer killed my father. Why?”

Sweat poured down his face, eyes wild.

“It was a robbery gone bad! Your family wasn’t supposed to be home?—”

“You knew us,” I snarled. “Knew my father was defending his family. You policed your brass, made it clean. You slaughtered them and didn’t even take whatever you came there to steal.”

My blade opened his throat, blood spilling hot across the deck as he choked and collapsed.

Caleb was next, thrashing as I yanked him up.

“You sat in the car while they died,” I said, knife pressed to his gut. “You knew my nineteen-year-old little sister Ava was there, you knew they were going to kill my fucking baby sister, and you drove them away from the scene of the crime like it was nothing.”

He sobbed, shaking his head.

“It was all Thayer’s idea… and when the plan to steal that tech from your dad’s office went sideways and Thayer shot him, we fucking panicked…”

“Fucking coward. You could have done something, you could have convinced them to at least spare Ava, but you didn’t even try.”

I drove my blade in deep, twisting until he went limp, blood pooling on the deck.

Chad was last, reeking of piss, his dark eyes wild and frantic.

“I got a kid, Knox, please…”

“So did my parents.” I forced him to face his brothers’ bodies. “You chased Ava to her bedroom. She didn’t deserve to die, but you shot her three goddamn times on Thayer’s orders.”

He broke, tears mixing with snot and leaking down his face.

“We didn’t plan to hurt anyone… we needed that tech your dad had in his office…”

“Bullshit,” I snarled. “You wanted it. There’s a big fucking difference. The Williams family isn’t broke or desperate. You had plenty of wealth to your names. Thayer wanted to steal that tech from my father. What I want to know is why.”

“He was sick of your family always being on top, always richer, always more influential. He wanted it to be time for the Williams family to shine. He thought he could make that happen if he got that prototype out of your father’s safe and auctioned it off to the highest bidder?—"

One slash, ear to ear, and he was gone. The deck was a slaughterhouse, blood seeping into fiberglass, the metallic tang thick enough to choke a horse.

The cover-up was meticulous. The Gulf Reaper ’s electrical issues were documented; I’d hacked logs to confirm it.

I rigged the wiring panel in the cabin — frayed cables exposed, a spark waiting to ignite.

Poured accelerant to mimic a fuel leak from the engine room, subtle but deadly.

A timer on a rigged outlet would set it off after I was clear.

The fire would be ruled accidental: faulty wiring sparks vapors, boat erupts, bodies charred to bone.

No knife wounds would show; blades leave no ballistic scars.

The Gulf’s depths and sharks would scatter any fragments.

The forty-footer would burn itself down to the waterline before dawn.

I’d set the failure where no one would think to look — stripped insulation, an overloaded breaker buried behind a panel.

Not sabotage. Not arson. An accident waiting to happen.

By the time the fire investigators logged it, there would be nothing left worth tracing.

I left her drifting in open water, throttled the inflatable away at a steady clip.

I took the mask off, checking it carefully – no drop of blood had sullied its leather, there was nothing to tie it to what I had just done.

And with that certainty, I let the moment go, let the mask be just the surface of Nox Obscura, all about playing thirst trap games for the woman I loved.

Vengeance was mine, bitter and twisted as it was, and that was enough.

It was twenty miles back to shore — nothing but black gulf under me and the metallic stink of gasoline on my hands. Behind me, the sea swallowed the first smoke, the promise of flame.

The boathouse rose out of the dark like a shadow kingdom, pilings stacked with history and power.

The yacht was moored quiet, lights trimmed low, a hulking silhouette against the breakwater.

On deck, Jerry waited, coiled line neat in his grip.

Always early. Always ready. That was why I paid him to stay on retainer.

I cut the engine well short of the slip, let the current nudge the dinghy in on silence.

Boots hit dock, rope bit into my palms as I swung her bow around.

Jerry dropped to meet me without a word, clipped the davit hook in one practiced motion.

The steel groaned, hydraulics hissed, and the little boat rose dripping from the gulf, water sluicing down its sides until it dangled clean against the yacht’s rail.

In less than a minute, it looked like it had always belonged there. Just another tender, another forgettable toy in a rich man’s arsenal.

I brushed salt from my hands, looked at Jerry dead-on.

“Make sure this inflatable can only ever be traced back to us and this boat. Spend at your discretion to make it happen.”

He gave the smallest nod.

“Understood.”

That was enough. Behind us, far out on the gulf, the first orange bloom broke against the horizon. The sportfisher was burning itself into nothing, exactly as I’d planned.

I turned my back on it and walked up the gangway, the mask tucked against my side, under my jacket. The water closed over the past, and the night closed over me.