Page 142 of Convict's Game

Fuck them and the horse they rode in on. Mila’s grandmother knew Mila had a sister and never said a word. What a bitch. “Show me and I’ll let you live.”

He reached for his pocket. Found a phone. Then he held up a photo of a young teenager. Even if the picture was over a decade out of date, I recognised her. The set of her jaw was all Mila, though I’d never made the connection when I’d seen her in the flesh only a week or two ago.

She’d had surgery to change her appearance, going from girl next door to bombshell.

I dropped the lawyer to a heap on the floor and strode away.

Chapter 48

Convict

Someone gripped my jaw, turning my head to the side. “You could’ve killed him.”

“Sorry, sir. It was unintentional. He ducked.”

My brain went fuzzy, and I missed the rest of her explanation. I knew the man’s voice, though. It was the cop from my hospital room. The man who’d read my chart, laughed, and walked away. He’d told my crew I was dead for his own entertainment.

Cassie had called him Detective Dickhead, but his real name was… I searched my memories.Kenney.

Holy shit. The jolt to the brain apparently helped.

I struggled up on my elbows and blinked open my eyes. My hands were cuffed, a chain leading beneath me. I was laid out on a tabletop in what looked like a disused office, the furniture dated and battered, though the place was otherwise clean. Across the room, two police officers raised their heads.

I gazed at Kenney, a lumbering oversized man in his fifties or maybe early sixties, still fit, but with a gut that said he didn’t work out so much anymore now he was closing in on retirement.

His face triggered a new recollection.

Instead of seeing a jackass who’d teased my crew, a darker memory surfaced. Of cash and a secret bank account. A meeting in a dark alley like something out of a police procedural show. At last, I had the whole picture.

Thankfuck. I could’ve laughed.

“You tried turning me into an informant.”

His eyes flared wide, and he dismissed the other officer with a snapped word. The door banged at her back.

I held my gaze on him. “That’s why I took a cash job for the Four Milers. It was to give you what you’d paid for.”

Another piece of information flooded in. Arran knew. He’d suspected that others would dive in on me after he publicly kicked me out of the crew, and he’d been right.

I fell back on the table surface with a gasp of utter relief. I hadn’t betrayed my friend after all. Nor had I been paid to traffic women in order to line my own pocket. The burden I’d been carrying lifted.

My happiness quickly died.

“You stood over my hospital bed. Why the fuck didn’t you tell my crew where I was?”

He scoffed. “Which crew was that?”

Right, because I was supposed to have left Arran behind. I worked through his thinking. Kenney had sat back and waited to see where I ended up. Had he sent his daughter in to spy, or was she in the dark, too?

The big cop’s eyes gleamed. “So Daniels welcomed you back with open arms. Did you remember yet how much you hated him? How his actions put you in that hospital?”

I tightened my jaw and kept my mouth shut. Kenney was trying something. He just had to spit it out.

The cop smiled. “He’s playing you, kid. He’s relying on that amnesia and you forgetting just how shitty he treated you. You have a chance to make a lot of money, but not at his hands.”

Not satisfied with whatever I’d gathered on the Four Milers, he’d wanted more.

Kenney strolled to the window, hands in his pockets. “Don’t get me wrong, I also enjoyed Daniels thinking you were dead. I was hoping he’d feel guilty, but do you know he laughed when he found out? Doesn’t that piss you off? Daniels never searched all that hard for you, but I protect my own. You were right that I was recruiting you. Join my payroll. Work for me. He’ll never know, and you can have your revenge on him.”