Page 116 of These White Lies

My stomach swirls with unfamiliar nerves.

“Brady?” I hear Sera’s voice hesitant and worried, through the buzzing in my ears. Elizabeth’s hand turns over in mine so that she is now stroking mine.

“Brady?” she asks quietly, her other hand lands on my forearm.

The room is silent, tension wound so tight it’s snapping like a live wire between us.

Finn clears his throat. “So… want to share with the class, or should we all just continue pretending like we don’t notice that you and Sera look like you’re about to shit your pants, and he”—he jerks a thumb at Vincent—“looks like he wants to kill you.”

Rhodes narrows his eyes at me, but I don’t answer the question.

I take a slow breath. Then another.

“I have a plan.”

Elizabeth blinks. “A plan?”

“If we can get into one of these parties, one of these events. We can approach one of them, someone who knows how this thing operates?—”

“Sure,” Finn interrupts, his words dripping with sarcasm. “Sounds awesome. And how exactly do you intend to get invited to a black-tie shadow-cabal soiree when they have to know who you are by now?”

My hands curl into fists in my lap. I unclench them. Clench them again.

Say it. Get the fucking words out.

“Because The Hammer,” I say through gritted teeth, “is our father.”

Every single face in the room processes it differently.

Rhodes is silent, one brow raised unsurprised. I think he’d already worked it out, but I don’t love his expression. Like he’s reevaluating every moment since he met me.

Vincent’s face is unreadable, but his eyes are locked on mine, bracing for the fallout. He’s known the truth. When we’d joined forces, I’d told him in the interest of transparency.

Finn’s eyebrows have practically disappeared into his hair, and he blows out a long stream of air. “Well, that explains a few things.”

Sera doesn’t say a word. I don’t know what’s going on in her head, but I know it can’t be good.

Elizabeth sits completely still beside me. I’m not sure she’s even taken a breath in the last minute, but her eyes never leave my face.

“Ray ‘The Hammer’ is our father,” I repeat unnecessarily. “And he fucking owes us. He’ll get us in.”

32

ELIZABETH

Two large men in athleisure and dark sunglasses, with holstered-guns intentionally obvious under their jackets, flank the door to Ray’s hotel suite.

Our luck after finding the necklace has held. Finn was able to discover there is a party planned for this upcoming weekend as a precursor to an exhibition fight, featuring former heavyweight world champion, Ray “The Hammer.” It is intended to raise money for a youth charity.

A charity run by a woman named Anna Lindquist.

Anna.

There were only two on the list. One lives in Switzerland. The other lives in Atlanta. The Atlanta-based Anna also happens to sit on the board of Jonathan Carrow’s company.

It can’t be anyone else. She has to be theAnnathat Carrow mentioned—the one who’d ordered the attacks on me.

More digging by Finn and Sera has uncovered that Anna Lindquist has either a personal or business relationship with almost every person on the Lapidarist’s list. So, if there is a lynchpin to this group, it appears to be her.