Page 91 of Conflicted Lies

“Not with broken legs,” Anya snaps, and I can’t help but smile at her. If I’m being honest, I actually like her. She says all the things I’ve forced myself not to say publicly in order to keep my image.

“Why did you kill your partner?” Anya asks. “And you owe me, by the way. My sons were quick to stage the hanging and clean up your apartment, making it look like only a ghost lives there. Which can quickly be arranged.”

“Your aunt is actually quite funny,” I say to Hope, and she rolls her eyes.

“Flattery won’t get you far in this family,” Anya bites out.

“Who said I was complimenting you?” I reply, pinning her with a glare. Her gaze narrows, but I swear I see the corner of her lips tilt slightly.

I then look at Hope and exhale. “I knew it was you. I knew from the moment I found you in that park and started following you.” I can’t help but grin as I think back to the night I met her again, drunk in the park, with a lack of stamina that’s misleading as to how much she can provide in the bedroom. “You are the perfect killer, really. But you became sloppy.”

“So why did you continue to see me?” she asks.

“Because despite everything, when I looked at you, I didn’t feel like I was lost in this world. I was intrigued by how your mind worked and how far I might be able to push you.” A soft smile touches her lips, and it’s precisely for that that I was willing to give everything up for her. “Did you really think I would let someone take you away from me?”

“Fucking hell,” Anya mutters. “Now we have a detective in our family.”

“I’m everything you’re against,” Hope reminds me as if she’s giving me an out. As if she wants me to push her away. But she’s stuck with me.

I can’t help but laugh. Hope Ivanov is everything I’m against? It couldn’t be further from the truth.

“No, you aren’t. You’re the brilliant mind that will captivate me until the end. You and I aren’t that different, Shortcake. We do what we have to for self-preservation.”

“I kill people.” She finally confesses it to me for the first time. “And I enjoy it,” she adds with a half-smile.

Beautiful.

Lethal.

Unhinged.

She couldn’t be more perfect.

“Yeah, you need better training,” Anya says, rolling her eyes.

Her father is watching me carefully. I know his approval means a lot to her, but someone like Alek Ivanov is not easily swayed. In fact, I might have to try my entire life to win him over.

“Something doesn’t make sense to me,” he says, still trying to intimidate me. I’m already half dead, so I don’t know why he thinks glaring at me will have me shriveling into my blankets. “We pay an exorbitant amount of money to keep our business under wraps in that station. So how did you end up with all the evidence?”

I smile, surprised he hasn’t already figured it out. It makes me feel good to know I’ve had one up on him this entire time.

“You didn’t think the name you were sending all that money to was the real person, did you?” I ask carefully.

His eyebrows dip. “I’ve reached out to your chief multiple times. Personally.”

I can’t help the arrogant smile that forms on my lips. “The chief who works for me.” His eyes narrow. “You didn’t think I’d come all this way without corrupting the system and creating a business that works for me, did you? You don’t think you’re the only family paying us handsomely to make things go away, do you?” The chief was the first person I bought out and answers to me.

“Little shit,” Anya says, sounding impressed.

“So why haven’t you made this serial killer business go away yet?” Alek asks. Hope is staring at me like I grew a third head.

“Oh, you thought you were the only bad influence out of the two of us?” I reply.

I learned from a young age how to study people and decipher their patterns; it made it easy to manipulate and exploit them. It started with self-preservation, but then it became something more. I’ve made a fortune from it, more money than I know what to do with because of it.

“I was enjoying our game too much,” I tell Hope as I rub my thumb over her hand. “I wasn’t ready to catch you yet.”

“Young love is getting stupider by the day.” Anya scoffs, rolling her eyes and throwing her hands up in the air.

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