Page 97 of The Contract

Fully transferrable upon my death.

But then, there’s her.

A soft, persistent angel whispering in my ear with the subtlety of a fucking wrecking ball.

The one voice I can never silence.

Trinity.

My sister.

The image of her battered body threads viciously through my thoughts, barbed wire slicing over flesh.

I don’t even have to glance down to see the blood on my hands. I feel it—slick warmth oozing down my ice-cold fingers.

A permanent fracture etched into my mind from the moment I found her—discarded like trash, crumpled behind a filthy dumpster. The black necklace around her throat was so tight it left deep, angry marks.

Because she’d been sold more than once.

Blood drips down my desk. I watch it fall.

And just like that, my urge to own a Keenan evaporates.

“If the concierge said no, it’s a no.” My voice is steel-edged. Brutal. Final.

Fury briefly ignites across Declan’s face, swiftly replaced by a sly, unsettling grin. “I said I’d make it worth your while. And I’m a man of my word.”

Without room for another refusal, he yanks a folded sheet of paper from his pocket—an image—and slaps it down onto the desk between us.

From Declan, I expect something predictably twisted—blackmail, porn, my driver’s dog held hostage.

But this?

This is… hell, I don’t even fucking know.

A bored, irritated sigh escapes my chest. “This interests me because…?”

Patronizing as hell, he clucks his tongue. “Don’t you recognize it?”

“No.”

Satisfaction flickers across Declan’s brow. “Then I’ll use small words so you can keep up.” He taps the image again, lazy and deliberate.

I picture the sharp, satisfying glide of steel slicing clean across his throat—one precise jab to the jugular would end this little tête-à-tête perfectly.

“That’s O’Hare Terminal,” he says. “That’s the date. And that”—he drags his finger to the center—“that’s your poor papa, minutes before he vanished.”

A blast of adrenaline locks my breath in my lungs.

Declan leans closer, his voice a seductive whisper dripping with cruelty. “And we’ve got it on very good authority that whoever took him…bought Trinity, too.”

Emotions blacken, dark rage flooding every hollow place, every vein, every fracture inside me.

Declan knows exactly which nerve to press.

How deep to cut.

How desperate I am—how easily I’d trade what little remains of my soul to become his perfect weapon.

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