Page 73 of King of Cruelty

Bane gave her a look that would’ve boiled her head. “I can log in but I can’t turn off the system. Only the developer knows the code, and that was by design. If no one in the family knows, then none of us can be forced into doing what you’re doing now!”

“Let me worry about that. Just do what I said.”

Flicking from her to me to his family, Bane sat down.

Wilson and Debra—and I—were shadows over his shoulder, tracking his every twitch and keystroke. As ordered, Bane pulled up a program calledCofre. He logged in, then Wilson grabbed his desk chair and flung him back. A hard shove sent me flying too, right into Wilson’s hold.

“You all thought you were so clever.” Debra sauntered up to the desktop, flipping the knife on her palm. “Hire a security expert in complete secrecy, allow him to choose the shutoff code, and then send him on his way. No one would know the important information he holds in his head. No one will even look his way.”

“And no one can,” Liam sliced in. “He died over a decade ago, taking the code with him. He was—”

“—shot in his home,” Debra finished. “The police claimed it was a burglary gone wrong.” She smirked right in his face. “I think they wrote that on the report to make his wife feel better. It was kinder than telling her I didn’t take a damn thing when I tortured him for hours until cutting things off finally made him loosen his lips.”

I goggled at her. “What the fuck! What the hell is wrong with you?!”

Debra blinked at me, holding her hand to her chest likewho? Moi?“Not a thing is wrong with me, Mackenzie Blaine.”

I shivered at her casual use of a name she shouldn’t know.

“What you should really be asking is what is wrong with your pals here? How could they have been so stupid as to let an outsider walk out of here with the code to their security? And of course, because they’ve never known the code, they’ve never been able to change it any time in the last ten years. So this...”

Bending over, she pulled up the main screen. Clearly displayed across the top wasGUEST MODE, but beneath it were some of the modes Bane talked about. Family Mode, Hostile Enemy Mode, Natural Disaster Mode, and even a Cops Mode. At the bottom beneath all of that was a red button we all knew well:

SHUTDOWN MODE

Debra clicked it and a warning box appeared on screen.

Warning: If you proceed, all camera feed, entrance codes, exit codes, door alarms, panic buttons, and all existing security protocols will be disabled.

Confirm you wish to proceed with shutdown?

I internally screamed as she typed it in.Don’t work, don’t work, don’t—

SHUTDOWN CONFIRMED

“Still works,” Debra finished, straightening up.

Still and heavy silence hung over the room. Even River fell silent in the closet, his banging coming to a halt.

Adeline stepped beside her daughter, drawing Genny close and stroking her hair. My friend did not look good at all. She needed to be in bed resting. But then... I didn’t think any of us were doing too well either.

“What do you want?” Adeline asked simply.

Debra scoffed. “It’s incredible to me that you even have to ask. You have ruined and destroyed so many innocent lives, you lost track of your body count decades ago. You can’t even remember our names, which we haven’t changed!

“Wilson,” she cried, pointing to him. “Jillian, Yumi, Natalya, Maryann, and Debra. The names our fathers gave us before you took away theirs!”

If understanding was dawning on Adeline, she wasn’t giving it away on her face. None of Sunny, Liam, and Bane’s parents gave a sign that they had a clue what she was talking about.

“No?” Debra stepped out, facing the Merchants head-on. “What about you, St. John? Don’t you remember Racer, Viper, Gunner, and Hawk?”

The man shrugged. “Not even a little bit. Why? Should I?”

I could hear her clenched jaw cracking from where I stood. “You should. You should remember shooting my father in the stomach, cutting out his tongue, and leaving him to bleed out in a back-alley dumpster. You should remember my father, Donald Seward!”

Another shrug. “Nah, doesn’t ring a bell. But if I did all of that to him, you can rest assured the cockless bastard son of a gas station toilet seat deserved everything he got and more.” The impossible man smiled—smiled!—right into her eyes. “I hope that puts your mind at ease.”

Debra snarled. Lips peeling back from her teeth, I wouldn’t have been able to pick her out of a lineup with ten other feral animals. She charged him, knife high—then jerked to a stop.

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