Silence filled the night around me.

I breathed out, relief coursing through my veins.

Close fucking call.

My fingers hit the keys again, trying the year my father had first been elected for the Senate.

Incorrect password.

Fuck.

Okay, a birthday, maybe? But whose? My parents’ anniversary? He didn’t really strike me as the sentimental type.

I began typing again, trying my father’s birthday—

The door swung open with an ominous creak and then the whole room was flooded with light.

Fear slammed into me, the hairs on my body standing up, goose bumps pebbling my skin. I turned slowly—dreading what I’d find there—and my gaze connected with an open doorway and the sight of my father standing in the entryway, staring at me.

Chapter Sixteen

We have it from a very reliable source that Kate Reynolds is no longer on speaking terms with her family. We wonder what—or who—reopened this rift …

—Capital Confessions blog

Kate

We stared at each other, and then my father shut the door behind him.

I gripped the panic button so hard the edges dug into my skin, my finger itching to press down.

I didn’t.

Now that the moment I’d feared was upon me, I couldn’t imagine involving Matt in this. He’d paid enough at the hands of my family.

My father stopped on the other side of his desk, facing off with me.

I pulled my hands out of my pockets, jerking my head up to meet his gaze.

“Did you think I believed your little homecoming?”

I shrugged, adopting the same veiled nonchalance he flaunted before me, even as I mentally weighed the odds of him having me killed in the middle of a dinner party.

“Did Ryan put you up to this?”

My breath hitched.

“I know he’s alive.”

Fear slammed into me, my heart racing as my worst nightmare came true. For a moment I felt like I was splintering apart, as though my body couldn’t contain the panic seeping through my bones.

It took everything I had to shut it down.

I swallowed, some of the tension easing from my body, and then I met his gaze.

“Did you figure that out when you tortured James Ryan?”

I was the daughter of a killer, made even more dangerous by the fact that he wasn’t evil or crazy. He was smart and ambitious. This wasn’t emotional for him; it was business. That made him very hard to destroy. There were no chinks in his armor, my only play to beat him at his own game.

“Do you honestly think I’m stupid enough to answer that question? Let me guess, Ryan made sure you came here with a wire.”

Actually, we had figured my father was too cunning to implicate himself and had thought the wire too risky. I didn’t speak, though. There was no point to answering his question. I’d already learned a long time ago that sometimes the best offense was to say nothing at all, letting your adversary fill the silence with the secrets you needed. Human nature being what it was, people loved to talk about themselves. People like my father with egos the size of Texas were their own special breed of narcissist. I played to his weakness now.

My father jerked his head toward his computer. “What did you think you would find there? A note saying, ‘I did it’? Proof that you could use to bring me down?”

I ignored that, too. If I was going down, then at least I’d get some answers.

“You had me stabbed.”

I wasn’t going to let him control the conversation, wasn’t going to allow him to take the upper hand from me. I wasn’t a young girl anymore, and I wasn’t afraid to get my hands dirty if I needed to.

Anger flashed into his eyes—the color so disconcertingly similar to Jackie’s. “That never should have happened.”

So despite all of his atrocities, there was a part of him that was protecting me. Sort of.

“But it did. I was in the hospital. I had stitches. I collapsed on the fucking street. Did you lose control of your employee? Did he fail to follow orders and strike out on his own? How about when he broke into my apartment on my birthday?”

“You should never have been involved in this,” he snapped. “None of this would have happened if you didn’t start giving information to that blog.”

So he did know about my involvement with Capital Confessions.

“Do you really think there’s anything that happens in this town that I don’t know about? I knew the minute you started leaking information about this family.” His gaze narrowed, his expression shrewd. “How did your sister feel about you airing her personal business for everyone to see?”

Of all of my regrets, selling out Blair was my biggest one. Trust him to land his barb precisely where it hurt.

“At least Blair talks to me. It must be really difficult for you to keep up the facade of family values when you don’t have any family to speak of.”

“Your sister will come back. She’s having a moment with that boy, but she’ll eventually realize that she has a duty to her family, to our name.”

“You’ve lost Blair. You’re crazy if you think she’ll ever have a relationship with you again. Maybe the rest of the world doesn’t see it, but we do. You can’t pretend you’re anything other than a monster.”

“That’s rich coming from you. It’s like looking in the mirror, isn’t it?”

“Not even a little bit.”

“Do you think Blair would break into my office? That she would sell out her family to a trashy blog? Do you think she would put everyone else’s needs after her own? You want to take me down and you’ve had no moral qualms about how you do it.”

He almost sounded proud.

“I haven’t killed.” I held his gaze, clinging to that essential difference between us. “And you’re wrong. We aren’t the same. Maybe you taught me to be ruthless, how to play the game, but everything I’ve done, I’ve done for Matt. Everything you do is for your own fucking greed.”

“Does that boy have any self-respect or does he just hide behind your skirts?”

“What is this, 1920? Good luck with the female vote with that attitude. He’s more of a man than you’ll ever be. He’s not afraid to ask for help when he needs it, knows I’m not some weak, helpless creature who needs protecting.”

“You’ve betrayed your family for him.”

“He is my family. He always was. Matt and my sisters are my only family.” My gaze narrowed speculatively. “It must really piss you off to see us so close, to see Jackie treated as our sister. You can’t bury that shit anymore. Can’t hide behind all of your lies.”

“Do you really think I’m scared of a blog like Capital Confessions? I’ve been in the Senate longer than you’ve been alive. Blogs like Capital Confessions come and go. I’m not afraid of the nonsense they print about me.”

Even he couldn’t be so arrogant as to think he was above public opinion. For all of his money and power, he still held an elected office. Upsets happened all the time, so unless he wanted to lose his seat, he needed to start caring.

“I think you’re going to have to be extra careful if you’re running for president. I think you’ll be under a level of scrutiny you avoided when you ruled over Virginia as an incumbent with a wealth of connections and support. I think your opponents will have deeper pockets behind them and will be able to dig for dirt more than anyone you’ve ever run against. You just better hope that they don’t find the bodies you’ve buried.”

I took aim and fired.

“You killed James Ryan—one of your oldest friends—to cover up the fact that he was diverting arms that should have been going to American troops and instead sending them to Afghani warlords with interests contrary to the United States—with your assistance. For what? Money? Campaign contributions?

“You killed Matt’s Army unit because they got too close and realized you were a traitor to your own country, sending weapons to the other side, because they saw payments go down that would have implicated you. All those bodies so that you could cover up your treason.”