Page 6 of Freedom’s Inferno

Breathing through my nose, I smoothed my dress, squared my shoulders, and stepped back out into the church.

The mourners began to trickle out, the pews emptying one row at a time. I couldn’t escape fast enough. Fresh autumn air hit my face in a rush, cool and clean. I sucked in a breath, clearing lungfuls of frankincense. The breeze swept away hours spent pretending to give a shit and letting strangers touch me.

My black dress billowed around my legs, crisp leaves rasping against pavement with the shift of the wind. The trees were on the cusp of turning, deep greens tinged with the hint of reds and orange. I turned my head, and my eyes snagged on a man.

He leaned against a black SUV, a cigarette glowing between his fingers. The man wasn’t dressed in funeral attire. He didn’t wear a suit or pressed tie.

Sharp eyes locked onto me and refused to look away. His gaze dissected me.

The hairs on the back of my neck prickled, and I took an instinctive step back toward the door.

I’m being paranoid. My nerves are too raw, that’s all.

With one last glance, I turned back and slipped inside the church, the heavy doors closing behind me. Unease clung to me like smoke, and for the first time I wondered if Richard’s death had opened a door to something I wasn’t prepared for.

Chapter 3

Chuck

Iditched the suit. The tie. The polished shoes. All of it. I traded the confines of formality for a plain black T-shirt, jeans, and my riding jacket.

Neutral. Forgettable.

I didn’t need to look like anyone worth remembering.

I meant to stay home, to go to bed early, but I was restless. Every time I tried to settle in, the static drowned out my thoughts. Instead, I found myself unleashing a lifetime of grief at one hundred thirty miles per hour. The road yawned open before me, adrenaline flooding my system with a high unlike anything else on the planet. The world blurred, the horizon pulled me forward in a tunnel of black asphalt and roaring wind. Trees melted into streaked silhouettes in the night, signs vanished before I could read them, and the only real thing was the shuddering machine beneath me and the furious beat of my own heart. Recklessness dared the void to call my bluff, but maybe that was the point.

Blackwell Sterling’s office was dark when I let myself in, the air stale with abandonment. For a place that once thrummed with phones ringing off the hook, deals closing, and champagne corks popping in the conference room, the space was too quiet. Now, the silence echoed, like I was standing in the hollow corpse of a once thriving hedge fund. Investors were pulling out in droves. The building would be a tombstone with our names etched into it before long.

I moved down the hall to Richard’s office, images of his painted body intruding on my already racing thoughts. The lingering smell of his cologne hit me as soon as I opened his door, like a ghost I couldn’t shake. My stomach tightened. He was gone, and yet so much of him still remained.

I dropped into the chair, the leather groaning under my weight, and rifled through accounts. Pages of numbers blurred together, deposits and transfers, until one name started cropping up again and again.

Lana Blackwell’s signature was all over our books. Page after page, swooping and perfect. All so compliant, so innocent. Except, none of it was guiltless. Her signature was the thread woven through half of the questionable transactions.

My pulse kicked.

That sneaky bitch, playing the grieving widow while her name was inked across the ledger.

I leaned back, staring at her neat little scrawl, and bile rose in my throat.

She’d been standing right there the whole time, hiding behind Dickie’s shadow, sharper than I’d ever imagined. I’d thought she was just along for the ride, a spoiled little princess, but it turned out she’d been keeping score.

I pulled the relevant files together, jamming them into a folder, and my hand tightened on the edge until my knuckles popped. If that fire-haired witch thought she could bleed the firm dry and walk away, she had another thing coming.

I shut the lights off behind me and headed for the elevator. The empty building hummed, expectant, like the place held its breath. By the time I hit the ground floor, every instinct in me was electrified. Uneasiness settled over me like a weighted blanket, suffocating in its gravity. The glass doors whooshed open, the night air slapping me in the face. But before I’d had the chance to breathe it in, I was ambushed.

A thick sack was forced over my head and my vision went black. My arms were wrenched behind my back, the folder ripped from my grip, my boots dragged across the pavement as I was hauled off the curb.

I twisted, cursed, tried to break free, but the men were practiced. Before I had the chance to process what was happening, I was thrown into the back of a vehicle, the smell of smoke and leather thick in the air. The door slammed shut, and we took off with a lurch. A sickness gripped my guts.

Damian Costa’s reach was longer than I’d prayed, and now he had me.

“Sterling,” a smooth, almost bored voice cut through the panic. “You’ve been busy.”

I didn’t answer. I was too busy concentrating on trying to slow my breathing. Playing dumb was pointless, anyway. They wouldn’t have gone to the trouble of dragging me from the night if they didn’t already know.

The rustle of shuffling paper told me he was flipping through the folder with Richard’s accounts.