Penniless (Finders Keepers Book 2) by Allie Stern

Author:Allie Stern [Stern, Allie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2022-11-14T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 16

Connor

The letter lay on the counter as if it were a dark object. Embers crackled and popped in my chest as I replayed how this had happened. My uncle had come into my home. After Emily had her fun with him, I was going to rip him in two. He was a dead man walking; more so now than he was before. Why was he even coming after Liam and me like this? I could understand my father, but we had been close. Hadn’t we?

“Never start a war you can’t win,” my uncle informed us.

Liam scooped his mashed potatoes up while he stared at our uncle, drinking in every scrap of knowledge. We had just gotten back from one of the training programs Dad was putting us through. I wanted to go straight to bed with a bag of fast food, but Uncle Cormac was set on us eating as a family. Our father was gone for the night, so he was staying over.

“How do you know you will win?” Liam asked.

“Prepare,” he answered, with a no-shit kind of expression.

I rolled my eyes and scoffed under my breath. That was really enlightening. I could have been playing my guitar instead of listening to this.

“So when you prepare, you know you will win?” Liam hesitantly asked.

“Educate us, dear old wise one,” I said with a condescending tone.

My uncle tossed his head back as a loud laugh burst from his lips.

Cormac stopped laughing and looked at me. “No wonder you are always on your dad’s shit list.”

It wasn’t that funny. I slouched down in my seat. His stare cut through me, making me pick at my cuticles under the table until they stung.

He pointed his fork at me as he said, “Know your enemy, and once you truly know them, you can take them down.”

I broke free of the memory, and my chest tightened. He knew us from the inside out. We were family, but these attacks were calculated and personal. He knew we would chase after him and leave the house vulnerable. Maybe he even knew Emily would be distraught enough to chase after us.

I shook my head at the box filled with photos. He had captured the moments of us reuniting in Time Square, heading to the house where he’d kept Emily hostage, and a polaroid of her running after us in the stairwell. He wasn’t just following us. He was stalking us and anticipating every move we were making. Our uncle wasn’t an amateur playing childish games. He was an elite, strategically jabbing at our weakness. Emily.

Liam stared at Emily like she was going to lose it again. All I saw was the small twitch in the corner of her eye with the need to shed blood and regain control. My fist clenched. Had I rubbed off on her?

“This letter isn’t from Cormac. It isn’t his handwriting,” Liam said on an exhale.

“Of course it fucking is,” I sneered, furrowing my brows.

Emily frowned and rubbed her palms up and down her arms.

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