Page 24 of Cruel Crypts

Heading straight over to the filing cabinet, I punched in the unlock code on the keypad and grinned when it clicked open. My dad should really know better than to use JoJo’s birthday as his unlock code, and I knew it was the same one he used for his phone. Someone really should give him a heads-up about changing it.

Thanks to his meticulous organisational skills, it was easy to find the file for the Greenwoods. I shuffled through the papers—standard criminal disclosure check for Letitia Greenwood, headshot photos of them both, references from Letitia’s previous employer. I noted down their previous address details, unfamiliar with the area—somewhere in Surrey, south of London—but noting it down for research. There were medical reports for both of them, too—height, weight, blood pressure, cholesterol, STDs… It looked as if every one of my parents’ standard employee health checks had been covered at the time of employment. Clipped to the health check pages were papers noting medication details—Elena was on the pill, and her mother was taking a low dosage of prescribed mild anti-anxiety meds.

There were no passports. But there were copies of their birth certificates, so I took those too. Once I had everything I needed, I spread them out on my dad’s desk, switched on his desk lamp, and began photographing the papers, then uploaded them to the secure server.

After I’d put everything back in its proper place and switched off the desk lamp, I sent a text to “Nitro” to let him know it was all uploaded, then made my way upstairs to my bedroom. I gritted my teeth, angry all over again that thanks to Elena, I was in this situation, skulking around my own fucking house and trying not to wake anyone when I could have been balls-deep in a willing girl or passed out in my bed in the crypts after a good night.

When I reached my bedroom door, it was ajar, and I paused on the landing. It shouldn’t be open. I distinctly remembered closingandlocking it before I left the house earlier.

All my senses were on high alert. Fuck. If we had an intruder, I didn’t have a weapon. But I had the element of surprise, and I was strong. That was all I had to work with.

Treading noiselessly, I eased the door open and looked inside.

I saw them straight away. Although my room was dark, the tiny torch light they were currently shining inside my fucking bedside drawer gave away their position, and I wasted no time slipping into the room and closing the door softly behind me. Using all my speed and strength, I launched myself at them and took them down in a tackle that would’ve been highly illegal if I’d done it on the lacrosse field. We hit the bed, hard, and it took me a second to get my bearings before I realised just who I had pinned underneath me.

Elena fucking Greenwood.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing sneaking around my room and digging through my shit?” I roared. “First you go poking around the crypts, trying to get into places that are off fucking limits, and now you’re in my bedroom? What the fuck are you playing at? I’m going to wake my dad up right now and tell him what you’ve been up to, and you and your mother can kiss this job goodbye and get the fuck out of our lives!”

“W…w…” she wheezed, and only then did I notice how hard her heart was hammering and how her breath was coming in short pants. Her eyes were wide and panicked, and fuck if I’d be responsible for crushing the girl to death, so I moved back a tiny bit, just enough for her to suck a few deep breaths into her lungs.

“Wait.” Her lip trembled, and her eyes shone with unshed tears, and it did things to my cock that it really shouldn’t. “Wait.Please. Don’t tell him.”

“Give me one good reason. Because I already caught you in the crypts,twice, and now I’ve caught you red-handed, going through my fucking stuff. As far as I’m concerned, there’snoexcuse for that.” I pressed her down into my mattress. Just my fucking luck that I’d never had a girl in this bed before, and here I was, with the one girl I hated more than anything lying underneath me.

“I wanted to pay you back for being such a bastard to me all week,” she said eventually, and I fuckingknewshe was lying.

“Guess what. I don’t believe you.”

“Believe me or don’t, it’s the truth.” Her voice was toneless, and her eyes had taken on a blank expression that I knew all too well because I’d perfected it.

“That’s not reason enough. Get ready to pack up your shit because you’ll be out of here in the morning.”

“Knox.Please.”

Something about the way she breathed my name and begged me for mercy went straight to my already half-hard dick.

I looked down at her and threw down the gauntlet, a cold, taunting smile curving over my lips. “Convince me not to tell him.”

15

ELENA

Convince me not to tell him.

Knox’s words seemed to suck all the air out of the room. When he’d tackled me, after my initial moment of panic, I couldn’t help the flare of relief that the fact that he was here meant he wasn’t out somewhere with another girl.

I didn’t even want to unpack what was happening, but I was overflowing with adrenaline and shock, and even though he was the enemy, he was so fucking gorgeous and strong and here, and, well…you didn’t have to like someone to sleep with them. Hate fucking was a thing, after all. And it would make it all the more sweeter when we brought his family down, knowing that part of him wanted me, even though he clearly resented that fact.

There was a taunt in his smile, and I knew that at least part of him had expected me to back out immediately. But that was because he didn’t know me.

“Okay.” I licked my lips, and I didn’t miss the way his tongue followed the movement. “You want to be convinced?” I’d noticed how his pupils had dilated when I begged him, as they had last night in the crypts when I’d been helpless. He clearly got off on being the powerful one, like the arrogant asshole he was, but he also liked it when I fought back.

I could give him helpless damsel with an edge of fire. If this was my one shot at convincing him, then I needed to push as many of his buttons as possible.

It wouldn’t exactly be a hardship.

“Hmmm.” I widened my legs so he was settled between them and hooked my bare leg over his. I was in a black cami and pyjama shorts set, which covered just about as much as my dress had done last night, but this time, I had no instruments of torture strapped to my feet. Sliding my heel up the back of his calf, I reached up and threaded my fingers through his hair, scraping my nails across his scalp.