A Silent Reckoning: Sinner's Empire by Nikita Slater (ereader iphone .txt) 📗

terrorize as many nannies as they could, tallying who scared which nanny away. The age difference had certainly been one barrier, but Saskia had distinct memories of sitting on her sister’s lap, reading books, playing with toys and coming up with nanny plans.

Really, they had stayed close until Leeza married, when Saskia was around twelve. Almost immediately after the wedding, Leeza started pushing her younger sister away. No matter how much Saskia begged, Leeza refused to play with her. She said married women didn’t play with children.

At the time, Saskia had been so hurt that she hadn’t questioned her sister’s about-face. Now, several years later, she wondered if maybe Leeza had been trying to drive her away for a reason.

Saskia had always been curious by nature. She had no problem with snooping through other people’s stuff. As the younger daughter, she was rarely included in organizational discussions or decisions. If she didn’t snoop, she would never know what her father was up to.

Same with her mother and her sister. Saskia had gone through all of their private things, rarely coming up with anything interesting. But this time, she was determined to ferret out the reason for her sister’s withdrawal. Maybe if Saskia figured it out, she might be able to bridge some of the distance that had grown between them.

Since Saskia started taking classes at the University, she’d been forced to look at the world in a new way. It suddenly became bigger and was filled with things she didn’t know but wanted to understand. One of the skills she’d been developing over the past year, was the ability to think critically. She no longer lived in the box her family put her in. She was able to branch out and think about things in a new and different light.

She left Kristoph’s room and walked across the hall to Leeza’s room. She didn’t hesitate but slipped inside, leaving the door open a crack. She was fairly certain she was safe since she knew Leeza’s household schedule and it almost never deviated. Leeza left with Kristoph at 9 AM for homeschooling with Kristoph’s tutor at the mansion. The cleaning staff came through from 10-12. Leeza took lunch in the mansion then came back at 1 PM to change for her yoga or Pilates class, which she attended daily at a posh studio in the city.

It was now 12:30 pm. Saskia had about twenty minutes to finish up and get out.

She went straight for Leeza’s huge walk-in closet. It was filled with women’s clothes, even more than Saskia possessed, which was impressive considering Saskia thought of herself as a fashionista. The difference between the two was that Saskia preferred high-end brand name clothes in her particular style, while Leeza preferred to have every type of yoga pants in every colour available.

She also possessed a rack of formal day clothes, mostly skirt suits and pencil dresses. She had a rack of formal wear including black gowns, dress pants, blouses. Boring clothes.

Saskia closed the closet door behind herself and used her phone for light rather than turn the closet light on. She knew she was being overly cautious but didn’t want to take the chance that she would have to have a very awkward conversation with her sister. Of course, she would lie about why she was in the closet, giving some bullshit excuse about having to attend a stuffy luncheon at the university and needing boring formal clothes for the occasion. She preferred not to lie to her sister though. She was good at it and she did it often, but it never quite sat right.

Saskia shoved a rack of jeans that had been colour coordinated to the side and sank to her knees, wiggling further into the closet until she was draped in clothes, sitting next to Leeza’s safe.

She hoped Leeza hadn’t changed the passcode.

She punched in the four digits she’d memorized the first time she’d broken into the safe; 0115. The years Saskia and Kristoph were born. She’d felt a warm glow the first time she’d punched the numbers in, but that glow had faded over the years as her sister persisted in distancing herself.

She sighed and rolled her eyes when she opened the safe. Leeza was one of those really smart stupid people. She could hit a target better than any man on their staff during range practice. She could work out a solution to almost any puzzle, but she flat out refused to understand technology. She never upgraded her software and she never changed her passwords. She was a hacker’s wet dream and Saskia was convinced it was a matter of time before Leeza’s security was breached.

That wasn’t Saskia’s problem though. She was pretty sure if a hacker got in, they wouldn’t find anything more interesting than Leeza’s yoga schedule and her online mommy chat groups.

Leeza preferred paper trails, which was why Saskia’s first target was the safe. She was disappointed though. When she looked inside, it held nothing more than a typical mobster’s stash. Piles of cash, a gun, a box of ammunition, a marriage certificate and two birth certificates; one for Leeza and one for Kristoph.

Disappointed, she started shoving the wads of cash back inside.

Something moved on the other side of the closet door. Saskia froze, holding her breath. She leaned back on her heels and peeked through the rack of clothing to the closed door. The knob was turning.

“Shit!” she whispered to herself.

She lunged through the clothes to the back of the closet, dragging the hangers back together so there wouldn’t be a gaping hole next to the safe. As the door opened, she tried her best to be soundless as she shoved the rest of the cash, the gun and everything else in the safe.

Leeza’s voice startled her and, at first, Saskia thought her sister had busted her.

“I can’t leave until Saturday, but I think I can get away overnight. I’ll tell them Giana is having a late birthday bash at her weekend cottage.”

Saskia reached