My gaze flicked over to his car and the sparkly pig rune dangling from his rearview mirror. Well, now I knew where he’d gotten that from.

“I can see that you’re surprised, but I assure you that I’m telling the truth. Catalina’s mother, Laura, was my sister. I brought some photos, in case you need further convincing.” He gestured at the folder on the seat of the rocking chair. “May I?”

“Slowly.”

Silvio opened the file and grabbed a slip of paper out of it, before crossing the porch and holding it out to me. I took it from him, and he quickly stepped back out of knife’s reach.

It was a photo of Silvio standing next to a shorter woman with similar features—who was cradling a young Catalina in her arms. The picture had to be at least fifteen years old, but I could still tell that it was Catalina. Same eyes, same nose, same happy smile. And now that I saw Silvio and her in the same space, I could see the familial resemblance. Faint, but it was there in the shape of their faces, the arch of their eyebrows, and the curve of their lips.

“I came here because I care about Catalina very much,” Silvio said, his voice tight with more emotion than he’d shown the whole time we’d been talking.

I placed the photo on the porch railing. I knew what he was going to say next.

“I came here, Ms. Blanco, because I want you to protect Catalina.”

I let out a soft laugh and shook my head. “No, that’s not what you’re asking. That’s not what you want me to do. Not really. At least have the guts to say it out loud.”

His hand crept up to Benson’s rune stabbed into the middle of his tie. He rubbed it a moment before dropping his fingers from the pin. “Very well. I came here because I want to hire you as the Spider. I want you to kill Benson.”

15

His voice was as soft as my laugh had been, and his meaning was just as dark. But the determined pinch of his mouth, the slight flare of his nostrils, and the icy chill in his gray eyes told me that he meant every word.

“Name your price,” he continued. “Whatever you want, I will gladly pay it.”

For the first time, I saw Silvio Sanchez as more than an anonymous bad guy and disposable hired hand. I saw him for what he truly was in that moment: a man desperately trying to protect his family.

In a way, his actions eerily mirrored my own. Except that I had wanted Catalina to disappear and Bria to let go of her vendetta against Benson, whereas Silvio was taking a much more direct, brutal approach to the situation. I admired him for that, for doing what he thought was necessary, for having the guts to come here, knowing that I might kill him anyway simply because of what Benson had done to Roslyn.

But I’d told Bria the truth when I’d said that I was tired of all the blood, battles, and bodies. If I did what Silvio wanted, then I’d be in the thick of things with Benson, fighting him until one of us was dead. Did I really want to risk myself like that for Catalina? Until two days ago, she’d just been a girl who worked for me. Nothing more, nothing less. Did that really make her my responsibility? Was it my duty to protect all my employees from every bad, dangerous thing that life threw at them? What about their friends and families? Doing pro bono work, helping folks who couldn’t help themselves, was all well and good. Fletcher had taught me that. But where did it end?

I supposed the answer to that last question was whether I could live with myself if I let Benson kill Catalina just for trying to do the right thing.

And the answer was a resounding no.

But the irony of the situation didn’t escape me either. Silvio was doing what I usually did—getting to the point of the matter—while I stood on the sidelines, trying to keep everyone safe, including myself. I’d never considered myself to be a coward, but that’s what I was being when it came to Benson. Cowardly—or at least too concerned with my own problems to help the person who needed it the most, Catalina.

“Well, Ms. Blanco?” Silvio asked. “Do we have a deal?”

Instead of answering his question, I asked a few of my own. “Why come to me at all? Why not persuade Catalina not to testify? Surely, that would be the easier option. Cheaper too.”

“Believe me, I’ve tried.” Silvio huffed. “I’ve spent all damn day trying, ever since Benson got the call this morning that there was a witness. The second I heard that, I knew it was Catalina. Like you said, I’d seen the two of you there, and you certainly weren’t going to testify.”

I raised my knife to my heart. “Oh, Silvio, you wound me with your lack of faith. I actually do like to do my public duty from time to time.”

He barked out a laugh. “I just bet you do. Probably about as much as I do.” He laughed again, the sound even more caustic than before. “And now Troy has gotten her in trouble again. I never did like that little punk.”

“That’s a bit harsh, isn’t it? Considering who you work for and all the nasty things you’ve done for him.”

“Bah.” Silvio waved his hand, shooing away my words, and started pacing back and forth across the porch. “Even if it wasn’t Troy, Catalina would still want to testify. Her mother raised her to be a good kid that way. Laura never liked what I did and who I worked for, just like you said.”

“So why do it? Why stay with Benson?”

He shrugged. “Because there weren’t any other options when Benson took over Southtown. It was join him or die. So I did what I had to do.” He stopped pacing to stare at me. “You should understand that, if nothing else.”

I looked down at my knife. Maybe it was the way the sun was gleaming off the blade, but for a moment, I was back in Southtown, back in that alley with Coral, clutching a broken beer bottle and staring at a man’s blood on my hand.

“Ms. Blanco?”

I shook off the memory and concentrated on Silvio again. Oh, I did understand it, more than he realized.

More than I wanted to.

“So you think asking me to kill Benson will make up for all the bad things you’ve done?”

He laughed again. “Of course not. I’ll pay for my sins, just like we all will in the end. But Catalina doesn’t deserve to die for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. And she especially doesn’t deserve what Benson will do to her. You saw what he did to Troy.”

“Hard to forget.”

“And he wasn’t even using the full extent of his Air magic last night.” A faint wince of concern creased Silvio’s face.

Air magic? So my theory was right, and Benson did have that elemental power mixed in with his own vampiric ability.

Silvio stared at me, the ice in his eyes melting into a desperate plea. “Please. Please kill Benson. Whatever your current asking price is, I’ll double it, triple it. And that’s not all. I’ll even help you, if you want. I’ve already started. See?” He gestured at the folder still on the rocking chair.

“Help? What sort of help?”

Silvio picked up the file, pulled a fat wad of papers and pictures out of it, and started showing them to me one by one. “Benson’s daily and weekly schedules, blueprints of his Southtown mansion, photos of the exterior grounds and every room inside the structure, the routes he takes to meet with his drug suppliers.” He hesitated. “I wasn’t sure exactly how you go about doing . . . what you do, so I thought it pertinent to include a wide range of material about all aspects of Benson’s life.”

“You could always do the job yourself,” I pointed out. “You’re his right-hand man. You’re close enough to kill him anytime you want to.”

“Believe me, I’ve dreamed of it many times,” Silvio murmured, slipping the papers and pictures back into the folder. “And if I thought that I could do it, then I would already be loading the gun. But Beau can sniff out the faintest hint of insurrection. It’s his Air magic, you see, it . . .”

“Gives him a bit of precognition,” I finished. “Yeah. I know.”

Silvio pinched the bridge of his nose the way that I’d seen his niece do at the restaurant after a particularly stressful shift. “Then you can see my predicament, Ms. Blanco. I can’t let him hurt Catalina, and I can’t kill him myself.”

“And maybe we should both trust my sister to do her job. Bria will do her best to protect Catalina. I can promise you that. She wants to take Benson down too badly not to.”

Silvio gave me a sad smile. “Catalina has told me many good things about your sister. How dedicated she is, how honest, how brave. But I think we both know that it won’t be enough. Not against someone like Benson.”

The image of Troy’s desiccated body filled my mind. The thought of Benson doing the same thing to Catalina, to Bria, turned my stomach. And I finally admitted to myself that my actions of the last two days had been nothing but stall tactics. I was tired of constantly fighting for my life—of all the blood and battles and bodies that just never seemed to end.

But I would never, ever get tired of protecting the people I loved.

So I stared into Silvio’s eyes and held out my hand, letting him see the poison promise glinting in my icy gray gaze.

He handed me the file without another word.

I hefted the folder in my hand. It felt even thicker and heavier than the ones in Fletcher’s office. Silvio appeared to have done his homework. I hoped his information would be as useful as the old man’s always was.

Silvio sucked in a breath and opened his mouth as if to thank me, but he thought better of it, and the air slowly hissed out between his teeth. Instead, he put his hand over his heart and bowed low to me—even lower than Benson had at Northern Aggression. But what surprised me the most was that there was no mockery in the gesture.

Then he straightened back up, nodded at me, stepped off the porch, and headed over to his car. He walked quickly, his shoulders high and tight, as if he expected me to dart forward and plunge my knife into his back at any second.

I seriously considered it.

I had the intel on Benson, which was all I needed to do the job. And it wasn’t like Silvio was blameless in all of this. He’d stood by and watched Benson kill Troy, Derrick, and countless others before them. In a way, that made Silvio’s hands even bloodier than his boss’s. Besides, if what Silvio had said was true, and Benson could sense others’ ill intentions toward him, then I was better off cutting Silvio’s throat here and now, rather than letting him go back to Benson and risking that the drug kingpin would realize that his right-hand man was plotting against him—with me.

I looked at the photo of Silvio, Laura, and Catalina. His expression was somber, but he had his arm around his sister’s shoulder in a protective way, and Catalina was grinning up at him, like he’d hung the moon.

I let Silvio walk.

He stopped at his car, slowly turning his head in my direction, as though he expected to find me right behind him, raising my knife high for the killing strike. But when he realized that I was letting him go, he didn’t waste any time getting gone.

Silvio slid inside the vehicle, cranked the engine, and steered down the driveway, with the Pork Pit pig rune dangling from his rearview mirror winking at me all the while.

16

“I can’t believe that you agreed to kill Benson for him.”

I sighed, crossed my arms over my chest, and leaned back against the kitchen counter. “Really? Why not?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” Finn said, his green eyes wide and accusing. “Because you didn’t even talk price!”

Owen chuckled, far more amused by Finn than I was. The two of them were sitting at the table in the breakfast nook off the kitchen. As soon as Silvio had left, I’d called and asked them to come over to Fletcher’s house for a powwow. Now I almost wished that I hadn’t, given Finn’s incessant whining about the fact that I hadn’t negotiated payment for the job.

I hadn’t called Bria at all—for obvious reasons.

“I mean, really, Gin,” he muttered. “You can’t just keep killing people for free. Pro bono is not a phrase that is in the Finnegan Lane vocabulary.”

“Oh, no,” I drawled. “But greedy, shameless hustler certainly is.”

“Damn skippy.”

Owen chuckled again. There was no use arguing with Finn, so I grabbed a spoon off the counter and went back to the pan on the stove. I’d already been through Silvio’s file while I’d been waiting for them to show up, and I’d decided to make us all some dinner while Finn and Owen reviewed the info. After the emotional roller coaster of the day, I needed some serious comfort food, and I’d decided on good, old-fashioned sloppy joes.

I’d melted a little butter in the bottom of the pan, before browning up some ground sirloin, adding ketchup, and letting everything bubble away together. I leaned over the pan and breathed in, enjoying the spicy tickle of chili powder and black pepper steaming up from the simmering mixture. I gave my sloppy joe filling a final stir, then turned off the stove.

While Finn and Owen flipped through the papers and photos, I sliced up a loaf of Sophia’s sourdough bread and started making sandwiches. I covered one piece of bread with a bit of mayonnaise, along with a thick layer of my spicy sloppy joe mix, then topped that off with some shredded sharp cheddar cheese and another piece of bread. I made six sandwiches, two for each of us, then grabbed the parmesan-dill potatoes I’d been roasting in the oven, along with parfait glasses filled with dark chocolate mousse I’d made earlier in the week. I put everything on a tray and carried it over to the table.

My stomach gurgled with happiness as we all dug into the food. The warm, hearty potatoes pleasantly offset the slow burn of the spices in the sloppy joes, while the mousse was a rich cocoa concoction. I washed everything down with tart, crisp lemonade.