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“You said yourself she didn’t do any real damage,” I pointed out. “And she wasn’t spying on me—she was spying on Twilight.”
Cain’s leg jiggled faster. “As far as we know,” he said under his breath.
“What the fuck’s that supposed to mean?”
“That she wasn’t spying on you as far as we know.”
“She wasn’t, okay?” I said, even though I wasn’t completely certain myself. “And none of this is your goddamned business.”
He stiffened. Even his leg stopped moving.
I’d offended him. I didn’t apologize, though, because there are some lines even an old friend didn’t cross.
“No?” he retorted. “Her spying put us all in danger.”
We glared at each other. I looked away first.
“I’m handling it, okay? Now tell me what’s happened since I left.” I dropped into a gray leather chair he’d bought at some chichi French store in Montreal. “Any word about Lemaire?”
A high-ranking Quebec City soldier, Lemaire and another vampire named Fleur had helped place Twilight on Lilith Island so she could stake Brien. When the truth had come out, Brien and Twilight had gone after them, taking out Fleur and a couple of other coven members—but not Lemaire. He’d managed to escape in time.
“Hasn’t been seen since Brien staked Fleur,” Cain told me. “We have intel that he may have fled to France, but I haven’t been able to confirm that.”
“I’d like to find the motherfucker who tipped him off.”
A tight-lipped nod of agreement. “Now that you’re back, I’m putting Adrian on it full-time, just in case Lemaire is thinking about staking Twilight in retaliation.”
“Brien amped up security on her?”
“Yeah. But FYI, Twilight doesn’t know. Insists she doesn’t need it.”
“Understood.”
We discussed a couple of other current projects, then I started to rise. “If we’re done here, I have some work to catch up on.”
Cain grunted. A suspiciously vague grunt.
I sank back into my seat. “What?”
“Nothing.” His eyes focused on the door behind me. “It’s been pretty quiet, actually.”
“But?”
Cain adjusted the left cuff of his dress shirt. Then he fiddled with the right.
“It’s your father,” he said, still without looking at me.
The back of my neck crawled. The last time I’d seen my ‘father’—and I used the word loosely because as far as I was concerned, Marco Esposito was my sperm donor and nothing else—had been five years ago in Montreal. Somehow, he’d found out I was in the city with Brien and had talked his way into a vampire speakeasy.
The man could charm anyone; it was his superpower.
Anyway, Esposito had hit me up for ten thousand dollars—a “loan,” he called it, even though we both knew I’d never see that cash again. I paid up and told him to get lost. He hadn’t, of course. Every six months or so, he sent a request for more through his friends or family on the island—or worse, my mom.
I willed the tension lifting my shoulders to loosen. “He just wants money.”
“You shouldn’t keep paying him.”
“It’s worth it if it keeps him away from Lilith Island.”
