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CHAPTEREIGHTEEN
HADES
The four of us sit at a café table on a busy Paris street. Ares has a newspaper, but he surreptitiously scans the faces of every single person that passes our table. Eros shuffles a deck of cards as he looks around, fanning and folding the deck over and over again.
I scribble notes about our upcoming job into a tablet, scowling at the other patrons until the tables around us begin to clear out.
And Penny?
Her lips are clamped together, her cup of tea long since gone cold. She stares at the gold-plated bullet that I placed in the middle of the table, unable to concentrate on much else. The bullet is inscribed in a cursive scrawl.
It saysHades.
I set my tablet aside and look at Penny. She reaches for the folded piece of stationary sitting next to the letter. She reads the contents again, although I am sure that she knows them by heart by now. They are exceedingly simple.
We know that you’ve raped dear, sweet Persephone.
We know that she carries your child.
She belongs in New Orleans, untouched and childless.
This can only be rectified with bloodshed.
Choose who you will protect.
You’ve been warned.
— Constantine, Benjamin, and Marcia
“Where did you find the bullet?” Eros asks, shuffling the deck.
“I found it with the note in my luggage when we arrived at the hotel. The thing is, I looked for something in my bag after we got off the plane here in Paris. So it must’ve been slipped into my bag sometime after that.”
He looks at Ares, who is still silent. He reaches out and edges the paper aside a few inches, arching a brow.
“What do you think? Is the threat viable?”
Ares gives a half shrug. “If they could get close enough to put it in Persephone’s luggage, why wouldn’t they just take her?”
“Good question,” I say, my gaze lingering on a suspicious-looking man who leans casually against a wall opposite the café.
My alarm bells are sensitive as fuck right now and right now, they are ringing at the way the man is casually scanning our seating area. But in the next moment, the man pushes off the wall and says something to a man who approaches him. The two take off, strolling, and I let out a breath I didn’t know I had been holding.
“Maybe they couldn’t grab me,” Penny says. “Maybe the bullet was a part of their backup plan.”
“The whole thing is pretty fucked up,” Eros says, his gaze sliding around the street corner.
“Penny.” I reach over and pluck the letter from her hands, folding it and sticking it in the inside pocket of my jacket. “I’m sorry, but I think we should keep you inside while we are in Paris. I know the weather is pleasant, but this letter makes your family’s intentions clear.”
She clenches and unclenches her hands. She looks at me, dry eyed, but more puzzled than anything else.
“I don’t understand,” she whispers. “My parents don’t act as a unit. And they definitely don’t keep track of my movements. How do they even know I am not hiding out somewhere in small town Louisiana?”
Taking her hand, I pull it into my lap. “Constantine.”
She looks horrified. “You think he has something to do with this?”
“It’s too much of a coincidence for your parents to have the ability to suddenly track you down. If they have the information, it was supplied to them by Constantine.”
