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“Calvin signed on to help him and was killed without a second thought. Calvin’s been in the life since he was fifteen, and he couldn’t take this guy. What’s a hundred-and-fifteen-pound designer from North Quay going to do if she sniffs out this traitor and we don’t make it in time? Other than become another innocent death on my conscience?”
Sole stepped between us. “Liam, listen to what you just said. Calvin was in on it. He watched you, Sienna, Kenzie, and Tricky climb out of that car, and he still put a bomb in it. He didn’t wait until you came back another night alone. He didn’t stone up to warn the man he’s worked with for three years. He walked away knowing he sentenced Elizabeth to die.”
Sole blocked most of Liam, but not his hands. I saw them tighten into clenched, white-knuckled fists.
“A couple of days ago, we would’ve said we trusted our employees. Before one of them tried to blow you the fuck up. So, who do we trust now? Who do we ask to root out the traitor when, for all we know, they’re working for him too?”
“She’s not up for this,” Liam snapped. “She can’t even handle questioning someone who tried to kill her! How can we expect her to go hard at your crew when she doesn’t know if they’re guilty?”
My face burned. Part of me hoped he hadn’t picked up on the true reason for my refusal. Wishful thinking—Liam saw right through me.
“It doesn’t have to be Kenzie,” Sole said. “But we need to do something. Now. Someone’s eaten away at our business for months, biding his time, and we’ve discovered the reason. The patient, methodical, ruthless killer weakened our organization, now he’s cutting off the heads one by one. Who’s next, Liam? Genny? Bane? What if they’re not as lucky as we were?”
“I don’t need convincing that we’re in trouble! I just sent my daughter away!”
I knew Liam for a short time, and I didn’t have to ask if hearing him shout was a rarity. He’s facing a threat he can’t see. Doesn’t know how to defend against.
And the last person he thinks is strong enough to face them is the twenty-three-year-old homeless designer from North Quay.
“Big bro.” Sunny clapped his shoulders—the light breeze in the face of a raging storm. “What I’m trying to convince you is you gotta stop playing this like an old-school gangster and get creative. We’ve got a rat. Possibly a dozen little rats. We can toss dynamite in their hole—take them out and our own house with it. Or we poison the cheese and let them take it right back to the one in charge.”
Liam tilted his chin, looking down on both of us. “I’ll put the word out—discreetly. Seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars will give us no end of contract workers willing to infiltrate and get the job done. Do you disagree, Miss Blaine?”
I pulled the towel tighter around me. “I won’t beg to put my and my sister’s life in danger. If you want us to go, we’ll go.”
I sidestepped the brothers and walked out. They were arguing before the door shut.
Sienna slipped into my—scratch that, Sunny’s guest room that night. Burrowing under the covers, she hugged me and rested her chin on my shoulder. “I could hear you stewing and chewing your lip from across the hall. What’s going on?”
“You can’t put that on intuition,” I grumbled. “You sat through the same awkward, tense dinner with Sunny.”
“And I wasn’t the cause of it, so yeah, I picked up that something was wrong. Tell me.”
I buried my face in the pillow. It smelled like sun-ripened apples, jasmine, and Sunny. “The valet is dead. Committed suicide, but Liam believes it was murder.”
“Hmm.”
I waited. “That’s it? Because Liam had a lot more to say after he heard the news. Including that our services are no longer required. He wants us out.”
“Mmm.”
“Sienna, I need full sentences from you.”
“Why? So I can voice the real reason you’re upset?”
“Give it a shot,” I bit out.
“Okay. Even though between Sunny’s attempted murder, the car bombing, and a valet’s suspicious suicide, it becomes more real what a dangerous situation we’ve gotten mixed up in, you can’t run away because, for the first time in eight months, you saw the way forward. We help take down a heartless person, and you’ll feel no guilt or charity accepting Sunny’s reward. You’ll have earned that fat sack of cash. Deserved the apartment and new life we bought with it, and held your head high when you demanded custody of Laurel and had the perfect, put-together life to prove she belonged with you.”
I pressed my lips together. It didn’t stop them trembling.
“Eight months, no one gave a shit about us. If we lived or died, or ate, or slept with both eyes closed. We were on our own until a silver-eyed devil fell out of the sky and said he needed us. A powerful enough spell, but then he looked at you, and saw what everyone else stopped seeing through the dirt and grime. Sunny wants you to stay with him, and you want to stay too.”
