Bitter Bite (Elemental Assassin #14)(105)

Make good on your threat. Cut my throat, right here, right now. Otherwise,

drop your f*cking knife, quit posturing, and tell me what it is that you

really want.”

Tucker dug the blade into my skin, making even more blood trickle down my

neck. I glared right back at him, not showing a lick of fear. Finn might be

Fletcher’s son, but I was the old man’s daughter in all the ways that truly

mattered, and he’d passed down the same stubbornness to me, drilled it into

me during all the years he’d trained me to be the Spider.

I wasn’t afraid, not of Tucker and especially not of the knife at my neck. I

’d accepted the inevitability of my violent, bloody, messy death a long time

ago. My solace here was that I wouldn’t be the only one departing this world

tonight. Because as soon as he was done with me, Tucker would kill Deirdre,

which meant that she would never have a chance to hurt Finn again.

Tucker dug the blade even deeper into my neck, but I didn’t crack and start

begging for mercy like he wanted. Instead, my eyes narrowed in challenge,

silently daring him to do his worst. If I could have spit in his face without

him slicing through my carotid artery, I would have done it in an instant and

then lunged forward and sunk my teeth into his throat for good measure.

The vamp saw that I wasn’t going to break. He nodded in approval, dropped the

knife from my neck, and stepped back.

“Well, it’s good to see that you’re as tough as advertised, Ms. Blanco,”

he said. “It’s time that we replaced Mab, and I think you’ll make a fine

addition to the Circle.”

“Join you? The group who supposedly ordered my mother’s murder? Not bloody

likely.”

He ignored me and snapped his fingers. One of the giants stepped forward, and

Tucker exchanged his bloody knife for the giant’s gun. Deirdre and I both

tensed. Tucker could easily shoot us where we sat, have his men roll our

chairs out into the shipping yard, and shove us off the docks and into the

river. No one would have any clue to what had happened to us until some poor

fisherman hooked our bodies and got the fright of his life a few weeks later.

Instead of shooting us, Tucker ejected the clip from the gun, then loaded a

single bullet back into the chamber. He put the gun on a nearby table and

pulled a set of handcuff keys out of his pocket. He held the keys up in front

of my face.

“Don’t do anything stupid, or my men will kill you.”

The giants stepped a little closer, a couple of them pointing their guns at

me. I made note of where they were all standing and of all the other obstacles

around me. The crates, the boxes, the door at the far end of the warehouse,

where a lone giant was posted, angling his phone in my direction.

Tucker uncuffed my right hand, then slapped the gun into it. He stepped out of

the way and gestured at Deirdre. “Shoot her. Prove your loyalty to the

Circle, and you can go free.”

Deirdre’s eyes bulged. “No! Tucker, no! You can’t do this! Think about all

the money I’ve made you and the others over the years. Think about how much

more money I can still make you.”

He gave her a cold glare. “We wouldn’t be in this mess in the first place if

not for all your bad investments and ridiculous spending habits.”

I remembered what Silvio had told me about Deirdre’s charity foundation,

about how someone had bankrolled her when she first started out years ago. And

about how she was now broke and playing a shell game with other people’s

money.

“All these years later, and this is still all about your trust fund, isn’t

it?” I said. “You blew through all your money, just like your parents did,

and then you lost all your friends’ money too. That’s why you went for the

double shot of the exhibit jewelry and the bank vault. Your friends wanted

their money back, or else.” I smirked. “I guess champagne bubble baths don’

t come cheap. Do they, Mama Dee?”

Anger stained Deirdre’s cheeks a mottled red, but she didn’t deny my

accusations.

Tucker chuckled softly, enjoying her humiliation. “And now, because of your

own incompetence, everyone in Ashland—underworld or not—knows that you tried

to rob your own exhibit, along with the bank. You’ve exposed yourself, and

potentially all of us, and you know what the penalty for that is.”

He shook his head. “You should thank me. If it were only me deciding, I would

stake you out here and make your death last for days. Ms. Blanco will probably

be far more merciful and shoot you in the gut so it only takes you a few hours

to bleed out.”

My fingers curled around the gun, calculating distances and angles. I shifted

my feet so that my toes were resting against the concrete floor.

Seeing that she was getting nowhere with Tucker, Deirdre turned her teary eyes

and pathetic pleas to me.

“Gin, please, honey, you can’t do this. I’m Finnegan’s mother—”