Ben had been watching Tommy for weeks now. The man had been moving around the city and schmoozing with all different kinds of people. Schmoozing was maybe not the best word choice. He persuaded, cajoled, harassed until whomever he was talking to finally relented. The weirdest thing by far, though, was the flowers. He’d filled his rented minivan with flowers and proceeded to take them upstairs to an apartment. Afterward, he’d waited patiently for the woman to return home. If Ben hadn’t been set on him like a tracker dog by Hades, then he might have assumed the guy’s intentions were honorable, just a man doing a romantic gesture for his lady. But, Hades had set him on the guy, so he doubted very much that there was anything honorable going on behind the man’s dark eyes.

When the light in the apartment had come on, Tommy had stood up next to the van, the glow from his cigarette illuminating the smile on his face. A police car had shown up a few minutes later, and Tommy had backed up to a place he’d already marked on the grass. Ben didn’t know what that was all about, but he was going to guess it didn’t bode well for whoever was in the apartment that he’d covered in flowers.

In some respects, Ben loved his job as a fury. Dealing justice to those who escaped the law? It made him feel like a superhero. There was a lot of his job that he hated, though, specifically the part he was experiencing in that moment. The fact that Hades always wanted them to wait, to make sure that whomever it was deserved to be punished before a fury descended on them or even took them to the Underworld, never made sense to Ben. Hades’ instincts hadn’t been wrong since Ben had started working for him; not one of the furies who worked in the field ever came back empty-handed, and it had nothing to do with the fact that they reported to a god, since above all, Hades only wanted to mete out the correct punishment. So, why did he insist on the patience, on playing the wait-and-see game when he already knew the party was guilty and someone would eventually get hurt? Ben didn’t have any answers, but he was thankful that it hadn’t happened yet. At least, not for any of his cases.

He had no doubt that Tommy was dangerous. The man raised the hairs on the back of his neck like nothing other than a budding serial killer, or something similar, could do. When he’d first started following the man, he’d made himself visible and bummed a cigarette from him, sharing an awkward smoke break with the man and a strange woman who he could have sworn was supernatural. When she’d slapped him on the shoulder, he’d felt a strange spark go through him. Tommy had just stared at the two of them with confusion clouding his features. After making eye contact with him, though, Ben decided following him while glamored was the best course of action. There was an empty rage behind his eyes. Nothing else. Other than the anger he could see burning within the guy’s soul, he was practically dead. It didn’t help that his skin was pale and his hair was almost as dark as Ben’s own.

After the police car departed surprisingly quickly, his quarry edged closer to the apartment building, his eyes still locked on the illuminated window. A woman made an appearance in the window, her curvaceous body highlighted by the backlight from the room, not to mention she wore leggings and a sports bra. She was beautiful in an effortless way, in a way that made him want to jump up to the balcony just to see if the beauty held true when he was closer. The thought made him shudder a little. He’d been spending too much time with the stalker. She was gorgeous, though. There was no denying that. All soft round edges and long wavy hair.

He glanced at Tommy, expecting the man to be happy now that he’d confirmed and essentially cornered his prey. He wasn’t. A vicious snarl was on his face. Something about seeing her had finally broken through his calm veneer. Part of Ben couldn’t help but wonder what it was that had pissed him off. Was it because she wasn’t crying? That she came back to the apartment undeterred by his attentions, his imagined gift of flowers? She came downstairs a few minutes later with multiple garbage bags clutched in her hands, flowers peeking up out of the gaps in the closures at the top of the bags as she tossed them into the dumpster.

Once she seemed to be settled back upstairs, the man began chain smoking as he paced in front of the apartment. At some point, she had noticed him and closed the curtains, which only provoked his rage even further. Ben wished she would have waited to throw the flowers out. She could have offered them to her neighbors, or donated them to an old folks’ home, anything other than throwing them away, because now Tommy was well and truly pissed. He could feel the rage coming off the man in waves, like a kettle about to boil.

Sure enough, after he had riled himself up enough, Tommy set out toward the apartment building. Since Ben knew where the man was going, he jumped to the balcony attached to the woman’s apartment. That way he could watch without getting in the way, and make the final call on whether the jackass needed to go see his mom, Tisiphone, the fury who dealt with people who committed murder, or his aunt, Megaera, who dealt with the consequences of jealousy and rage. Ben hadn’t grown up with either of them, and for that, he would be forever thankful. His adoptive parents had been amazing, and he couldn’t imagine growing up in the Underworld, being completely cut off from everything, like his cousins.

The woman was going through some static self-defense moves in her living room, clearly on edge by what had happened. The leggings and the sports bra hugged her generous curves in a way that made his throat run dry. Ben assumed there was a knock at the door when she jumped, flinching as though something had exploded close by.