4
Finn drove me to Fletcher’s house—my house now—and dropped me off. A familiar car was sitting in the driveway next to mine, and the front porch light was on.
“What’s Owen doing here?” Finn asked, waggling his eyebrows at me. “You guys having a hot late-night date? A little bow-chicka-wow-wow time?”
I punched him in the shoulder. “Your maturity never ceases to amaze me.”
He snickered and started to tease me some more, but I drew my fist back again in a clear warning about what would happen if he kept on yapping.
Finn threw up his own hands in mock surrender. “Fine, fine. I’ll keep my mouth shut.” He grinned. “Just don’t do anything that I wouldn’t do.”
I snorted. “You would do anything and everything.”
His grin widened. “I know. That’s what makes life fun.”
And just like that, Finnegan Lane triumphantly got the last word in, beating me two to one tonight.
Finn promised to let me know if he found out anything else about Damian Rivera or what he might have done. I got out of the car, stood on the front porch, and watched until his taillights disappeared down the driveway, then went inside and locked the door behind me.
“Honey, I’m home!” I called out, singing the old cliché.
“In the den!” Owen called back.
I toed off my boots, yanked off my toboggan, and shrugged out of my fleece jacket before walking down the long hallway to the back of the house. I reached the doorway to the den and stopped, my eyes widening at the sight in front of me.
Normally, the den was, well, just a den, with a couch, television, tables, and other well-worn furniture. But tonight it had been transformed into a cozy, romantic space. White and red candles covered the end tables, casting out a warm, soft, flickering light. Thick pillows large enough to sit on had been positioned all around the coffee table in the center of the room, adding to the intimate feel.
Fine china and silverware covered the table alongside crystal wineglasses. Dinner had already been served, and steak and mashed potatoes were on the menu, along with a garden salad and a basket of bread that had just been taken out of the oven, given the delicious curls of steam wisping up from it. Even better, a chocolate cheesecake topped with fresh raspberries sat perched off to one side of the table, just begging to be cut into. My stomach growled in anticipation.
“Do you like it?” a low, husky voice asked.
I looked over at Owen Grayson, my significant other, who was arranging a few more candles on the fireplace mantel. He was a little more than six feet tall, with a body that was all strong, delicious muscle. He struck a match, and the resulting glow highlighted his black hair and rugged features, including his slightly crooked nose and the faint white scar that slashed across his chin.
“What’s all this?”
Owen finished lighting the last candle, blew out the match, and set it aside. A teasing grin lifted his lips. “Not what you were expecting?”
I shook my head. “When you called and said that you wanted to come over tonight, I expected pizza and a movie. Not all this.”
“Well, with all of us working nonstop to learn more about the Circle, we haven’t exactly had time for a proper date these past few weeks.” Owen gestured at the candles, pillows, and gourmet food. “So I thought I’d change that.”
I went over and looped my arms around his neck, staring up into his violet eyes. “Have I told you lately that you’re the best?”
“Right back at you, babe.” He grinned and drew me closer. “Right back at you.”
I stood on my tiptoes and kissed him, opening my mouth and seeking his tongue with my own. Owen kissed me back, holding me tight. My fingers started to roam down his chest, but he caught my hands, brought them up to his lips, and kissed the spider rune scar branded into each of my palms.
“No funny business,” he teased. “Not yet anyway. I spent way too much time cooking dinner for it to go to waste.”
I peeked around his broad shoulder at the take-out containers stacked by the trash can in the corner. “Really? Because those containers make it look like the fine folks at Underwood’s spent way too much time cooking dinner.”
Owen laughed. “Okay, okay, you got me. But I did painstakingly reheat everything.”
I clasped his hands to my heart and batted my eyelashes at him. “My hero.”
He laughed again and pulled me over to the table. We sat down on the pillows on the floor and dug into our meal. Underwood’s was the most expensive restaurant in the city, and the food matched its excellent reputation. The steak, mashed potatoes, and garden salad might have been simple dishes, but they’d been made with the very best ingredients, elevating them to new heights. And the cheesecake was a chocolate dream, melting in my mouth bite after sinfully rich bite, along with the tart, refreshing bursts of the raspberries.
After dinner, we lay down on the pillows on the floor, Owen with his arm around my shoulder and me with my head on his chest, and I told him everything that had happened at the Rivera estate, including Damian’s dig at Tucker about his feelings for my mother. I’d gotten over my initial shock and denial, and Owen was the perfect person, the perfect sounding board, to help me work through all my turbulent feelings about the startling revelation.
“Hugh Tucker and your mother?” Owen asked. “You really think they were an item way back when?”
“I don’t know. I don’t remember Eira ever mentioning him, not even in passing. The only memory I have of them together is when Tucker threatened her in her office the night of her last Christmas party.”
Ever since I’d found out about the Circle, I’d been desperately trying to remember every single thing I could about my mother, searching my mind for the smallest, faintest images of her face, smile, laugh, words. The memory of Tucker threatening Eira had bubbled up to the surface of my brain a few weeks ago when I was sleeping, dreaming, as did so many of the bad things in my past.
“Maybe you’ll remember more about them,” Owen said. “Or at least about your mom.”
“I hope so. I still don’t know what she did for the Circle or why they had her killed.”
My gray gaze drifted up to a series of framed drawings behind the candles on the mantel. I focused on the first drawing, of a snowflake, my mother Eira Snow’s rune, the symbol for icy calm. Her matching pendant was draped over the frame, and the flickering candlelight made the silverstone snowflake necklace gleam as though it had just been freshly minted. The pain of her loss knifed through my heart, as it had a thousand times before, still as sharp and bright as her rune pendant, along with equally strong stabs of cold rage and icy determination.
“If my mother and Tucker were involved at some point . . .” My voice trailed off for a moment. “Well, that just makes me even more determined to kill him.”
“Why is that?”
I propped myself up on my elbow so that I could look at Owen. “Let’s say that Tucker had feelings for my mom, cared about her in some way, like Rivera claimed. Let’s say that Tucker even loved her at one point.”
“Okay . . .” Owen said, not quite sure where I was going with this.
“Then why didn’t he help her? Why didn’t he warn her that his boss wanted her dead and was sending Mab Monroe to do the job? Why didn’t he fucking save her?”
My voice cracked on the last few words, and I had to blink back the tears suddenly stinging my eyes. My heart ached and ached, each beat bringing a fresh wave of loss and longing with it, as though I were stabbing myself in the chest over and over again with one of my own knives.
“Oh, Gin,” Owen whispered, sympathy filling his face. “I’m sorry. So sorry.”
I shook my head. “It’s not your fault. It’s his fault. And I’m going to make him pay for it—all of it.”
“I know you will,” he whispered again. “I know you will.”
Owen pressed his lips to mine in a sweet, comforting kiss, and I slowly lost myself in him. I couldn’t do anything about Hugh Tucker tonight, and I didn’t want to waste another second of my time with Owen thinking about the past.
So I focused on the man I loved, on the feel of his lips against mine, the warm brush of his breath on my face, the faint taste of chocolate and raspberries that lingered on his tongue from the cheesecake we’d eaten. I concentrated on each sensation, along with the slow slide of his hands up and down my back, until my heartache and rage faded away, melted by the growing heat between us.
We finally broke apart, and I nuzzled my nose up against his. “So . . . think we can finally get down to that funny business now?”
Owen laughed, his violet eyes gleaming with anticipation. “Oh, I think that can be arranged.”
Our lips met again, and the familiar fire ignited between us. We kissed again, and again, and again, each meeting of our tongues longer and more intense than the last. We rolled around on the pillows, scattering them all over the floor, our hands roaming up and down each other’s body.
And that’s when we met the first bits of resistance.
“Stupid winter clothes,” I grumbled, yanking at the buttons on his jeans, trying to get them open. “Why are you wearing so many of them?”
“I could say the same thing about you,” Owen muttered, fumbling with my turtleneck, trying to shove it up out of the way.
We stopped, looked at each other, and started laughing. Our chuckles rang out through the den, growing louder and louder, and we collapsed onto the pillows again, both of us laughing as hard as we could.
“Okay, okay,” I said, when the last of our chuckles had faded away. “Take two.”
This time, we were far more sensible about things. We both stripped off our clothes, then came together in the middle of the floor again. But our laughter was gone now, and we were ready—hungry—for a different kind of teasing.
Owen grabbed a condom from his wallet and put it on, since we always used extra protection in addition to the little white pills that I took. I admired the rippling of muscle in his arms and shoulders, the sprinkling of dark hair that arrowed down his abs, and especially the hot, fierce light in his eyes as he turned toward me.
I got up on my knees, and we met in the middle of the floor, our lips and tongues thrusting together, our hands roaming, kneading and caressing all the sweet spots that each of us knew that the other liked. Hot, electric desire sizzled through my veins, and I couldn’t kiss him enough, couldn’t touch him enough, couldn’t get close enough to him.
Owen let out a low, primal growl deep in his throat, picked me up, and set me on the edge of the coffee table. I leaned back, and he feasted on my breasts, licking and teasing my nipples with his tongue and teeth. More heat spiked through me, and I groaned and pulled him down on top of me.
Owen’s hand slid down my stomach, and I opened my legs. He eased a finger inside me, drawing those slow, deliberate patterns that he knew drove me crazy. He pulled back ever so slightly, his tongue darting in and out of my mouth in time with his finger. I moaned with each glide of him against me.
I didn’t want to wait any longer, and neither did he. I put my hands on his shoulders and rolled us both off the coffee table and onto the floor. The pillows broke our fall, and we crashed together once more. I locked my legs around his waist and pulled him deep inside me, moaning at how good he felt sliding against me.
Back and forth, we rolled on the floor, kissing, caressing, and thrusting against each other, trying to wring as much pleasure out of this moment as possible. Our movements became more and more frantic, our kisses longer, our thrusts harder and deeper, until finally we both reached the peak of our pleasure and went over the edge together.
Bow-chicka-wow-wow indeed.
• • •
I woke up a couple of hours later, my arms still wrapped around Owen, the two of us cuddled together in the mounds of pillows on the floor. He was snoring, the sound vibrating out of his chest like a low, rolling drumbeat. I lay there for a minute, enjoying the feel of his warm, strong body next to mine and the steady, soothing thump-thump-thump of his heart under my fingertips.
But as wonderful as tonight had been, I was too restless and had too many things on my mind to just relax and lie there next to Owen. So I slipped out of his arms and covered him with a blanket from the couch. Then I grabbed another blanket, wrapped it around myself, and left the den.
I headed into Fletcher’s office—my office now—snapped on the lights, and went over to his battered wooden desk. Ever since the old man’s murder more than a year ago, I’d slowly been going through several decades’ worth of papers, photos, and other information that he’d collected and squirreled away in here. Now, finally, everything was organized and neatly filed away, and I could find info on just about anyone in the Ashland underworld in a matter of minutes. I’d even been updating and adding to the files myself, with Silvio’s help. But tonight I only had eyes for the bottle of gin and the glass perched on the center of the desk.
I plopped into Fletcher’s chair, poured myself a healthy amount of gin, and drank it down, relishing the sweet burn of the liquor sliding down my throat. I poured a second glass, leaned back in the chair, and eyed the photo of the old man that I had placed on the corner of the desk.
Walnut-brown hair, green eyes, tan wrinkled features. Fletcher smiled as he looked out over the scenic landscape of Bone Mountain, where we’d gone hiking together so many times over the years. This photo was one of my favorite shots of him, and now that I’d cleaned out his office and made it my own, I often found myself coming in here and looking at the picture for guidance, even if he was dead and buried.
“Did you know about Tucker and my mother?” I asked. “Did you have any clue about the two of them? Because it was certainly news to me.”
Of course, Fletcher didn’t answer. He just kept looking out over the mountain view and grinning his sly grin, as if he knew all these secrets and was silently telling me that I’d have to find the answers myself.
Fletcher had set this whole thing up like an enormous treasure hunt, with one clue leading to another clue, all of them slowly revealing more and more information about the Circle, its members, and my mother. Not for the first time, I wondered why he’d done things this way, instead of just leaving all the information in one place for me to find. Specifically, why he hadn’t included a photo of the leader of the Circle with all the other pictures that had been in his safety-deposit boxes. What was so special, terrifying, or horrifying about this man that Fletcher had deliberately left him out?
It was almost like Fletcher was building up to something—some secret that he knew would further rock my world—and he was trying to get me ready for it, trying to prepare me for the shocking truth, trying to soften the blow by only giving me small dribs and drabs of information along the way. I had the sinking feeling that my mother and Tucker being involved wasn’t the worst of it. Not by a long shot.
The old man might have thought he was protecting me, but it was damn frustrating to always have more questions than answers.
“Well, Fletcher?” I asked, still staring at his picture, the office walls soaking up my soft words. “Care to tell me what you were thinking? What am I going to find out when I finally get to the bottom of this crazy rabbit hole?”
Just saying the words made me feel better, like the old man was sitting here with me, like we were discussing a new assignment, a new mission, the way we had so many times in the past. And it also calmed some of my turbulent emotions, although it left more questions in their wake.
If Damian Rivera’s mocking works were true, then Hugh Tucker had been sweet on my mother. At some point, he had cared about her, enough for other people to notice and remember it, even now, all these years later. Maybe the two of them had even had a romantic relationship before my mother met and married my father, Tristan. I could accept all those possibilities, although they still boggled my mind. Try as I might, I just couldn’t picture Eira, who’d always been so warm, caring, and considerate, with someone like Tucker. Someone so cold, heartless, and ruthless.
Someone so much like, well, me.
Then again, it had taken me years to get to this point. I hadn’t started out as a stone-cold killer. Once upon a time, I’d been a sweet, innocent little girl without a care in the world. But that little girl had burned to ash right alongside Eira and my older sister, Annabella, the night Mab Monroe murdered them and tortured me.
Every single step I’d taken since then had seemed perfectly logical, necessary, and right at the time for my own protection, survival, and self-interest. Living on the streets, hiding my true identity, taking Fletcher up on his offer to train me, becoming the Spider. Now I was a notorious assassin with a perpetual target on my back. Not exactly where I’d thought I’d wind up, but it was my life, for better or worse, and I was going to make the best of it.
For the first time, I wondered what had happened to Hugh Tucker to turn him into the man he was today. The one who did so many bad things on someone else’s orders. I wondered how fast the vampire’s downward spiral had been. I wondered what the tipping point had been, the one thing that had dragged him down, down, down into the darkness, never to surface into the light again.
My own downward spiral had started with the murders of my mother and Annabella. But what had been Tucker’s trigger? The loss of his family’s wealth, power, position, and prestige? His own ruthless ambition to get it all back? Helping to orchestrate my mother’s death? Or perhaps all the dirty deeds he’d done for the Circle since then? The ones that had chipped away at his soul a little bit at a time until now there was nothing left?
In the end, Tucker’s reasons were his own, and I doubted that I would ever learn them. And however sad and tragic his motives, however they might pluck the heartstrings, they still didn’t change everything the bastard had done to me and my friends. Tucker’s rationale didn’t change how he’d stood by and watched Deirdre Shaw weasel her way into Finn’s life, pretending to be a doting mother, when all she really wanted was to rob the First Trust bank. It didn’t change how Tucker had drugged and kidnapped Finn, Bria, and Owen so that I would hand over some precious jewels that Deirdre had hidden from him and the Circle. And it certainly didn’t change how many times he’d tried to kill me.
Or the fact that I would kill him, when the time came.
Because that sweet, innocent little girl was long gone, and this stone-cold killer would do whatever it took to protect the friends and family that she had left.
Feeling much calmer, I raised my glass in a toast to Fletcher’s photo. “Good talk.”
I downed the gin and set the empty glass aside. Then I got to my feet, turned off the lights, and went back to Owen to try to get what sleep I could tonight.