Total pages in book: 116
Estimated words: 109878 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 549(@200wpm)___ 440(@250wpm)___ 366(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 109878 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 549(@200wpm)___ 440(@250wpm)___ 366(@300wpm)
“Don’t thank me yet,” she says, wiping down the bar where my glass was. “Wait until you see how this all plays out.”
I settle back onto my barstool, checking the time. Still have twenty minutes before Wren comes back. The poison feels like a secret burning in my purse, and I can’t stop touching the velvet bag through the leather.
“Saylor,” Duffy says, her voice dropping lower. “The Crow aren’t just killers. They’re survivors who’ve done unspeakable things to innocent people. Men who deserve everything that’s coming to them.” She leans closer across the bar. “Little secret—my sisters and I also believe in ‘justice.’ But be smart about this. Don’t underestimate them.”
I look up at her, and for the first time in five years, I smile with real anticipation. “They underestimated my father once. That was their mistake.”
Duffy nods slowly. “Just remember what I said about dosages. Start small.”
I touch the velvet bag through my purse one more time. Such tiny little spheres to carry so much hope.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Blue
“So,” Jay says before I’m even through the door, “I have to ask—was the corpse centerpiece a planned part of the evening’s entertainment, or did you just wake up that morning and think, ‘You know what this dinner party needs? Dead people decor’?”
I settle into my chair while he frantically searches through desk drawers like he’s looking for something stronger than his usual coffee. “You seemed to enjoy yourself well enough. I saw you having quite the conversation with Dame Gothel.”
“I have to admit,” he continues, finally locating a hip flask buried under a stack of case studies, “I’m still processing the fact that you used Samuel Crow as a floral arrangement. Very artistic, by the way. The blue flowers were a nice touch.”
“Thank you. I thought the color coordination was important.” I cross my ankle over my knee, settling in for what’s clearly going to be a longer session than usual. “And before you ask—don’t worry, I didn’t fall off the wagon. Hans did the killing. Although that’s not why I’m here today.”
“Oh god.” Jay sets down the flask without opening it. “What happened after I left the party?”
Jay blinks. Once. Twice. Then he uncaps the flask and takes a long pull.
“It’s ten-thirty in the morning, Jay.”
“Your sessions have completely destroyed my relationship with normal business hours.” He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “So let me get this straight. You’re telling me that retirement lasted exactly . . . what, forty-eight hours?”
“Retirement is overrated.”
“Blue, we spent three years building your exit strategy. Three years of anger management, meditation techniques, finding healthy outlets for violent urges.” Jay gestures wildly with the flask. “And you threw it all away for gift giving?”
“I prefer to think of it as targeted problem solving.”
“With axes.”
“Hans’s axes,” I correct. “There’s a difference.”
“Oh, there’s a difference?” Jay’s eyebrow arches dangerously. “You can’t just have your staff handle all the killing and think that makes you murder sober, Blue. There are loopholes, and then there’s . . . whatever the hell this is.”
“It’s called delegation.”
“Delegation.” Jay takes another swig from his flask. “Right. Because being murder sober doesn’t mean you stop orchestrating deaths, it just means you outsource the actual stabbing.”
“Hans’s axe is just a tool, Jay. Like your pen, or your little stress ball that you keep hurling at the wall.”
Jay retrieves said stress ball from behind the filing cabinet where it’s apparently taken up permanent residence. “My stress ball doesn’t decapitate people.”
“Your stress ball is also significantly less effective at eliminating threats to the people I care about.”
“And there it is.” Jay stops mid-squeeze, his attention sharpening. “The people you care about. Singular person, really.”
“Peter was my friend—”
“We’re not talking about Peter anymore, and you know it.” Jay leans forward in his chair. “We’re talking about the fact that you came out of retirement not because someone killed your friend, but because someone threatened his daughter.”
The distinction shouldn’t matter, but somehow it does. Peter’s death was a tragedy, a failure on my part to protect someone I cared about. But the thought of anyone hurting Saylor? That’s something else.
“Fine. Yes. Saylor matters to me.”
“How much?”
“Enough that I’d rather not see her tortured to death by criminals.”
“Blue.” Jay’s voice takes on that patient tone that means he’s about to make me say something I don’t want to say. “How much does she matter to you?”
I stare at the chaos of his office, buying time while my brain tries to formulate an answer that doesn’t sound completely insane. Books scattered across every surface, coffee rings on important documents, that motivational poster about change that’s hanging crooked behind his desk.
“She’s different,” I say finally.
“Different how?”
“She’s not afraid of what I am. She should be, but she’s not.” I think about the way she looked at the Crow’s corpse, the hunger in her eyes when she asked me to teach her violence. “She sees the monster and asks for more instead of running.”