by Natalie Grey
Chapter Three
“How could you do this?” Tabitha shook her head at Joaquin. “You could have told me to go. You could have just let me walk out of here, but—”
“I didn’t have a choice!” Joaquin looked around himself wildly. “They know who I am. They know about my family. They said they’d do horrible things to them. I can’t take the chance. And this is all because you stayed with me!” He threw the accusation at her.
“What? How did they even find you? Emmi didn’t know who you were. No one did. I made sure no one ever followed me home at night. If they found out I stayed with you, that’s on you.” Tabitha took refuge in the facts.
There was a long silence, during which none of the men surrounding them spoke at all. They didn’t seem to care what happened, as long as Tabitha didn’t get away.
“I needed more money, so I tried to get a job,” Joaquin said finally. “You’d told me some things about where you worked, so I went and found them.”
Tabitha declared, “And then you had the cojones to turn around and try to blame this on me? You knew how dangerous they were! I warned you about them!”
“I needed the money!”
“So drive a fucking cab in your spare time!” Tabitha shot back.
Gabrielle was trying to hold in her laughter. She wasn’t the least bit worried about the men surrounding them. They all seemed at ease with their weapons, but she knew that most of their experience with keeping the peace had actually just been posturing, showing up to make a visible statement of their employer’s strength.
And they were human—she had checked every one of them. Not one of these people was going to have the time to react once she unleashed her fury.
Since she didn’t have to worry about the impending fight, she was free to find humor in Tabitha utterly rejecting Joaquin’s bullshit. The man had tried to guilt her and frighten her and had told her that his predicament was her fault, and maybe Tabitha might have fallen for that if she were younger.
But she’d grown up a lot since joining the Queen Bitch’s crew, even from the sidelines.
“I came to stay with you,” Tabitha said quietly, “because they would have found my family otherwise and I couldn’t afford for that to happen. I took measures to keep you safe. I told them my landlord was a bastard who liked to hit me when he was drunk so they’d think I hated you. I never told them where I lived.”
“Tabby—”
“Don’t call me that! I did everything in my power to make sure that no one close to me got hurt just because I’d screwed up. But you? You weren’t just careless. You walked me into a trap.” She could feel the tears building in her eyes again. “That was low. I can’t believe you’d fucking do that.”
Joaquin stared at her wretchedly. “It’s your fault,” he said again, sullenly. “If you hadn’t gotten mixed up in this in the first place I wouldn’t have either.”
“Yeah, keep telling yourself that.”
“All right.” The leader of the group surrounding them had apparently heard enough. “Let’s get moving. On your feet.”
Gabrielle leaned forward slightly, raising her eyebrows at Tabitha.
“I could get us out of this.” Her voice was smooth and low. It wasn’t the sort of sentiment to make the guards reach for their guns, but the offer was there. She was only too eager to start kicking some ass.
Tabitha looked down at her hands.
She could take Gabrielle’s offer. She could tell herself that it was useless to try going it alone, but...
She didn’t want anyone to save her. She wanted to look whoever was doing this in the eye and figure out what they were up to. She didn’t want to be the scared little girl anymore, the one who kept getting in over her head and telling herself there was no way out.
“No, let’s go.” She shook her head and stood up, avoiding Gabrielle’s eyes.
“Good choice,” the leader said sarcastically. “Come on, Red, you’d better follow your friend’s example.”
He’d been eyeing the way that red tank top clung to Gabrielle’s form, and he had some hopes of getting to see what was under it later. Thiago, their employer, was a generous man with people who did good work for him.
But as the woman stood, she gave him a look so cold he felt his cock shrivel.
Maybe he didn’t want to get tangled up with this one.
They moved through the streets in silence. People closed their doors or turned their faces away. Everyone made very sure not to see the men with the guns. The implication was clear. When the police showed up, everyone would say they’d seen nothing.
The gang’s rise to power must have been recent, Gabrielle thought. In neighborhoods riddled by violence the people in the streets had a wary look. Most of the men carried weapons, and there were always signs of strife: missing doors, broken windows, chips of paint where bullets had hit houses.
This place, however, looked like it was simply a slightly poorer-than-average neighborhood. The streets were clean, there were curtains in the windows, and the children didn’t look scared. Even when the gang had shown up, their parents had had to haul them inside.
If the gang hadn’t gotten a toehold yet, it was going to be easier to boot them out.
Gabrielle shook her head at her own foolishness. She didn’t know any of these people, and there were bigger fish to fry than one minor gang in one neighborhood in one city. She knew from experience that you couldn’t fight every battle.
But when she saw places like this, places that reminded her of the kindly old bakers’ wives slipping her pastries and the down-on-their-luck artists she had known over the years, she wanted to save them.
And although she knew she couldn’t save Tabitha from her own choices, she wanted to save her, too.
Tabitha kept her mind resolutely blank as they walked.
The truth was, she wanted to cry her eyes out at Joaquin’s choice. When she had left home, it had been a long string of one bastard after another trying to back her into corners, telling her how grateful she should be for a roof over her head.
Joaquin had sheltered her, worried when she didn’t come home for a few days, always tried to make sure she ate enough.
Why did it have to be him who had sold her out? Emmi she could have dealt with just fine—she’d never liked that bitch. But Joaquin?
Tabitha’s mother had always told her that God made sure the wicked received their punishment. Tabitha had been of the opinion that the punishments never seemed to come quickly enough.
And it didn’t help to think that Joaquin might pay for what he’d done someday. It didn’t take away the fact that he’d done it, and it would never take away Tabitha’s pain.
Maybe that was why she hadn’t wanted Gabrielle to let loose on these guys.
What would have been the point? No matter what Gabrielle had done, Tabitha was still going to be the girl who trusted the wrong people. Who had to be bailed out. That wasn’t ever going to stop.
They stopped in the shadow of an apartment building and one of the men rapped on the door. It opened from the inside, and he motioned to the two women to enter. “We’re here. Don’t get any funny ideas. We were told to bring you in alive…if we could.”
It was an obvious bluff, but Gabrielle wasn’t planning to call him on it just yet. She swept ahead of him into the darkness and had to fight every instinct not to lash out as hands grabbed her and ran over her body searching for weapons. She was shoved down a dark hallway, a tactic more effective for disorienting humans than vampires, and watched as the same search was performed on Tabitha. Tabitha’s messenger bag was ripped off her shoulder and given a cursory search, and Gabrielle caught sight of notebooks.
Oh, shit. Had Tabitha brought the notebooks? The information in those was far too important to be floating around.
“Tabitha.” The voice that spoke out of the darkness was genial.
A light clicked on, briefly blinding her, and Tabitha squinted at the man who had greeted her. She kne
w that voice...
“Santino.”
Shit. She wasn’t sure who she’d expected, but it hadn’t been him.
Santino was the very definition of a jumped-up thief. The man had grown up in one of the worst neighborhoods and had stolen for the gangs since he was a small child. He was the sort of person who’d never have amounted to anything if his sister hadn’t been sleeping with the gang leader.
But because she had, Santino had been family. And that meant he got put in charge of things. He got to oversee jobs and take a higher cut. He got to wear suits like the one he was wearing now, with expensive cufflinks. He got booze and women whenever he wanted.
You’re just a guy who stole cigarettes, Tabitha thought as she stared him down.
But she was screwed, and she knew it.
Because she didn’t know Santino from her time in Anton’s group. No, she knew Santino from her home neighborhood, Abasto. Santino’s gang was pulling jobs in the worse neighborhoods by then—and sometimes the rich ones—but a lot of them were from Abasto so Tabitha had known their families.
And they knew hers.
“It’s been such a long time,” Santino said, embracing her. “Little Tabitha. No one thought you’d grow up to be a hacker, and you were one of the best, weren’t you?”
“Not really.” She didn’t want him to keep talking about this. It was, in fact, the last thing she wanted. I’m nobody. Nobody important, and I can’t do anything for you.
“Oh, don’t be so modest.” Santino looped his arm around Tabitha’s shoulders and drew her away, after one last lascivious glance at Gabrielle. “You were a star in our world, you know.”
Tabitha said nothing. The hallway sloped down toward the basement, and she found that she was fighting the urge to scream.
They wanted her to, though.
So she wouldn’t. She told herself that if they wanted her to be scared, she would refuse to be. If they wanted her to feel trapped, she would remember that she was—
God, she was the same person she’d always been. Despite her resolve, she wanted to cry. She wanted to scream at them with every expletive she’d ever learned—her months with Bethany Anne’s team had been very enlightening on that front—and tell them to go to hell and leave her alone. But she knew what she was. She was one of the people who didn’t call the shots.
She had promised Gabrielle that she would try to change, but she didn’t see how that would help.
The hallway led to a double door that opened into a massive room. Water pipes ran along the ceiling and the grimy floor the group walked over held puddles.
There were people everywhere. Women in tiny dresses turned to watch, their eyes skipping over Tabitha and going straight to Gabrielle. The men, some in jeans and some in suits, mostly did the same, although a few had the good sense to wonder why their boss seemed so invested in a tiny chick with piercings and dyed hair.
Tabitha, trying to ignore the stares, looked toward the end of the room, where Santino was leading her.
When she stopped in her tracks she heard Santino’s low laugh.
“You remember Thiago, my dear.”
Thiago. The man sat behind a large desk as if he were Anton himself and not just another jumped-up criminal. His blond hair was parted neatly, and his suit had been expertly tailored. He rested his elbows on the arms of his chair and stared at Tabitha over his steepled fingers.
“I don’t remember Thiago,” Gabrielle said innocently. “Who’s he?”
Tabitha gave her a panicked look, but Santino only smiled.
“I have no doubt that you’ll become very well acquainted with Thiago,” he told Gabrielle. “He held this little group together after Anton disappeared.”
Gabrielle looked at Thiago with renewed interest. She would not have picked him out as Anton’s ally—for one thing, he was human—but Tabitha’s fear made it plain that he had in fact been involved in the organization somehow.
“Tabitha,” Thiago called to her with a smile. “How lovely to see you. You look just like I remember. And what have you brought me?” He looked over as an underling handed him Tabitha’s bag, and slid the notebooks out of it with a reverent look. “Your research?”
At his shoulder, Emmi gave a smug smile. “I told you she wouldn’t have destroyed them. Little Tabitha was always so proud of everything she knew.”
Tabitha swallowed.
“I see you’re thinking of leaving.” Thiago’s voice sounded regretful. “And I really can’t allow that.” He raised his voice. “Matteo, Santino. See to…securing Tabitha’s family. The rest of you are dismissed. And you, Tabitha… You can come here. You really must introduce me to your charming friend.”
Chapter Four
“So,” Thiago said, as Tabitha and Gabrielle were brought forward by the guards. “Who is this charming woman?”
Tabitha looked away. She had learned how to be quiet while the people around her played this game—everyone pretending that they weren’t posturing and threatening—but she had never learned to play it herself. She hated saying words that were the opposite of what she meant.
“Oh, come now. I am an eminently reasonable man.” Thiago smiled.
The smile made the hair on the back of Tabitha’s neck stand up, and from the look on Gabrielle’s face she wasn’t impressed, either.
“I just want you to do one little thing for me,” Thiago explained. “Very easy, really—for you, anyway. I need you to hack into the Central Bank and get me a little something.”
Gabrielle watched him, trying to make sure her face showed no expression.
Tabitha had to decide what happened next. She had spent years being exploited under Anton’s thumb. True, she had been young and naïve, and she was vulnerable to people of Anton’s persuasion. The question was whether now, when she had a crew to back her up and the ability to free herself, would she be the same.
She knew the importance of freeing oneself from one’s problems. The story she had told Tabitha had been as much a reminder to herself as it was to the younger woman.
—
It had been Stephen who had found Gabrielle in the burnt-out wreck of the rebellion’s safe house all those years ago. She’d been sitting in the corner, arms wrapped around her knees, staring at Henri’s charred body.
I sent you a message weeks ago, Gabrielle told him.
I know. Stephen stared down at the body. How did he die?
I killed him, if you must know.
Oh? Why? Stephen’s handsome face had held a small smile. He knew, but he wanted her to say it.
She could have said anything. She could have mentioned the look on his face when he killed, or the way he pressed the younger women to find their way into government officials’ beds to get information, even when the young women didn’t want to. She could have said that Henri had gone crazy, and he didn’t care about anyone else as long as he got to feel important.
All she said was, He had to die, and I had to be the one who killed him.
Stephen had stared at her for a long moment. And that’s why I didn’t come when you sent the first message, he said finally. You had to free yourself. You’re more now than you were before, Gabrielle. It’s easy to get caught up with the wrong people when you’re trying to do the right thing—we all know that. Michael has seen atrocities committed in the name of causes he fought for, and so have I. So have all of us, but we’re not helpless. We take care of those people. Now that you’re one of us, you have to do the same.
There had been more—quiet murmurs shared over a pitcher of wine in some terrible bar until Stephen’s latest mistress had shown up and tried to stab him over his alleged misdeeds with the latest ingénue at the opera—but it was that moment Gabrielle remembered: staring at Henri’s body and hearing Stephen tell her that she had to be the master of her own fate.
—
Thiago had tipped Tabitha’s face up, two fingers below her chin.
“Come on, now, sweetheart,” he cajoled. “It would be s
o easy for you. No one is as good as you are.”
Emmi, who was standing behind his chair, crossed her arms, annoyed by the attention being paid to another woman—even threats.
Tabitha made her eyes as wide as she could. “I’m just scared. They’re getting better and better at finding people, and what if they find out it was me? They might hurt my family.”
Gabrielle tried to refrain from sighing. Tabitha was playing up her innocence and youth. Hopefully it was the start of some con, but at this point Gabrielle didn’t have much faith in that.
“I’ll keep your family safe,” Thiago assured her. “I promise. My men are looking after them right now, aren’t they?”
Tabitha looked down at the floor. If she did this job for him maybe she could find a way to set him up, and given that time she could figure out a way to rescue her family and—
And that was exactly how she’d gotten into this mess in the first place.
She looked at Gabrielle. “Okay, do it.”
Gabrielle’s face split into a huge grin. “Really?”
“Yeah.” Tabitha could feel fury beating in her suddenly. “You know what? Fuck this. Fuck all of this.”
“I agree,” Gabrielle said delightedly. She smiled at Thiago. “You really are a total idiot, you know. A little two-bit criminal. You think you’re Anton’s successor? I can pretty much guarantee you he would have used you as cannon fodder without hesitation if he needed some. Anyone who meant anything to him got taken out with him by my people.”
Thiago opened his mouth to tell the guards to shoot, but…
He never got the chance.
Gabrielle turned smoothly to slam her fist into the head of the nearest guard. He was wearing a helmet, but that did next to nothing to protect him at the speed she was moving. His head snapped sideways and he went down. He never saw the red eyes, the claws, or the teeth for one simple reason: he was dead before he hit the ground.
Thiago yanked Tabitha toward him and pulled an old ornamental pistol out from under his coat.
“You brought a narc?” His face was white with fury. “You thought you’d bring a narc in here? You’re going to pay for that, little bitch.”
