Chapter 20
Twenty
Salvatore
The pistol rests in my hand with a familiar weight. I concentrate on the firing pin and the hum of ephemera in the room around me.
Weave in a few strands of magic to speed the bullets faster. Then a few more to soften the recoil.
Shifting my attention to the barrel, I will a little energy into that passage to dampen some of the blare of the shots.
We can’t make the magical effects too blatant, or the drab branches of the two syndicates we’re supplying will ask questions we don’t want to answer. All they need to know is the Cosgraves and Morellis are providing them with the best pieces money can buy.
The effect isn’t permanent. All enchantments lose their energy gradually as they’re used. But a truth I’d never admit to anyone outside the families is that no gangster actually fires their gun all that often.
You go around making a fool of yourself blasting left and right, and someone’s going to blow you away sooner rather than later. Probably someone from your own side.
I set the finished pistol on the worktable and inhale deeply. The earthy, almost sweet scent of gun oil fills my lungs. Rhythmic rustles and clicks rise from the other worktables where various relatives are working throughout the warehouse room.
Normally, I like losing myself in this job.
After years of practice, the spellwork comes easily to me—no one could make a single complaint.
The smell is as familiar as the mingled cologne-and-perfume tang of my parents’ house, and the sunlight that creeps through the high windows gives the place a warmth you wouldn’t expect.
Today, the second I stop concentrating on wielding ephemera, Elodie Devine’s face springs to the front of my mind again. Her sleek figure in that slinky dress, her hair spilling wild over her shoulders.
Her expression, so intense as she jabbed me in the chest.
“No one but you is going to get you out of this mess.”
How did she see so much about me? How could anyone at that stupid academy have ever guessed— Not even my own family suspects that my allegiance is anything but avid and unshakeable.
She didn’t even sound angry about it. The fervor flaring in her dark eyes, the raw conviction in her words…
Has anyone else in my life ever spoken to me, about me, with that much passion?
I don’t think so.
My fingers itch, but there’s nothing to reach out to.
She was right about other things too. I didn’t really know her. If I’d had any idea what a spitfire was hiding under that polished front, so smart and bold…
My honed instincts recognize my parents’ arrival before I hear the tread of their footsteps. Some shift in the air or softer sound has my stance tensing, my nerves spiking to alertness, just as a lance of magical energy whips across the floor to my feet.
My defensive shield is already snapping into place. The assault jars against it, radiating a faint sting from my heels to my ankles, but nothing worse.
Gods only know what it’d have done to me if I hadn’t dispersed most of the effect before it hit.
I fix a bored expression on my face and swivel casually to greet my parents as if I barely noticed their little test. From the small, sharp smile Mom’s sporting, it was her jab.
“We need to be sure you’re ready for anything,” she used to coo to me when I was a little kid swallowing sobs after the earliest tests. “Betrayal can come from any side at any time. Never let your guard down.”
They’ve sure as shit confirmed I’ll never trust them farther than I can spit.
Side by side, the two of them couldn’t look more mismatched.
Dad is all hard lines and blocky muscle, his red hair blazing above his icy blue eyes, looming a foot taller than his wife.
Mom stands slim and gracefully petite, her elegant features and the sculpted waves of her hair deceptively soft.
Her presence fills the room just as much as his does.
It’s hard to say which of them is more vicious. I guess you have to be steel-hearted if you’re going to throw away your match to marry the heir to a family yours has spent the last century trying to slaughter.
Dad lifts his chin, his gaze turning even flintier. “We’ve got a situation to deal with. Sal, Shiv, Gabe, Simone, let’s go.”
I tug on the gloves I set aside while I worked—it’s easier to manipulate ephemera with close contact—and head over alongside my cousins of various closeness.
Gabrio tries to play the big man while puffing out his chest, as if he’s a decade rather than two years older than me. “What are we dealing with?”
Mom—his dad’s sister—cuts her gaze toward him with a look that clearly says, Stick to your place, foot soldier. Her tone comes out as icy as Dad’s eyes. “We’ll fill you in on the way there. Let’s go.”
She snaps her fingers and spins on her heel. She and Dad stride out together.
It’s funny how naturally they act in unison when they’ve spent my whole life reminding me of the fated unions they gave up to create this one.
To create me.
As if I asked to be the living symbol of the alliance between the opposing sides of my family.
As we trot down the stairs after them, Simone catches my gaze and raises her eyebrows like she’s trying to share the excitement.
Does she really enjoy this shit? Most of the work we do feels like an endless push and pull, snatching power and trying to stop it from being wrenched back.
Like we’re stray dogs fighting over the scraps from the garbage can while the actual powers of the lucent world stare down their noses at us. They’re off cozying up to politicians and making big business deals while we run the criminal world no one wants to admit even exists.
Or maybe Simone is only flirting. We realized after accidentally brushing skin a couple of years back that we’re definitely not matches, not that mates even within far-extended family are common.
Her mom is, like, my grandfather Morelli’s cousin’s niece or some crap, so not exactly close, and she’s pretty, and a lot more convenient for scratching certain itches than bothering with the drab bars.
So we’ve hooked up a few times. Maybe several. Sue me.
She lets her arm graze mine now, confirming my second suspicion, but the touch doesn’t summon any lust today. And not just because we’re about to head off to do my parents’ bidding.
All it makes me think of is Elodie. Of the curve of her waist and hip I traced through her dress. Of those perfect full lips.
I thought I was going to throw her off her game, shake up her confidence. Instead she threw me for a loop.
And fuck if I don’t want to make good on all those teasing promises for real now. Get those lips parting with a gasp of pleasure. See those eyes shining with devotion instead of fiery resolve.
Prove I’m more than an identity crisis. Earn the admiration of the only woman who’s ever been able to rattle me.
Not that I can do any of that right now. Because I am letting my family call the shots at this very moment, into a black 8-seater SUV and onward to literal shots possibly fired.
This is the life I have. I know guns and fists. What else am I good at anyway?
No one’s ever going to claim I’m not good at this.
As the car roars away from the warehouse, Dad twists in his seat next to the driver. “Some of the Triad lucents who’ve been expanding their operations are infringing on our territory. We’re going to lay down the law and make sure they remember their place. No mercy. Got it?”
All of us nod. “We” of course means the four of us in the younger generation, and maybe Uncle Maddox who was waiting in the car when we got in. Dad’s third brother is always even more desperate for scraps than the rest.
No mercy doesn’t mean killing them. It means beating them until they wish they were dead but letting them survive to pass on the tale. Simple enough.
We cruise through the streets for a while, evening light fading beyond the tinted windows. Then Mom says, “There.”
Three Chinese guys who might be even younger than me are sauntering along the sidewalk, openly passing a joint between them. That’s all I have time to register before the SUV screeches to a halt and my hand is reaching to throw the door open.
We barge out at them in a mass of fists and glinting blades. I punch one of the dudes in the nose and swipe my knife along his neck just deep enough to leave a mark—deep enough to show I could have slit it if I’d wanted to.
Magic crackles between us as our enemies summon a defense, but I shatter it apart with a heave of ephemera and sweep the feet out from under one of the other pricks.
As his ass smacks the pavement, Siobhan is on him with a one-two-three slam of her brass knuckles that leaves their imprint on his cheek and temple.
I catch the third guy before he can aim his pistol at her and swing him toward Gabrio’s waiting switchblade. Gabe slices the attacker’s arm from wrist to shoulder, his glim guiding his blade for maximum pain, while my spurt of condensed energy cracks every bone in the prick’s fingers.
The pistol clatters to the ground. The guy whose nose I broke lunges at me with a hiss of ephemera that nicks a thin line along my jaw, but I snap the magical assault an instant later. Then my knee is in his gut and my knife carving open his side.
There’s no real thought in it. My body moves effortlessly, exactly the way I’ve trained my whole life.
I am good at this.
But then there’s the moment when three guys who might not be past eighteen are slumped groaning and bleeding on the sidewalk, and I’m standing over them like I think that makes me a king.
If Elodie saw me like this…
Through the lurch of my gut, Uncle Maddox plants himself over the three Triad members—though not quite close enough that they could touch him if they had the strength. He left all the actual fighting to the four of us twenty-somethings. Wimp.
“This is Cosgrave-Morelli territory,” he declares. “Get your stinking Triad asses off our streets, or we’ll hand them to you inside out next time.”
Broken Nose clutches at the cut below his ribs and sputters through the trickle of blood seeping into his mouth. “We thought it was open. Fair game. No one said shit.”
Maddox’s mouth pulls into an ugly grin. “That’s not what we heard. Take your pathetic excuses and your pathetic hides and get going.”
We pile back into the SUV and take off without waiting to see if they listen to that last part. It’s hard to say how well any of them can walk at this point.
Siobhan glances over at me and flicks a finger toward the nick on my jaw with a sneer. “You’re bleeding, Sally.”
I restrain a grimace at the mocking nickname. As if she won’t have taken at least as many hits in the middle of the brawl. I held my own.
But Gabrio clicks his tongue at me too, even though he has a bruise the size of Manhattan forming on his neck. Fucking hypocrites.
It’s not that the alliance isn’t working out in everyone’s favor so far. But I’m the most visible manifestation of the compromises both sides made. I’m the one who’s supposed to be bossing around the lucent factions of both syndicates someday down the line when my parents kick the bucket.
Most days it seems like everyone in both families hates me for that.
Okay, not quite everyone. After my parents drop us off back at the warehouse, Simone sidles closer to me and tiptoes her fingers up my arm, following the path of the snake tattoo that curves across the skin underneath.
She cocks her head coyly. “Hey, what’s up with you and Elodie what’s-her-face lately? You aren’t really trying to get something going with that stuck-up cunt, are you?”
My mouth moves automatically, giving the response I would have meant before last night. A scoffing sound slips out. “It’s just fun to mess with her. She wouldn’t know what hit her. Got to keep the rich bitches in their places.”
Simone smiles approvingly and edges even closer. “No kidding. So, you want to have some real fun tonight?”
Another day, I might have welcomed the distraction. Now, all it provokes is a current of nausea.
Is there any part of my life that doesn’t revolve around my family?
I shrug her off. “Nah, I’ve got stuff to take care of.”
I just have to figure out what that is.
Simone makes a noise of protest, but I head straight to my car, the crimson Mustang I convinced myself was hot shit.
The Mustang I got because my parents agreed there was no fucking way they’d pay for the Maserati I actually wanted until I was completely “holding my own.” Whatever that’s supposed to mean.
As I sink into the driver’s seat, I find myself picturing Elodie sitting next to me. Watching me with the intense gaze she fixed me with last night.
Seeing all the things I didn’t think I wanted anyone to see. But somehow even as my stomach twists, a twinge of a softer, warmer sensation reverberates through me.
She didn’t just tell me off. She told me I could find my way out if I tried. She believed it.
Does Elodie Devine have anyone who truly believes in her? She’s obviously got so much more to her than anyone else realizes—than even I saw until the past week.
As I gun the engine, a smile tugs at my lips.
Cosgraves and Morellis take what we want. And I want her. I can’t think of anything else in my life that’s felt worth going all in on.
She said she has better things to do? Not a problem. I’ll just have to make myself better, until she’s ready to do me.
I’ll keep at it, over and over, no matter who our matches are, no matter where this new road leads us. My parents didn’t marry the partners who were fated for them, so why should I have to?
All I have to do is convince Elodie Devine to feel the same way about me.
And anyone who gets in my way had better watch out.