Chapter 4

Cecilia's POV

Two men marched me through crusted snow.

The burly one with tattoos crawling up past his collar had a bruising grip clamped around my upper arm.

The other, sharp-suited and ice-calm, hung half a step behind my right shoulder.

My boots slipped on icy pavement. I took each step with deliberate care.

Tripping and sprawling in front of four armed men would be the worst possible misstep right now.

And slow movement bought me something else too: time to think. Time to read the situation. Time to figure out exactly what I had walked into.

The suited one stopped me about six feet from where the leader stood and pressed down on my shoulder, not roughly, just firmly enough that my knees hit the snow-dusted pavement before I fully processed that it was happening.

Cold soaked through immediately.

"Look up," the leader said.

I looked up.

The nearest streetlamp caught my face full-on.

The leader eyes moved across my face with the careful attention of someone trying to identify something they were not entirely sure was real.

The suited one cleared his throat.

"It's the makeup," he said, like a man helpfully stating the obvious.

"I can see that," the leader said.

The tattooed one made a sound like a man swallowing a laugh whole and nearly choking on it.

"I have seen a lot of things in this line of work," he said, directed at the man above me, "but I was not prepared for how hideously ugly she is."

Hot embarrassment flooded my chest.

Eight hours of club-shift makeup still sat heavy on my face: smudged raccoon eyeshadow, foundation two shades too dark, the kind of lipstick Danny had once called a bold choice in the diplomatic tone of a man trying very hard not to say something honest.

I had piled it all on deliberately, an ugly mask designed to make men look away fast.

Inside the Golden Chalice, ugly meant safe, and it worked exactly as intended.

Under raw streetlight in a snowstorm, in front of four men who had just executed someone, it was the single most insane thing about the whole situation.

"Dio mio." The tattooed one bit his lip hard, fighting back what was very clearly not a cough.

The man ahead of me said nothing.

But something moved at the corner of his mouth, quick and involuntary, there and gone before it fully formed.

Silence pressed down over the snow-covered street.

Silence meant danger. I had to speak.

"Please." My voice came out thin and shaky. "You have to listen to me. I'm just a bar girl. Those words I said back there, I was only trying to scare the muggers off. I didn't know what I was saying."

The man at the center tilted his head slightly, dark hair catching the edge of the streetlight.

He was young. Late twenties, maybe. Dark hair, clean jaw, and a pair of eyes so cold and green they didn't suggest anything warm or living. The kind of green that made you think of deep water. Of things that didn't need light to find you.

"I didn't ask you that."

His voice carried the same unhurried, flat tone he had used when he gave the order to bring me over.

And underneath that pleasant, almost conversational tone, quiet as a knife laid flat against a table, I heard exactly what he wasn't saying.

I had done it again.

I had opened my mouth and said exactly the wrong thing.

Whatever brief amusement had crossed his face was gone now, completely, like it had never been there at all.

"Handle it," he said to the suited one.

The two words dropped into the silence and kept falling.

My eyes went to the alley mouth before I could stop them, to the dark stain spreading across the snow, to the outline of two feet visible just at the edge of the shadow.

My brain put things together fast.

The first shot had been a warning, fired wide, aimed at the pavement between the muggers and me.

He had let two armed men walk away without a second look.

He hadn't wanted to drag an innocent bystander into whatever this was tonight.

The suited one started moving toward me, unhurried, which was somehow more frightening than fast would have been.

I ignored the grip on my arm and took one step forward, toward the man with the green eyes. My heart was slamming so hard it hurt.

"Wait." My voice shook. I let it. "Just one minute. Please."

He didn't signal anyone to stop, but he didn't look away either.

"I'm nobody," I said, keeping my eyes fixed on his. "I carry drinks and smile at men who don't remember my face by morning. That is my whole life."

I kept my hands visible at my sides, open, unthreatening, every inch of my body trying to communicate harmless.

"I picked those words up by accident. Drunk men forget the waitstaff can hear them. I memorized phrases without understanding what they actually meant. Back there I was terrified. Those two were going to hurt me, so I grabbed the scariest-sounding thing I had and used it to bluff them into leaving."

I paused.

"I had no idea what you misunderstood, but I meant no harm by it."

Snow fell between us, soft and indifferent.

"I'm not a cop. I'm not connected to anyone in this city who would care what I stumbled into tonight. If you let me leave, I will forget this street exists. I will forget everything I saw. I will never say a word to anyone, because I have absolutely no one to say it to."

The green eyes stayed on me, patient and unreadable, pulling the sentences apart and looking at what was underneath them.