But this was a vindictive cunt who’d savaged the heart of a sixteen-year-old girl for no reason that couldn’t have been entirely selfish. Someone that petty wasn’t going to be any kind of role model.
“Wonderful,” I said. “I wouldn’t have intervened if you hadn’t involved my family in the whole mess.”
Holly sniffed disdainfully. “As if you didn’t involve yourself inmylife way before now. Who do you figure you’re fooling with that cutesy dress? You think I don’t know why your dad kept sending you under Marcel’s eye? Practically offering you up on a platter. He figured he’d get the hook in good and deep, and as soon as you were old enough—”
She snapped her fingers. Then a malicious smirk crossed her face. “I wonder what Marcel would think if he knew what a whore you were even back then.”
A shudder crawled down my spine.Thatwas why she’d poisoned the years of friendship and budding love between me and the Rosano brothers—because she assumed Dad had been setting me up for Marcel? The guy might have liked his women young, but I’d never gotten the impression he saw me that way. Ugh. I’d only been ten years old when I had my first summer visit.
But this woman clearly didn’t have any concept of normal human thought patterns.
Brant tapped me on the head with the side of his pistol again. “It’s none of your business anyway. Your idiot brother didn’t want you. You’re a goddamn stray. No one’s going to miss you when you’re gone.”
The blatant threat made my skin prickle even more. I braced myself, studying the scene and working out my options. If I could just delay them a little longer…
But I didn’t want to wait for the Rosano brothers to show up, if they were even on their way after my conversation with Felix. I wasn’t some damsel in distress needing rescue. I was Anthea fucking Noble, and I took care of my own business.
I’d needed to deal with these two, and it appeared I was going to have to do it much faster than I’d have preferred if I was going to get out of this alive. But it’d had to happen either way.
It would be better—simpler—if no one suspected anyone other than these two had ever been here. No investigation into their connections, which would bring a heap of police trouble down on the Rosanos’ heads. No possible fingers pointed at me, just months after a different death.
Could I pull off an even bigger con than I ever had before, without weeks to plan every variable? Maybe, if the pieces I’d set in motion came together properly. From the corner of my eye, I thought I caught a slight sway in Brant’s stance. The toxin had gotten several minutes to travel through his bloodstream. His muscles shouldn’t be holding him up quite as firmly as they normally would.
“You don’t have to kill me,” I said, holding up my hands. “And if you do, believe me, my brother won’t be happy about that. How many enemies are you looking to collect?”
“Cast-off gang princess,” Holly sneered at me. “Who says anyone will ever know what happened to you? We’ll make you completely disappear.”
That could be the prompt I needed. “Vanishing a person isn’t all that easy,” I said, taking on a haughty tone I knew would irk her. “Especially someone like me.”
Holly stalked closer to me and looked me up and down. She waved Brant to the side, and he stepped back with his gun still aimed at my head.
Perfect. I’d bought myself a little more space to work with.
“Let me guess, you’ve got something on you that you expect the Nobles to trace,” she said with obvious skepticism. She patted my sides and my pockets, shoving her hands right into the latter to check for phones or other devices.
“She was doing something on the phone I broke when I caught her,” Brant said, jerking his head toward the spot where he’d smashed it.
Holly glared at me. “What were you up to? Were you talking to someone?”
I stared steadily back at her. “Why should I tell you?”
She hissed through her teeth and turned toward Brant—exactly where I needed her. “You shouldn’t have crushed it. Go and—”
My pulse thumped faster with a jolt of adrenaline. Before she could finish her order, I snatched the little pistol out of my sleeve, whipped my arm in front of her chest, and shot three bullets into Brant’s torso.
Holly let out a shriek. She grabbed at me, but I was already darting away and past her. Brant staggered, blood blooming across his chest, but his gun arm managed to follow me.
Thankfully, my toxin was slowing him down, messing with his reflexes. His arm wobbled, and then I was on him.
I caught his hand in mine, yanked it up, and squeezed his finger on the trigger.
The bullet caught Holly in the neck. I’d been aiming for her head, but the slight deviation would do given the circumstances. She gurgled, blood gushing from the artery I’d hit.
Brant swore, but the words mingled with a groan of pain. He slumped to his knees. Holly teetered, clamping her hand to her neck ineffectually. Blood spurted from beneath her fingers. She shot daggers at me with her eyes, but the life was already fading from them.
I stepped well back, wiping my pistol on the fabric of my jacket to remove my fingerprints. “If you’re thinking that I’m going to pay for this, you can forget about that. No one’s going to have any idea this was anything other than a spat between lovers with criminal inclinations. I’ll be removing every sign that I was here before I leave, and the cops aren’t going to look too closely when the obvious evidence will add right up.”
She opened her mouth, but all that sputtered out was more blood. Swaying, she keeled right over. The life had left her before she even hit the ground. Her corpse sprawled there, limbs akimbo, her hair more scarlet than ice-blond now.
Brant had slumped onto his chest. I fought the urge to put one more bullet in his brain, just to be sure. That would only make the policeunsure of how this spat had gone down. His breath rasped and then stopped.
As I checked his pulse, confirming it’d stopped, an engine roared nearby. Tires screeched, and a dark sports car careened around the warehouse into the lot.
Before I could do more than tense up, braced for a bigger fight, all three of the Rosano brothers spilled out into the night.