Page 18 of Killer Kiss

Those same inkling suspicions I’d had on the train that warned men weren’t trustworthy sounded again. If he had nothing to hide, he’d just tell me.

But Augie gripped the edge of the table and leaned down, so we were eye to eye. “Why didn’t you tell me she was your sister when we met on the train?”

I raised an eyebrow and told him the truth. “Because I don’t have a clue who you are or whether you can be trusted.”

“And yet you walk in here like you have any right to and expect us to trust you?”

I shrugged. “Why wouldn’t you? We seem to be in agreement that I am who I say I am. But I know nothing about you, not even your real name.”

Eve glanced over at him. “Augie isn’t even your name?”

He ignored her, his gaze never leaving mine. “You don’t need to know anything about me. I’m not the one demanding information.”

I pushed slowly to my feet, the prickle of irritation I’d felt when he questioned me turning into a thorn in my damn side. I stared at him from across the table. I was no shrinking violet. I was barely a few inches shorter, but even if he’d towered over me, I’d never been one to back down. Not to a man. I’d been raised better. I’d give my mother credit for that. A seething anger rolled up my spine. “She’s my sister.”

“She hated you.”

The venom in his words froze me to the spot. Even Scythe stopped his obnoxious chewing, his hand halfway to his mouth with another stew-soaked piece of bread.

On instinct, I shook my head. “No. She hated our mother and our family business. She didn’t hate us.” I gestured between my brother and I. “We let her leave.”

Augie recoiled like the words personally offended him. “You let her leave? What the fuck kind of messed-up shit is that? She was—is—a grown-ass woman who gets to make her own decisions. You don’t let her anything.” He shook his head, staring at me like I was the scum on the bottom of his shoes. “I see why she wanted nothing to do with you.”

My mouth dropped open. I could snap the man’s neck if I wanted to. Pull out the gun in my purse and put a bullet through his brain. Hell, those knitting needles hadn’t seen any action for a few hours. Plenty of places I could shove one of those that would be nicely painful.

What had Fawn told him about me? About our family? Surely, she hadn’t told him the truth?

Yet something in his blue eyes seemed to cut right through every defense I had, like he already knew all my secrets.

I didn’t like it.

It was wholly uncomfortable.

The guy was a grade-A asshole, and he could stick it where the sun didn’t shine. “Come on, Scythe. There’s nothing for us here. We’ll find her without their help.”

Scythe moaned something about not being finished with his stew and that it was the best thing he’d ever tasted, but he shut up when I glared at him.

Eve caught my arm as I turned for the door. “Wait. Don’t go. What Augie isn’t saying is that we’ve been searching for your sister every day since she was taken. We’ve turned over every leaf. Gone down every rabbit hole. We’ve spoken to everyone we can think of, and we’ve begged the police for help and information they refuse to give us.”

There was a plea in her unspoken words. A desperation in her eyes. “Fawn came to me a long time ago, broken and battered from a life she was desperately trying to outrun. So forgive us if we aren’t as forthcoming with information as you might want us to be. But you didn’t even tell Augie you were her sister, so from where I’m standing, it seems like we’re in a standoff.”

She wasn’t wrong. There was a clear line down the middle of the table, with her and Augie on one side, my brother and me on the other, both sides staring at the other with distrust in their gazes.

Except when I glanced over, Scythe wasn’t actually staring at anything except his stew with some sort of lovestruck puppy look that made me want to slap the back of his head.

He was lethal but also an idiot.

Eve cleared her throat and offered an olive branch. “Come by the club this week. Hang out. Have a drink. Get to know us and let us get to know you.”

Still prickly from Augie’s comments, I spoke too quickly. “I don’t make a habit of hanging out at strip clubs.”

Augie straightened, crossing his arms over his chest and shaking his head at me. “Why? Too good for them?”

“No,” I said too quickly.

Except, the answer really was kind of yes. Call me a snobby bitch if you wanted, but this place, in the middle of the Saint View slums, was about as far from my life as you could get. We’d moved around a bit, but I’d grown up with money. I’d never had to work a regular job because my mother’s business made more than enough money for all of us. When I met up with friends, we went to nightclubs in Europe and ate meals in expensive restaurants.

Not that you’d know it to look at my brother, who clearly thought that stew was the best thing he’d ever tasted.

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