Jennifer Estep - Poison Promise

“Gin?” Catalina asked, her hand latching onto the door handle, even though the car was still locked. “What are you doing here?”

“Saving you.”

She frowned. “From what?”

“Your ex-boyfriend. The oh-so-lovely gentleman who was hassling you last night.”

Her frown deepened. “Troy? What’s he got to do with this?”

“Everything. When you left the Pork Pit, he and his friends were right behind you. Call me crazy, but I doubt that they just want to talk.”

I crossed my arms over my chest. Carrying my knives was second nature to me, and I didn’t even realize that I was still holding one of them until Catalina’s gaze locked onto the blade glinting in my right hand. She eased to the side, putting a little more distance between us.

“Troy wouldn’t hurt me,” she said, her voice cracking on the last two words. “Not really. He’s a hothead with a big mouth, that’s all.”

“And what about his friends?” I countered. “They’re not going to be too happy about the beat-down I gave them. Neither will whoever they work for—trust me. Troy and his friends aren’t on their way here to offer you a heartfelt apology.”

Catalina opened her mouth, but the heavy smack of footsteps cut her off.

“C’mon.” Troy’s voice drifted over to us from a distance. “The bitch has got to be up here.”

Catalina sucked in a surprised breath, but I was already moving forward, grabbing her hand and pulling her around to the opposite side of her car. I made her crouch down beside me in the shadows.

“You stay here,” I ordered. “Out of the way. I’ll deal with Troy and his friends—”

This time, I was the one who got cut off by the squeal of tires and the rumble of several engines.

I scooted forward and peered around the back of Catalina’s car. Troy and his two friends had gotten here faster than I’d expected, because they now stood in the middle of this section of the garage. But Troy was as surprised as I was by the noise, and he turned to look behind him.

Two black Cadillac Escalades zoomed up onto this level, one going right and the other turning left, both of them stopping just before they hit the concrete walls. A few seconds later, a third car sedately drove up and parked in the middle of the metal V that the other two vehicles had created.

Unlike the other dark, anonymous cars, the third vehicle was completely memorable—an old-fashioned baby-blue Bentley that was chromed, waxed, and polished to perfection. It was the sort of fancy, high-end car that Finn always drooled over, one that was known throughout Ashland but especially over in Southtown, where its owner lived.

Now I knew exactly who Troy dealt for. Things had just gone from bad to worse. Story of my life.

Catalina crept up beside me, peering around my shoulder. She sucked in a breath when she spotted the blue car. “Oh, no,” she whispered.

Yeah. That about summed things up.

“Stay still, and be quiet,” I murmured. “No matter what happens. And if I tell you to run, then you run , and you don’t look back.”

Catalina nodded, too frightened to do anything else.

Men poured out of the two black Escalades, six of them total, all wearing dark suits and sporting wing tips that were as clean and shiny as their cars. They were all smiling, showing off a set of perfect, polished fangs in each and every one of their mouths. I’d heard that their boss was big on his men always looking their best, right down to their pearly-whites.

I looked past the enforcers to the man who got out of the driver’s seat of the Bentley. He was short and lean, and everything about him was a soft gray, from his suit and shirt to his hair and eyes. Silvio Sanchez. I’d never had the misfortune of meeting him, although I knew him by reputation. Smart. Ruthless. Vicious. The sort of sneaky, underhanded, backstabbing vampire you did not want to mess with.

Silvio being here was bad enough, but he opened the back door of the Bentley so that another man could get out—one who was a hundred times more dangerous than Silvio had ever dreamed of being.

Truth be told, the other man wasn’t an impressive figure. Oh, he was around six feet tall, but his arms and legs seemed almost too long for the rest of him, as though he were a gangly teenager who hadn’t grown into his own body yet. He had a string-bean physique and not much in the way of muscles, a fact that his clothes emphasized. His white pants almost completely covered up his white sneakers, while his long-sleeved button-up shirt was about two sizes too big, although the baby-blue fabric perfectly matched the paint on his Bentley. A white bow tie patterned with baby-blue polka dots hung loose and limp around his neck.

His face looked young too, his skin pale, his cheeks rounded with a perpetual bit of baby fat, even though I knew he had to be at least forty, if not older. His black hair was slightly mussed, as if he ran his hands through it repeatedly and didn’t care how it looked. Silver glasses perched on the end of his hawkish nose, making his pale blue eyes seem larger than they actually were.

All put together, he looked like a calm, quiet, geeky kind of guy, a fact that the pens and notepad sticking out of the plastic pocket protector on the front of his shirt only reinforced. But he was anything but the mild-mannered fellow he appeared to be. I knew him by reputation too.

Beauregard Benson, the drug-dealing vampire king of Southtown.

While Benson studied Troy, I studied Benson.

Even among the underworld bosses, Beauregard Benson was someone everyone talked about in hushed whispers. Unlike some of the other crime lords and ladies, Benson didn’t bother with selling blood, running hookers, or bankrolling bookies. Drugs were his forte. Uppers, downers, pot, heroin, crack, meth, oxy. If it could get you higher than a kite, then Benson was the one you were paying for the ride up into the wild blue yonder—and the piranha that was waiting to chew you up and spit you out on the way down.

Benson finished his perusal of Troy before turning to Silvio. “Is this the one?” he asked in a high, nasal voice that perfectly matched his geeky wardrobe.

“Yes, sir,” Silvio replied in a soft, bland tone.

Benson nodded, then pointed at the two vampires standing with Troy, snapped his fingers, and jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “Gentlemen, you may leave now.”

“Sorry, Troy,” one of the vamps muttered.

The two vamps skirted past Benson and Silvio and hurried out of the garage as fast as they could. Meanwhile, the six men who’d been in the Escalades closed ranks, forming a circle around Troy. And I realized exactly what this was: an execution.

Troy had come here to hurt Catalina, but he was the one who wouldn’t be leaving.

Troy frowned, not comprehending that he was a dead man standing. “Mr. Benson? What’s going on? Why are you here?”

Benson plucked his glasses off his nose. He held out a hand, and Silvio stepped forward and passed him a white silk handkerchief, which Benson used to clean the lenses.

“I’m here because apparently, you can’t handle having your own territory,” Benson said, focusing on his glasses. “Did you think that I wouldn’t find out what happened?”

“If this is about last night, I can explain—”

“Of course this is about last night,” he said, tucking the silk into his pocket before sliding his glasses back onto his nose and peering through the lenses at Troy. “You and your friends went to one of our Air healers to get patched up. Your friends were smart enough to contact Silvio immediately afterward and confess their incompetence. Yet you did not. Do you want to tell me why?”

“It was nothing,” Troy insisted. “Somebody got lucky and got the drop on me. I was going to take care of it. Tonight.”