Jimmy’s blue eyes narrowed at her disbelieving tone, and he gave Jackson a dark look. Fontaine wasn’t stupid. Like most predators, he could sense when others were near, and I could tell that his radar was already pinging when it came to Gin. He dropped her hand and stared at her with suspicion, but my girl just gave him a winsome smile and started exploring the room the way that any curious kid might.
“Gin’s a runaway,” Jackson explained, trying to smooth things over.
“Is that true?” Jimmy asked, his blue eyes locked on Gin.
Gin shrugged and picked up what looked like a real Ming vase. “Not really. But my family’s all dead and burned to ash, so what the hell does it matter?”
Jimmy frowned at her words, but Gin put the vase down and moved over to a painting hanging on the far wall. To a casual observer, she was doing nothing more than wandering aimlessly through the room, but I knew that she was doing exactly what I’d trained her to do—scanning the area for hidden weapons, hidden guards, or anything else that might be a threat to her.
Jimmy Fontaine watched Gin for another minute, but when she didn’t do anything else suspicious or threatening, his unease faded away, and his eyes latched onto her ass. In addition to pimping out young girls and boys, Fontaine also like to sample the merchandise himself.
Fontaine stepped out from behind his desk, moved over, and sat down on a wide white couch that took up the better part of the right wall. He patted the cushion beside him. “Why don’t you come over here? I’d like to get to know you better. Jackson’s told you what we do here right? How we run a sort of halfway house for teens who don’t fit in anywhere else.”
That was the bullshit line that Jackson fed to other teens to get them into the row house in the first place. After that, Jimmy, his men, and his drugs made sure that they didn’t leave until they were all used up—or dead.
“Sure,” Gin chirped in a bright voice, but once again, her smile didn’t reach her eyes.
She moved over and plopped down onto the sofa next to Jimmy. Jackson sat in a chair across from them. Neither man noticed Gin’s arm fall down to her side—or the bit of metal that suddenly glinted in her right hand.
“So,” Gin chirped in that light tone again. “Is this where you rape all the girls that you bring up here? Or do you get them high first so they don’t fight back as hard? Is this were you raped Violet Wong before you beat her to death? Or did one of your filthy customers do it for you?”
For a moment, Fontaine’s mouth gaped open, and Jackson wore a similarly stunned look. Big brother was a little quicker on the draw, though, because his mouth snapped shut, and his eyes narrowed.
“How the hell do you know that name?” Jimmy growled, dark rage filling his face.
Gin just smiled at him. “Because I went to her funeral a few weeks ago. And her father wanted me to come here tonight and say hello for him.”
“What the hell—” Jackson sputtered.
Gin chose that moment to lean forward, snap up her hand, and drive the silverstone knife that she held there deep into Jimmy Fontaine’s chest. The giant’s eyes bulged in pain and surprise, and he opened his mouth to scream, even though it wouldn’t do him a damn bit of good in the soundproofed office. But Gin didn’t give him the chance. She leaped on top of the giant, even as she yanked the knife out of his chest.
And then, she cut his throat with it.
She turned her head, and blood spattered onto the side of her face, coating her pretty features like thick, sticky paint. Gin’s lips tightened at the sensation, but she kept her eyes open and focused on Jackson the whole time, already thinking about how to take out her next target.
“You bitch!” Jackson screamed, scrambling to his feet. “This was a setup!”
Gin pushed herself up off the sofa and leapt at Jackson, but the younger giant was too quick for her. He stepped back, knocking over his chair. She landed at his feet, and the giant drew back his foot and kicked her in the ribs. Gin grunted at the brutal contact and rolled back, back, back, away from the enraged giant. She came up in a low crouch, her knife still clutched in her hand.
Jackson stared at his brother a moment, and the blood soaking into the white coach. “You killed him! You killed Jimmy, you bitch!”
With a roar, the giant went after Gin. She tried to defend herself, but he slapped her knife away. Jackson grabbed Gin’s jacket, lifted her up off the floor, and punched her repeatedly in the stomach.
I didn’t remember standing outside on the fire escape, but suddenly, I was, with the gun that I’d had tucked into the small of my back clenched in my right hand. Worry burned through my veins like a wildfire roaring out of control. The girl’s pride be damned. I wasn’t going to let her die, not like I had her mother and older sister—
Gin groaned, but she reached up and clawed at Jackson’s eyes. The giant jerked back in surprise, and Gin managed to spin around and out of her jacket. She stumbled across the room and fell on top of the desk, gasping for air. Her eyes landed on something on top of the smooth glass, and I saw her hand snake forward.
Behind her, Jackson drew the gun out of the pocket of his letterman jacket. Through the window, I took careful aim at him with my own weapon. If he made a move to pull the trigger, the boy was going to get a bullet through the back of his head.
But Jackson just looked down at his gun, then over at his brother with his cut throat. Rage twisted his handsome face, and he threw down the gun and took off his jacket. Fool.
Jackson cracked the knuckles on both of his hands. “Time to die, bitch,” he snarled, grabbing Gin’s shoulder and turning her back around toward him.
And that’s when she stabbed him in the throat.
The object that I’d seen Gin palm off the desk had been a long, slender letter opener with a shiny pearl handle. It wasn’t as sharp as one of her silverstone knives, but it did the job, especially since she buried it up to the hilt on Jackson’s throat.
Jackson tried to scream, but all that came out was a series of strangled gasps and gurgles. Gin pulled the makeshift weapon out of his throat and shoved him away. The young half-giant stumbled over his fallen chair and went down onto the floor on his back. Gin didn’t make the same mistake that Jackson had—she didn’t hesitate. She raised the letter opener again and used the force of her entire body to drive it down deep into his chest.
Jackson Fontaine didn’t get up after that.
When it was over, and Jackson was as dead as his older brother, Gin slowly pushed herself up to her feet. She stood there in the middle of the office, swaying back and forth, eyes wide, fear and a touch of disgust filling her face at what had just happened. At what she’d just done.
“Come on, girl,” I whispered. “Pull yourself together. You can do it. This is what you were born to do, what I’ve been training you for.”
After a moment, Gin closed her eyes and shuddered out a breath. When she opened them again, her gray gaze was sharp and bright as steel once more. Now, she was the Gin that I knew—the little girl with an iron will and a heart of stone that had let her survive so many terrible things already. The death of her mother and older sister, being tortured by Mab Monroe, living on the streets, being trained by an assassin like me.
Gin sucked in a breath and stared at the two bodies. For a moment, I wondered if she’d be able to go through with the final part of the assignment. But her face hardened, and her lips flattened out into a thin line. Gin tiptoed over to Jackson Fontaine, leaned down, and checked the pulse—or lack thereof—in his neck. Just because someone looked dead didn’t mean that he was actually that way. You always had to check and make sure.