Mab joined in with his self-satisfied chuckles, but her face quickly became thoughtful once more. “And what if you’re wrong? What if your little waitress isn’t the assassin you think she is? What are you going to do then?”
“Kill her, of course, along with the rest of her family, just so there are no loose ends,” Sebastian said in a matter-of-fact voice. “Porter is sending some of his men to take care of her father and her brother after we wrap up here.”
My heart seized in my chest. He was going after Fletcher and Finn too. All because of me. All because I’d been too blind to see who and what he really was.
A monster.
“Well, it’s good that you’re tying up things, just in case,” Mab said. “But don’t you want to string her along a bit longer? See what else she might tell you? If there’s one thing that assassins have, it’s access to other people’s secrets.”
Sebastian shrugged. “I’ve f**ked her all I care to. She’s of no further use to me.”
My world shattered with every single cruel thing he said. I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t move, I couldn’t even cry anymore. All I could do was just stand there and feel sicker and sicker at how thoroughly, how totally, how absolutely he’d fooled me. Sebastian Vaughn had been playing me this whole time, this whole damn time. Every heated word he’d said, every soft look he’d given me, every tiny tear he’d shed for his supposedly beloved papa.
Lies—all of it damn, dirty, rotten, heartless lies.
Even as my heart splintered into smaller and sharper pieces, the rage began to build brick by solid brick in its place, clearing the rest of the drugged fog from my mind. Rage that Sebastian had used me. It wasn’t just that he’d hired an assassin to kill his father. That was rather commonplace in Ashland. So was trying to double-cross said assassin somewhere along the way. But to go to such trouble to seduce me after the fact and now to be targeting Finn and Fletcher too . . .
In that instant, everything that I’d ever felt for Sebastian Vaughn burned to ash. Every soft thought, every kind word, every silly, secret hope and hazy, wishful dream. Gone. Incinerated. Obliterated. But in their places rose one thing, stronger than all that I’d felt for him before: a cold, vicious, unending desire to kill him for every low-down, dirty, rotten thing he’d done.
To me, to his father, and especially to Charlotte.
“Well, if you think that you can manage to take care of this girl and her family, we can move ahead with our plans,” Mab said. “How soon can you handle the first shipment?”
“As soon as you give it to me,” Sebastian said. “Vaughn Construction has several ongoing projects up and down the East Coast. I’ll be happy to include your packages with the building materials that we ship out. That should make it easier to get your drugs into new markets.”
“Well, I’m glad that you’re so much more amenable to the idea than your father was.”
So that’s what this was about. Cesar hadn’t wanted to help Mab move her drugs, but Sebastian had wanted to be a king instead of a prince, just like Finn had said, and he’d seen his father’s reluctance as a golden opportunity. So he’d made a deal to help Mab with her drugs and bump off his father at the same time. I wondered what Sebastian had planned for me—and for Charlotte.
Sebastian hesitated. “Along with the girl, there might be one more loose end, a detective named Harry Coolidge.”
“How so?”
“Right before the assassin killed my father, Coolidge gave him a file. I found it in his office safe after I paid off the cops to let me go through his papers instead of bagging them up as evidence. It seems as if my father had Coolidge independently investigating the terrace collapse.”
So that was what had been in that file, some sort of proof of Sebastian’s involvement. Sebastian must have thought it was his lucky day when he found the file in his father’s safe after I killed Cesar.
“What did he find, and how bad is it?”
Sebastian shrugged. “Nothing that I couldn’t explain away, but Coolidge is persistent. Worse than a dog with a bone. Plus, he’s never liked me. He already thinks that I had something to do with my father’s death. He intimated as much at the party tonight.”
“Well, then, perhaps you should get your waitress assassin to get rid of him before you kill her,” Mab suggested. “Instead of hiring another hit man and making more of a mess of things than you already have.”
Sebastian waved his hand. “I’m not worried about Coolidge. He’s more hot air than anything else. If he becomes a nuisance, I’ll bury him myself. In fact, I’m rather looking forward to it.”
“I thought that I made this clear months ago when you first approached me with your grand scheme, but let me repeat myself,” Mab said, her voice growing colder and sharper with every word. “Should you start becoming a problem, then I’ll do the same thing to you that you did to your dearly departed father. Only I won’t bother using an assassin. Are we clear?”
The snifter in her hand erupted into flames, punctuating her words, and the harsh scent of brandy filled the library before quickly burning away. Sebastian couldn’t stop himself from throwing his hand up and taking several steps back. He was afraid of her. He should be.
But not as afraid as he should be of me.
Mab kept her eyes on Sebastian, even as the glass in her hand began to bubble and melt and finally dripped through her fingers like molten lava. And when it was done, when the glass was gone and her point had been made, she brushed the last drops of molten glass off her hands and released her hold on her magic. The flames snuffed out on her fingertips, although the stench of smoke remained behind.
“I trust that’s the only demonstration that I’ll ever need to give you,” Mab said.
Sebastian tried to give her a confident look, as though he weren’t about to wet his pants, but the brandy snifter in his own hand trembled, sloshing around the liquid and spoiling his façade. “It won’t come to that. I can handle Coolidge and everything else.”
“Good. Because you don’t want to disappoint me.”
Mab patted Sebastian’s cheek, her hot hand leaving a faint red welt on his skin. I hoped she would burn off his smug face, but instead, she dropped her hand before turning and gliding away.
Leaving—she was leaving.
I ducked back behind the fireplace, scurrying deeper into this part of the library, and crouched down behind a wingback chair just as Mab stepped into view again. The Fire elemental started toward the door but then paused and glanced over her shoulder, her black eyes flicking over the bookcases and the shadows they cast out.