And I truly was. Sure, Derrick had screwed up by letting me slip past him, but Benson had to have known the chance of that happening was high. Like he’d said, I didn’t have my reputation as the Spider for nothing. No, Benson had killed his own man simply because he’d wanted to. He’d wanted to rattle me, wanted to make me worry about what he might do to Bria, and me too, and Derrick had been unfortunate enough to be his demonstration, with Silvio being forced to witness the death of someone he cared about.
“Yes, well, you know quite a bit about loss yourself, don’t you?” Silvio murmured. “Murdered parents, murdered mentor, and then, of course, all the people you’ve killed yourself. Death seems to follow you around, Ms. Blanco.”
I grinned, but the expression was sharper than the knife in my hand. “Maybe because he knows that I’ll be leaving behind a lot of folks for him to escort over to the other side.”
Silvio’s mouth quirked in thought. “I wouldn’t take you for a believer in such mythology.”
“I read a lot.”
He studied me again, but I kept my face smooth and easy, waiting him out. I didn’t know what kind of game Silvio was playing, but I was determined to beat him at it. One minute ticked by, then two, then three . . . and still, neither one of us moved, spoke, or did anything other than breathe. Finally, Silvio blinked.
“I wanted to warn you not to trust Beau,” he said. “He may have offered you a truce today, but he won’t live up to his end of the deal tomorrow. He’ll keep sending men after you, trying to kill you.”
“No, really?” I deadpanned again. “Because he struck me as being so trustworthy when he murdered his own man right in front of me.”
Silvio’s lips twitched with something that might have been genuine amusement. I leaned against the porch railing and stabbed my knife at him.
“As scintillating as our conversation has been, it’s been a long day, and I would like to go inside my house and wash off the lingering stench of my encounter with your boss,” I said. “So the next words out of your mouth had better be the real reason you came here, or I’ll be sending Death someone else to collect tonight.”
Silvio’s amusement iced over and cracked away, leaving his features as cold as mine. “Very well. You asked me earlier why I didn’t alert Benson to your presence in the parking garage last night. I didn’t want to say anything at the club. Too many ears listening.”
“Including Benson’s, you mean. He wouldn’t be very happy if he realized that you were the reason he had to worry about leaving a witness behind.”
Silvio nodded. “Catalina is actually what I want to talk to you about.”
My fingers curled around my knife. How the hell did he know her name? “What about her?”
Silvio squared his shoulders again. “She’s my niece.”
•
Of all the things he might have said, that was about the last one I was expecting. No, scratch that. His confession had never even entered my realm of possibilities. I had wondered why Silvio hadn’t said anything to Benson about spotting Catalina and me in the garage. I had assumed it was because he had blackmail in mind, or even some nebulous dream of taking over Benson’s operation himself, and Benson going down for Troy’s murder would help him with that. But this . . . this changed everything.
“Catalina Vasquez is your niece?” I asked, my mind churning. “My Catalina? The student who works as a waitress at the Pork Pit?”
“One and the same.”
My gaze flicked over to his car and the sparkly pig rune dangling from his rearview mirror. Well, now I knew where he’d gotten that from.
“I can see that you’re surprised, but I assure you that I’m telling the truth. Catalina’s mother, Laura, was my sister. I brought some photos, in case you need further convincing.” He gestured at the folder on the seat of the rocking chair. “May I?”
“Slowly.”
Silvio opened the file and grabbed a slip of paper out of it, before crossing the porch and holding it out to me. I took it from him, and he quickly stepped back out of knife’s reach.
It was a photo of Silvio standing next to a shorter woman with similar features—who was cradling a young Catalina in her arms. The picture had to be at least fifteen years old, but I could still tell that it was Catalina. Same eyes, same nose, same happy smile. And now that I saw Silvio and her in the same space, I could see the familial resemblance. Faint, but it was there in the shape of their faces, the arch of their eyebrows, and the curve of their lips.
“I came here because I care about Catalina very much,” Silvio said, his voice tight with more emotion than he’d shown the whole time we’d been talking.
I placed the photo on the porch railing. I knew what he was going to say next.
“I came here, Ms. Blanco, because I want you to protect Catalina.”
I let out a soft laugh and shook my head. “No, that’s not what you’re asking. That’s not what you want me to do. Not really. At least have the guts to say it out loud.”
His hand crept up to Benson’s rune stabbed into the middle of his tie. He rubbed it a moment before dropping his fingers from the pin. “Very well. I came here because I want to hire you as the Spider. I want you to kill Benson.”
15
His voice was as soft as my laugh had been, and his meaning was just as dark. But the determined pinch of his mouth, the slight flare of his nostrils, and the icy chill in his gray eyes told me that he meant every word.
“Name your price,” he continued. “Whatever you want, I will gladly pay it.”
For the first time, I saw Silvio Sanchez as more than an anonymous bad guy and disposable hired hand. I saw him for what he truly was in that moment: a man desperately trying to protect his family.
In a way, his actions eerily mirrored my own. Except that I had wanted Catalina to disappear and Bria to let go of her vendetta against Benson, whereas Silvio was taking a much more direct, brutal approach to the situation. I admired him for that, for doing what he thought was necessary, for having the guts to come here, knowing that I might kill him anyway simply because of what Benson had done to Roslyn.
But I’d told Bria the truth when I’d said that I was tired of all the blood, battles, and bodies. If I did what Silvio wanted, then I’d be in the thick of things with Benson, fighting him until one of us was dead. Did I really want to risk myself like that for Catalina? Until two days ago, she’d just been a girl who worked for me. Nothing more, nothing less. Did that really make her my responsibility? Was it my duty to protect all my employees from every bad, dangerous thing that life threw at them? What about their friends and families? Doing pro bono work, helping folks who couldn’t help themselves, was all well and good. Fletcher had taught me that. But where did it end?