A horrible, horrible thought occurred to me. “Your new lawyer?”
“Well, I suppose that’s not quite right, since he’s someone we’re all quite familiar with.”
Madeline waved her hand at the window. I looked through the glass. One of the back doors on the Audi opened, and a man got out of the car. He wore a suit and was clutching a silverstone briefcase, like any other sixty-something businessman. But his most distinctive feature was the elegant mane of silver hair that swirled around his head, seeming at odds with his smooth, unlined face.
Jonah McAllister, Mab’s old lawyer and my personal nemesis.
McAllister saw me staring at him and gave me a mock salute before bowing low. Malice glimmered in his cold brown eyes, and I knew that he was enjoying my absolute shock and surprise at this little bombshell that Madeline had just dropped in my lap.
“I have big plans for Jonah,” Madeline said. “No one knows more about my mother’s business dealings than he does. He’s been helping me get up to speed on all sorts of things in Ashland.”
I didn’t respond. I couldn’t. Not at that moment. Instead, I looked at the three of them in turn.
Madeline Monroe. Emery Slater. Jonah McAllister.
My worst nightmare come back to life.
I stayed rooted in my seat, but Madeline gracefully slid out of the booth and got to her feet.
“As I said before, it was so lovely to meet you in person, Gin. I’m sure that we’ll be seeing more of each other very soon.”
She gave me one more smile, then headed for the door, which Emery was already opening for her. My two newest enemies strolled out into the fall night to greet my oldest one. As the door shut behind them, the bell attached to it chimed merrily, as if announcing the start of a new boxing round.
Ding-ding-ding.
Madeline had definitely landed the first punch. All I could do was hope that I could withstand the rest of the fight—and the knockout blow that was coming sooner rather than later.
32
Their business concluded, Madeline, Emery, and Jonah got into the Audi and drove away.
I sat in the booth for several minutes after they left, thinking about my conversation with Madeline and all the not-so-veiled threats on both sides. Silvio cleared his throat, then got up, walked over, and slid into the opposite side of the booth from me. He watched what was left of the ceramic mug continue to bubble as the green acid burned through it and the tabletop.
“I couldn’t help but overhear your conversation with Ms. Monroe,” he murmured. “As well as her earlier one with Ms. Slater.”
“You couldn’t help it?”
He shrugged. “Vampiric hearing has its uses.”
I didn’t respond. Silvio cleared his throat again.
“Obviously, she wants to kill you,” he said. “But she also wants to wipe out everyone and everything that you care about to send a message to everyone else in Ashland. She wants to hurt you in the worst way possible. So does the giant. They were talking about their plans for you during dinner. Monroe wants to make an example out of you to the entire underworld, so that she can more easily take control of things. She’s not going to kill you immediately. She wants to make you suffer first. She wants to eat away at you a little bit at a time, much like the acid on that cup, until there’s nothing left but a brittle shell that she can easily smash and destroy at her leisure.”
“I would expect nothing less from the daughter of Mab Monroe.”
Silvio shifted in his seat. “Not just Mab Monroe.”
My eyes narrowed. “What do you mean by that?”
He looked around the restaurant, making sure that no one was listening to us, then leaned forward. I did the same.
“I heard her talking to Beau the first time she came to the mansion to do business with him,” Silvio said in a low voice. “He knew that she was Mab’s daughter, but she was really trying to impress him, so she told him about her father: Elliot Slater.”
I couldn’t keep my mouth from gaping open at the revelation. “Elliot Slater was Madeline’s father?”
Silvio shrugged again. “Well, I gather it was in genetic material only. Apparently, he and Mab had a victory celebration one night when he was drunk, and she was thinking about what sort of man might give her a strong, worthy heir to the Monroe family name. So she decided on him. That’s the story that Madeline told Beau. She made it sound like it was a rather spur-of-the-moment sort of thing on Mab’s part. But here Madeline is, all the same.”
So not only did Madeline have magic, but she also had giant blood running through her veins, which meant that she was even stronger than I’d feared.
Silvio didn’t say anything else, although he kept his gray gaze focused on me. He knew what Madeline’s coming to town meant for me. No doubt, he knew some other little tidbits about the acid elemental too, since he’d watched Benson deal with her over the past several weeks. Maybe Silvio was right. Maybe I did need an assistant after all.
I roused myself from my troubled musings and stared at him. “That file of information that you gave me on Benson. Is that something you’d like to do again?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that I want to know everything there is to know about Madeline Magda f**king Monroe,” I growled.
I didn’t add that I would need the information if I had any hopes of figuring out what her next move was—and how I could kill the bitch.
Silvio nodded. “I did something similar for Benson. He was insistent on my compiling very thorough dossiers on all his enemies. He wanted to know just as much about them as he did about his drugs and experiments. It was actually one of the few parts of my work that I liked. I’ve always enjoyed research. In another life, I might have become a librarian, if you can imagine that, maybe even worked in Cypress Mountain or somewhere like that.”
Oh, I could more than imagine it. Silvio had the kind of sharp, orderly, analytical mind that I’d associate with a librarian or a researcher. Well, I was going to put that big brain of his to good use.
“You still want a job with me?”
He nodded.
“Well, you’ve got one,” I said. “Start digging. I want to know all about her, Emery Slater, McAllister, and everyone they have working for or with them. Coordinate with Finn. He’ll help you. I want a preliminary report by the end of the week. I will pay you, of course, and reimburse you for any bribes or other expenses that you have.”
I quoted him a figure that made Silvio blink in surprise. Apparently, Benson had never paid him that much, but I knew that any info he could find for me on Madeline, Emery, Jonah, and what they were planning would be worth more than a briefcase full of diamonds.