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СКАЧАТЬ was listening.

      His grandmother looked up from her mug, scowling fiercely, and everything about her was suddenly different, from the harder edge to her voice to the stiffness of her posture. “Kristopher Daniels, tell me you did not bring a Tower employee into this house.”

      Kris groaned into my ear. “Gran, my name is top on the list of things you weren’t supposed to tell her!”

      “Take her back.” Gran blew calmly over the surface of her coffee as I kicked her grandson over and over again, growing angrier each time he only grunted and squeezed me tighter. “If she works for the Towers, she’s dangerous.”

      “Taking her back won’t make her any less dangerous. And anyway, I can’t take her back.” Kris oofed when I threw my head back and my skull caught his … chin? But his grip around my waist never loosened. “They tried to shoot her. Right now, I can’t really blame them.”

      “Why would they shoot their own employee?” Gran asked.

      “I don’t work for them! And they weren’t shooting at me, they were shooting at him.” Though they were clearly willing to count me as collateral damage. “Let me go!” I shouted when my anger crested, and I shoved the knife back with all the strength I had.

      The blade snagged on material again, and Kris gasped, then grunted in frustration. “Damn it, Sera!” He let go of my waist, but before I could do anything with my freed left arm, he spun me around and slammed me against the front of the refrigerator.

      Air burst from my lungs, then his forearm pressed into my collarbone through my sister’s yellow scarf, pinning my shoulders to the fridge. Panic tightened every muscle in my body. I fought blindly as memory obscured reality and it became hard to focus on his face.

      His free hand curled around my right one, which still gripped the blade. His angry blue-gray gaze bored into me, his legs pinning mine so that I couldn’t kick. “Please drop the knife, Sera! You got me. I’m bleeding. You win.”

      “Open the door and let me out,” I growled through clenched teeth.

      He exhaled heavily. “I can’t. I’m sorry you can’t see that, but I can’t let you leave yet, for your safety and for ours. I have to ask you some questions, and you have to answer them. But it doesn’t have to be this hard. Please, please, please let’s do this the easy way.”

      “Fuck you.” I glared into his eyes from inches away. “I don’t owe you anything.”

      His expression hardened. “Fine. We’ll do it the hard way. Just keep in mind that that was your choice.” He squeezed my left wrist, but I gripped the knife in spite of the growing pressure and pain until I actually lost control of my own fingers.

      The knife slipped from my failed grip and clattered on the floor. He kicked it across the linoleum and it thunked into something I couldn’t see. In the second my left leg was free, I tried to knee him in the groin, but he deflected the blow with the outside of one very solid thigh.

      He was just plain too big to fight, unless I was willing to fight dirty—and I was—or I could catch him by surprise. Which became the new Plan D.

      His eyes narrowed, his gaze cautious. “If I let go, are you going to play nice and show me your arm?”

      I stared back at him. “Are you going to hand over your phone and power tools?”

      His grandmother laughed from the kitchen table, and I realized she’d been watching us the whole time. Sipping her coffee.

      Kris groaned. “Are you this much of a pain in the ass every time someone asks to see your marks?”

      “No one’s ever asked to see my marks. And again, I don’t have any.”

      “How have you never been asked to prove that? What, are you from Mars?”

      “Worse,” his grandmother said, and I saw her watching us over his shoulder, a shrewd gleam in her eye. “Suburbia. There isn’t much syndicate activity in the outskirts, Kris. You know that better than most.”

      He did? What did that mean?

      “Yeah, I do.” His grip on me loosened and his gaze softened, but he didn’t let me go. “Okay, I get that you’re out of your element, and you’re obviously clueless about the way this city operates. So let me give you some survival advice. Stay out of the east side unless you want to deal with Cavazos. Stay out of the west side unless you want to deal with Tower—which you evidently do.” His disgusted expression told me exactly how dumb he thought that decision was, and I bristled beneath his judgment. “And when someone asks to see your arm, you show them your damn arm, so they know whether or not they’re allowed to fuck with you. They won’t all be as nice about it as I’ve been.”

      “You call this nice?” I snapped.

      He stared at me for a second, apparently gauging the sincerity of my question, while his grandmother shook her head slowly at the table. My naïveté was evidently confounding.

      “This is the kid-glove treatment,” Kris said. “There are people out there who would have cut your clothes off the first time you refused.”

      “My shirt,” I corrected, and he shook his head.

      “The left arm is the most common place people are marked, but it’s not the only place.”

      Chills raced up my spine, then down into my hands, which began to shake. I glanced at his grandmother for confirmation, and she nodded solemnly.

      Kris’s gaze narrowed on me again, and he seemed to be studying me from a new perspective. “What the hell are you doing here, Sera? Girls like you don’t belong in the city.”

      “No one belongs here,” Gran said, and I let her answer stand for me.

      “Now, I’m going to let you go, and you’re going to turn around and pull your left arm out of your shirt and show it to me. You can keep everything else covered, but your left arm is non-negotiable. Got it?”

      “How am I supposed to prove I’m not marked anywhere else? I’m not taking anything off.”

      “No need.” Gran chuckled into her coffee, and I couldn’t believe the change in her from a few minutes earlier. “A whore would never be so hard to undress.”

      “Whore?” I blinked at Kris in incomprehension.

      “Cavazos marks his prostitutes with a red ring on the inner thigh.” He chuckled a little at my shocked expression. “Don’t worry. I’ve never met anyone less likely to bear a red mark in my life.”

      I wasn’t sure whether or not that was a compliment.

      “I’m going to let go and back up, and you’re going to show me your arm. Ready?”

      “If I do, you’ll open the front door?”

      He frowned. “No, but showing me your arm will put you one step closer to that. Here goes …”

      He let go of my right hand and removed his left arm from my shoulders. Then he backed СКАЧАТЬ