I thought of Nic and frowned. All this time he was fighting his desires for my safety, and he was losing. And lying.

“But you didn’t see the danger, did you? Because you see only the parts you want to see, and you are blind to all else.”

I glowered at him. “I’m not blind to anything.” Except my uncle’s secret life as a drug kingpin. And my crush’s secret life as a killer.

“Of course, of course,” Felice replied dismissively. “How would an old fool like me know anything about that? I have no doubt you are perfectly in love and that you’ve counted all the notches on his trigger hand lovingly.” He leered at me and I hated him for it; but most of all, I hated him because he was right. I hadn’t reconciled myself with that part of Nic; I had tried to ignore it. I had even tried to justify it.

“So you see,” Felice purred on, “when Jack fled, he foolishly left you behind, the very thing that will cause his undoing. We expected you might lead us to him.

“However, since your uncle is smarter than your average deck chair and has inexplicably been able to outrun us thus far, we must move on to a more improvised plan, in which you are bait.” He clapped his hands together. “If Jack doesn’t present himself to us at the abandoned auto parts warehouse in Hegewisch before midnight tonight, then things will take a very unfortunate turn.”

“So you’re going to kill me?” I asked, feeling completely hollow inside. Was this really how it was going to end? I had fallen down a tunnel of lies, and now there was a gun to my head?

Felice stared at me impassively. “The idea of killing a teenage girl just doesn’t appeal to me, but I think you’ll really have to ask someone better qualified to answer, Persephone.”

“Like who?”

Felice rose to his feet again. “Our boss.”

My mouth dropped open. “You’re not the boss?”

“Me?” A shadow passed across his face, but before I could focus on it, he lit up, until he looked like a children’s cartoon character. “I am not. But thank you for assuming so. I’m flattered.”

“What are you, then?”

“Me? I’m just a simple beekeeper.” As he said it, one of his bees droned into my eyeline, just a foot away from my face, as though he had programmed it to do so.

“And a murderer,” I reminded him.

“I do feel we can all be defined by more than one thing.”

“Unless you’re a killer. Then that’s pretty much all you amount to.”

“Maybe you should tell that to your father. Or to your handsome Hades, between kisses.”

If I could have jumped out of my seat and ripped his face off right then, I would have.

“In any case,” he continued in his patronizing way, “I’m just the Falcone consigliere. I offer advice, which is usually ignored. I’ll find someone more equipped to answer your question. Frankly, I’ve grown weary of your teenage sarcasm.”

I heard him before I saw him — the hardwood floors rumbled as he glided into my eyeline, his hands barely touching the wheels to make them move. He turned with a series of expert flicks and then he was facing me. His frame was narrow, but not hunched as I’d remembered; he was dressed in black pants and a crisp black button-up shirt that pulled across his shoulders. The occasion? My doom.

He shifted his left leg so that it stretched out toward me, grazing the floor. His right leg, which was bony and turned in at the hip, slumped against it so that he looked twisted from the waist down. He released his hands from the wheels and entwined his fingers in his lap. The first time I saw him, he was behind a table, coaxing the emotion from his absentee subjects and showing me a different world with his pencils. Now he was watching me through that delicate azure gaze, his lips set in a hard line.

“You wanted to see me?” That musical voice. I struggled to believe it could be the commanding force of an entire fleet of assassins.

“Valentino,” I said, my voice surprisingly steady. I spoke like I had known him for years, but his expression didn’t break. It was unreadable. “Please tell me this isn’t true.”

He shifted in his wheelchair, pulling himself up, and he was taller all of a sudden, his shoulders broader than before. I realized I had been a fool to think him weak. “What isn’t true?” he hummed.

“You’re the boss of this whole thing?” I said.

He raised his jet-black brows. “By ‘thing’ do you mean ‘family’?”

“Yes.”

“Is it so hard to believe?” he countered.

I leaned forward, like I was trying to pierce the invisible wall between us. “Yes. It is hard to believe.”

He tapped the right wheel of his chair with his finger. “Because of this?” There was a hint of bitterness in his response.

“No. Because you seemed so … empathetic before.”

“I am empathetic,” he replied. “It’s one of my more prevalent traits.”

“But you kill people.” My voice was wavering.

Again he tapped his chair by way of explanation. “I order kills.”

“That’s not much better.”

“It is a necessary evil for a greater good,” he answered evenly. “It is what it is.”

“Are you really going to kill me?” My voice cracked and a string of tears slid down my cheek onto my neck, dampening it uncomfortably. Still I kept my chin up. If nothing else, I would be brave.