Chapter 42

Dull, yellow eyes looked up at him through too-thick mascara. “Fuck,” Rina muttered. Her stick-thin arm blocked the entrance, but they both knew she was no match for Gideon physically. It didn’t stop the female vampire from trying. She was all spit and vinegar, and in spite of her predilection for getting high with teenagers, Gideon rather liked her. She’d been turned and then abandoned by her sire, but after a run-in with Gideon at a bar around the corner from his office when she created a rumpus after being refused entry, she’d taken the advice he’d given her about how to exist in Chicago without getting killed and run with it. Six years later, she was still around. Not once in that time period had she given him a reason to kill her. That took balls. Gideon respected that.

“It wasn’t me,” she said before he could greet her. “And if that asshole told you it was, he’s fucking lying.”