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“Who the fuck is this?” he says, sneering at me.

“No one,” Jasper says, almost placating, rushing to my side. “She’s no one. She was just leaving. Go, please.” He turns to me, pleading. “Just leave. You’re clearly lost.”

Except I’m not, and this is my damn kitchen. But something tells me that neither of those facts will go over too well with the dangerous-looking man.

Jasper tries to push me toward the door, out but the man steps in the way, blocking me.

“Why the fuck would you bring your bitch in here? I told you to keep this shit to yourself.”

“I did. I swear. Please let her leave.”

“She’s going nowhere. She’s seen my face. I don’t need her running to your boss and killing my business.” His jaw works. “Now get my shit.”

“I’ll get it, just let her go. She doesn’t know anything.”

He narrows those beaded eyes at Jasper, his jaw visibly clenching. “I won’t ask again, little man.” And then he looks around my kitchen, and I understand what’s about to happen a half second before it does—because he isn’t reaching into a jacket. There’s nothing in his jacket. You don’t walk into a casino wearing a gun, not this one, not past Bishop Cassidy’s people on the door.

He reaches for the knife block instead.

He pulls a cleaver free and waves it at us. “If you don’t want me cutting you and your bitch to pieces, get my shit now.”

“Please.”

“Now, you son of a bitch!”

“Okay, alright.” Jasper gives me an apologetic look before walking to the cooler.

I watch him open it and lift out the same box I’ve seen hidden in there a handful of times in the last couple of weeks. The one that contains all those little baggies of white powder. The same one I accused Bishop of hiding in my kitchen.

It wasn’t Bishop, I realize as Jasper carries them to the stranger.

It was never him.

Jasper hands the box to the man, who rips it out of his hands, looks inside, counts, and makes a low, dissatisfied sound. “Where’s the rest?”

“That’s all I was given.”

“You thieving little bastard, I’m going to kill you and your bitch both if you don’t produce the rest of my shit.”

He swings the blade in my direction, and I see in those flat, beady eyes that he means it.

There’s nowhere to run, nothing to put between us. When he raises the cleaver, I let out a scream that tears out of the bottom of me.

Chapter Eight

Bishop

I’m pacing by the elevator banks, deciding whether to give her some space or go in there and make her listen, when a piercing scream tears through the silence.

I’m through the restaurant doors before I’ve finished registering it.

She probably cut herself or something. That’s the thought running through my head as I cross the dining room. Fuck, I shouldn’t have let her go into the kitchen angry, but there was no stopping her. And now, she’s put a knife through her own hand, and it’s my fault for letting her go on there like that.

Except when I burst through the door, I am met with something else entirely.

Margot is on the floor beside Jasper, who’s clutching his bleeding arm. And there’s a hulking figure standing over them with a cleaver, waving it as he rages.

“Give me my shit, you son of a bitch, or I’ll cut you both to pieces.”