“He’s high up. And the person requesting the kill?”

“Higher.”

Her breath slowed, and she grounded herself by touching the hilts of the scythes strapped to her thighs. Glancing around the office to buy time, she took stock of all the items she’d seen over the years. The clock on his desk ticked down the seconds. The room had little in terms of decoration, only a few gold-wire sculptures and an iron teakettle. There was the stain on the mats where her own blood had dripped when a mark had nearly bested her.

Kohl had bandaged her himself.

“If you’re stupid enough to get stabbed on the job, maybe you shouldn’t be here at all,” he’d muttered under his breath, then handed her a vial of painkiller he’d swiped from a clinic.

He’d clenched his hands into fists as she took it, drawing her attention to the tattoo on his inner forearm: a marking of his original gang, the Vultures. It stood out starkly on his alabaster skin. The black bird of prey’s neck was broken, hung by a string of diamonds that trailed to Kohl’s elbow.

Something had softened in his eyes when she’d winced in pain. Then he’d tossed the roll of bandages on the floor and walked out.

She could never quite tell if he wanted her to live or die.

“This won’t go unnoticed.” Her voice finally came out in a whisper. A piece of hair that had fallen onto her forehead itched with the sweat rolling down her skin, but she refused to move it. Kohl didn’t trust people who fidgeted. Kohl wouldn’t flinch or hesitate. Kohl would get the job done.

He came to stand in front of her, close enough that she heard his breaths. One hand rested on the handle of the flintlock pistol at his waist. When he looked at her like this, she wondered whether he saw her as beautiful or not. She’d prefer if he didn’t—it would confirm she’d succeeded in hiding any part of her that wasn’t a ruthless killer. She wanted him to see her as an equal he could respect and care for, not a pretty plaything.

Her rounded cheeks, the curve of her jaw, her narrow shoulders, had all gotten her into too much trouble as a child. When she’d begun working with Kohl, she’d made sure to cut away the softness and the curves, and turn them into sharp edges instead, so no one would ever think she was weak enough to take advantage of. Years of inhaling glue on Kosín’s sidewalks had left her copper skin dull and gaunt. She kept the dark waves of her hair, a mark of her Milano ancestry, in a rigid ponytail that hung to her shoulder blades. Her weapons hid any remaining weakness—a brace of diamond daggers strapped to her chest, scythes at her thighs, her palms hardened with calluses, and a small brace of blades between the knuckles of her left hand that protruded whenever she punched someone.