“Do you know how easy it is to kill someone like this? How fast I can do it? Faster than you can cast a spell. But don’t take my word for it, Dad. Give it a shot.”

“Carlos, let him go. He only wanted to help. Let him go and we’ll talk.”

Carlos laughed. “Whoo-hoo. Listen to that. Who wants to play ‘voice of reason’ now? What’s wrong, Dad?” His arm tightened so fast I gasped, eyes bulging. “Am I making you nervous? You should see your face, Papá. Sure, you’ll grieve for Hector and William, but this—” He heaved me backward. “This one would hurt.”

“If you—”

“Oh, that’s the way. Threaten me. Come on, Dad. Tell me what horrible things you’ll do to me if I hurt your baby boy. You say I don’t pull my weight around here? At least I show up. This one spends his working hours trying to destroy us. He moves clear across the country to get away from you. Marries a witch. Adopts a Nast. You build him an office, and he uses his trust fund to buy it from you. Sets up shop fighting Cabals with your money. Anything to screw you over. But you keep chasing him, like a pathetic SOB who wants the one piece of tail that can’t run away fast enough.”

I kicked Carlos in the shin, hard enough to make him teeter. I grabbed his arm, but it tightened so fast I blacked out. When I came to, he’d gone absolutely still. I wedged my fingers between his arm and my throat, and still he didn’t move. I looked up to see Paige across the room, her face pale with concentration.

“I—I’m having trouble holding the spell,” she said. “Can you get away?”

My father stepped forward.

“Stay where you are, Benicio. Lucas?”

I pried Carlos’s arm from my throat and managed a raspy, “I’m fine.”

My father tried to move forward again.

“Not a move, Benicio,” Paige said, “or I’ll do the same to you. You know I will. Lucas, get away from him. I can’t hold—”

The spell snapped as I lunged to the side. Paige hit Carlos with a knockback spell and he flew into the wall. My father lifted his hands. Paige turned the spell on him and he stumbled back.

The guards rushed into the room. Paige hurried to me. As she drew near, I could see she was shaking.

“I almost couldn’t cast,” she said. “The first one—”

“I’m all right.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw my father advancing on Carlos, now restrained by Griffin.

“Papá. No.”

“Didn’t you learn your lesson, baby bro? Stay out.”

“He would have killed you,” my father said. “He killed Hector and William, Lucas. Murdered them in cold blood.”

“We don’t know that.”