“Just a little.” She smiles, then tilts her neck to show off an already-healing wound. A Snakeface bite. “You got played, Daddy. It was the only way to get you here. Make you think I was in danger. You’d do anything for me, I said.”

“Nora–”

“There’s a new business arrangement. You’re at the bottom of it.”

“The hell?” Mookie doesn’t understand. All he knows is one sentence is tumbling through his head again and again: You got played, Daddy.

“I’m going to be your–”

Then: a sound. Off to Mookie’s left. A heel-scuff.

Nora’s gaze flits in that direction. Her eyes go wide. Then she looks right.

She mouths the word before she says it: “No. No!”

Suddenly her gaze locks with his and all she says is:

“Run!”

She hates him. That’s what she tells herself as he comes into that wine cellar like a beast led to slaughter. He was married to the mob. They were his family. Not her. Not Mom. And now…

And now here he stands, the poor dope about to have his manhood rubber-banded and sliced off by the very Organization to which he pledged his fealty–

That hate inside her rises hot and feels just. It tastes of sweet comeuppance. You deserve this, you dick. She’s old enough now to recognize that this is a teenage hate, the petulant hate of children for their parents, but it’s so deep-seated, so integral to who Nora is, she can’t help but take pleasure at it.

She thought everything had gone sideways. Casimir, dead. An attack on the Get-Em-Girls. The death of the Majestic Immortals. Then: she gets taken by a pair of Snakefaces to what she assumed was the grave. But Candlefly – the face of the new Organization, or so he said – offered her a new deal, instead.

Bring in your father and you can be his boss.

Then he clarified: His Keeper. His Master.

Some girls for Christmas want Barbie Dream Cars or ponies. Other girls want makeup, or a new cell phone, or hell, when she was 12 she wanted a pellet rifle (which she did not get). But now, all she wants is a collar around Mookie’s neck. And she wants to be the one holding the leash.

And that’s what she’s about to tell him.

She’s about to say, I’m going to be your boss. You’re going to be my little bitch. You’ll do everything I want. You’ll furnish me in Blue. You’ll kill anybody who gets in my way. You’ll get me a puppy for my birthday. You asshole.

Before she can say any of that, she sees the darkness move between wine racks.

A Snakeface assassin emerges – one of the killers who attacked her and brought her here. It’s the thin one, but the fat one is only a step behind.