These men were the worst of the worst. I’d call them bandits, but that would be an insult to proper bandits everywhere. No, these men preyed on the most vulnerable denizens of this sprawling city. Young women. Children. The elderly. They’d tried to pick a fight with us after clocking the quality of our weapons. It was the last thing they’d ever do, and the world was slightly better off for it.

“You’re making that face,” Ana says, wiping the blood off her own blades before sliding them back into their hidden scabbards.

“What face? I’m not making a face.”

“You are.” She furrows her brow and tilts the corners of her lips down just a hair. “This face. Your thinking face.”

I roll my eyes. “I do not have a thinking face.”

“You so do. You have a face for everything. It’s why you’re so bad at cards.”

“I am not bad at cards. I was about to beat you just now.”

Ana makes an indelicate sound. “That’s only because I let you win.”

I open my mouth to challenge her to a rematch, but a gruff voice cuts me off before I can make another peep.

“I hope you know you’ll be paying for this mess.”

I turn to find Santiago standing in the doorway with his hands on his hips. A crate of bottles—several now smashed—lies at his feet, right beside the prone form of a man I distinctly remember assaulting with a chair. Looks like Santiago barely missed getting hit by the man as he fell. His bottles of what might be wine, judging from the deep burgundy color spilled across the floor, weren’t so lucky.

I wish I could say it was the first time we’d trashed Santiago’s place, but that too would be a lie.

I point to the dead man at my feet. “He started it.”

It’s almost not a lie. And therefore not really a sin, in the grand scheme of things.

Ana tosses her arm around my shoulders. My heart does a fractured waltz in my chest. “Yeah,” she says. “We just finished it.”

“And you couldn’t have finished it outside?” Santiago sighs before bending down to retrieve the salvageable bottles of wine.

“Relax,” I say, extricating myself from Ana’s hold. I want to stay close to her, but I want it so badly it frightens me. I need distance. “We’ll cover the damages.”

I fish a generous handful of coins from the pouch tucked into the waistband of my breeches. I lay them down on the nearest table, one by one so Santiago can see that I’m good for it.