My gaze slid over to Cassidy, who was busy looking at her shoes. She’d heard Xavier’s question, and she knew what the McAllister name meant as well as I did. Cassidy thought I was going to fold, and she didn’t want to see me tell the cops to let Jake go.

The image of the orange-red flames licking at Cassidy’s slender throat flashed before my eyes, along with her tearstreaked face. Reminding me of another place, another time, another girl desperate for me to save her, to convince her everything was going to be okay, even if I knew it wasn’t. That it would never be all right again.

The memories of my baby sister, Bria, and the horrible night our mother and older sister, Annabella, had been murdered, swam up in the back of my mind, a dark shark rising to surface. The memory sank its cold, jagged teeth into my heart. Fire, torture, destruction, death. All that and more had happened that one, fateful night seventeen years ago. My hands curled into loose fists, hiding the spider rune scars that had been burned into my palms—scars that were a constant reminder of my lost family.

After a few seconds, I uncurled my palms and flexed my fingers, working the tension out of them.

I focused on Jake McAllister again, remembering the sharp, sly way he’d stared at me. Two hundred dollars or not, he’d been ready to kill me and everyone else in the restaurant for nothing more than a thrill. I’d be damned if I was letting him get away with it—any of it.

“Fuck who his daddy is,” I said. “He almost slit that girl’s throat. I’m pressing charges.”

Xavier shrugged. “Your choice. Just don’t expect much to come of it.”

He clinked the silverstone handcuffs around Jake’s wrists and yanked the Fire elemental up to his feet. The abrupt motion snapped Jake out of his blinking trance, and he looked over his shoulder at the cop, then back at me. It took a few seconds for the reality of the situation to penetrate his thick skull.

“You called the cops? You’re going to pay for this, bitch!” Jake screamed.

He surged forward, trying to break free of Xavier and get at me. But Xavier easily restrained him with one hand.

Hard to break a giant’s grip.

But instead of staying where I was, I stepped around the counter and walked over to Jake. This time, I let him see just how cold and flat and hard my gray eyes really were. “You’re the one who’s going to pay when Daddy finds out you’re knocking over restaurants—or trying to. Piss poor job you did, all the way around.”

“Bitch!” he screamed again. “You’re gonna die for this! Do you hear me? You’re dead!”