Donovan fucking Caine. He was all I could think about right now. I couldn’t believe the detective was actually leaving Ashland. That he was leaving me. That we were never going to get the chance to fully explore this sizzling attraction between us. All that promise tossed aside. And for what? So the detective could rest easy at night, his idealistic morals and outdated code of justice still intact? Pointless, all of it.

I took a long pull of my gin, relishing the cold burn of the alcohol. For a moment, I considered retrieving the bottle out of the cabinet and getting sloshed. But it wouldn’t do me a damn bit of good. I’d just wake up with a hangover tomorrow. Donovan Caine would still be leaving, if he hadn’t already gone. He’d just broken up, more or less, with a former assassin. Not the kind of person you wanted knowing your whereabouts.

I could go after Donovan, of course. Talk to him again, plead my case, ruthlessly seduce him into giving us another chance. Into staying in Ashland. I’d thought about nothing else on the drive home.

But I couldn’t do that. Because I still wanted what I’d always wanted—Donovan Caine to desire me, to want to be with me, Gin Blanco, the former assassin who called herself the Spider. But he didn’t, and he never would. His code of justice wouldn’t let him, any more than mine would let me forget about all the bad things I’d done in my life, all the people I’d killed. Or pretend that I wouldn’t do it all over again, if it became necessary.

“Warren, you old coot, you were right after all.” I raised my glass in a toast, then took another sip of gin.

I plunked my glass down on the battered coffee table, and my eyes landed on the folder—the one that contained the information on my murdered family. That was something else I’d been thinking about a lot these past few weeks. For the first time, I think I realized why Fletcher Lane had left it for me. He’d regretted his past with Warren T. Fox, for not making amends with his old friend. Fletcher had had some fifty years to do it, and he’d never gotten around to it. He didn’t want me to have those same kinds of regrets, so the old man had given me a choice, given me the information I needed to make a choice. And I knew what I was going to do. I’d known ever since the night of Mab Monroe’s party.

Ever since I’d realized she was the Fire elemental who’d murdered my family.