Hadn’t in years. I shoved him down onto his back, then straddled him, a knee on either side of his beefy chest, squeezing in and putting pressure on his ribs. Giants, even half giants like Jake, hated it when they had trouble breathing. Most people did.

I adjusted and tightened my grip on the knife, ready to drive it into his heart. A flimsy weapon, but it would do the job. Just about anything would, if you had enough strength and determination to put behind it. I had plenty of both.

A small, choked sob sounded, drawing my attention away from Jake and his high-pitched, keening howls.

My gray eyes flicked up. The girl huddled underneath a table a few feet away, her knees pulled up to her chest, her eyes as big as quarters in her face, tears sliding down her flushed cheeks.

A position I’d been in, once upon a time.

A couple of months ago, the girl and her tears wouldn’t have bothered me. I would have killed Jake and his friend, washed the blood off my hands, and asked Sophia to get rid of the bodies before I closed up the Pork Pit for the night.

That’s what assassins did.

And I was the Spider, one of the very best.

But I’d had an epiphany of sorts two months ago when my mentor had been brutally tortured and murdered inside the Pork Pit—in the very spot Jake and I were in right now. The old man, Fletcher Lane, had wanted me to retire, to take a different path in life, to live in the daylight a little, as he was so fond of saying. I’d followed Fletcher’s advice and quit the assassin business after I’d killed Alexis James, the Air elemental who’d murdered him.

“Hmph.”

Behind me, Sophia grunted. I looked over my shoulder at the dwarf, who still had hold of the other woman. The girl was unsuccessfully trying to pry the dwarf ’s stubby fingers off her waist. Good luck with that. Sophia had a grip like death. Once she had you, she didn’t let go—ever. My gray eyes locked with Sophia’s black ones. Regret flashed in her dark gaze, and she shook her head just the tiniest bit. No, she was saying. Not in front of two witnesses.

Sophia was right. Witnesses were bad. I couldn’t gut Jake with the two girls watching and get rid of the body afterward. Not in my own restaurant. Not without blowing my cover as Gin Blanco and leaving everything behind. And I wasn’t going to do that. Not for a piece of trash like the Fire elemental. But that didn’t mean I couldn’t let Jake know exactly whom he was dealing with.