She rolled her eyes, and they widened at the top of the arch when I increased my grip again, easing it only to let her response out. “Surely, you know who runs this city? If local businesses don’t want trouble, they pay the fees and look the other way.”
“What about the police?”
She barked out a harsh laugh. “Half of them are in on it.”
Not my Nikki, though.These are the very people she’s fighting against.
“Who sent you?”
She snarled at me. “I’ll tell you this, fuckboy, I may not be particularly loyal, but I’m more scared of him than I am ofyou.”
“I can kill you.”
“You can’t… there are rules.” She was right, and I snarled. Demons can’t kill on Earth, human or otherwise. We’d end up back in Hell if we were allowed to live at all.
“And your boss isn’t governed by those same rules?” I spat out.
Her expression changed, going blank, and she paused before answering, “No.”
What the fuck?
I tried a different tack. “When you came to Earth, how did you know where to go to find work?”
“Everyone knows if you want cash for violence, you go to the club.”
“What club?”
“Urban.” She rolled her eyes again.
Urban.Nikki doesn’t believe in coincidences, and therefore, neither would I. “Who runs it?”
“How about you go and find out for yourself? I’m no snitch.”
“How come I’ve never heard of it?”
She bit her bottom lip. It wasn’t a pensive look but cruelty in those eyes, the look of a demon who knew little but thought she knew it all. “If you hadn’t heard, then nobody back home told you…” she paused, then laughed, the sound biting into me, “… and if nobody thought you should know, then you’re no demon.”
Growling, I shoved her hard against the wall, and while she grunted and winced, there was little satisfaction in the act. Because she was right. I never fit in, and if there was a place demons came to while on Earth for some quick cash to run errands of a violent nature, I wouldn’t have been told.
Who the hell was running that club?
Someone not governed by the rules that demons were boundby—no killing of humans. Yet someone who knew not only the existence of demons but used them for their strength and lust for violence for their own gain. A human? It seemed unlikely.
If a demon was responsible for the death of Nikki’s father, then I was in deeper than I thought.
“Are you going to let me go?”
In response, I tightened my grip on her throat, cutting off her air supply as I pushed my palm painfully into the soft part of her neck. I could feel her throat working against my hand, and her mouth opened as her body became desperate for the air it was being denied. But her eyes were calm because she had the upper hand. Not only could I not kill her, but she knew she had gotten me with the quip about me not being in the loop for the work on Earth. I didn’t frighten nor intimidate her.
But apparently, whoever ran Urban, did.
Letting her go, she dropped to her feet, rubbing her neck and glaring at me. The rage was still bubbling in my veins, and my demon was close to the surface. If she wanted to fight, to engage me in this state, then I was all for it. There was no gender bias amongst demons, male versus female violence wasn’t uncommon, and it certainly wasn’t always the male who came out on top.
I could take her, and I welcomed the challenge that sat on the tip of her tongue.
She shrugged and flicked her hair over her shoulder again before striding away.
Gaining new information had done nothing to ease my guilt. It had only made it worse because now I had some information that could potentially break open Nikki’s case, but it was fraught with danger I didn’t yet know the nature of. Going behind her back tugged at that damn reminder in my chest that I actually fucking cared about someone, and the burden only twisted the knife further, making my lip lift into a scowl as I shoved myhands in my pockets and moved to see if Smithy was okay.
