Page 43 of Love At the Gates of Hell (The Seven Sinners Trilogy #1)

twenty-eight

Benny

Benny had missed the first day of the fall semester at Penn.

She had missed the second, third, fourth, and fifth days, too.

Olivia had mentioned the other night that they’d shut down their wing in an effort to clean up the destruction left behind by the men who’d taken Benny.

It had been the talk of the campus. No one knew why it happened, the investigation still ongoing.

Night security had been increased, and curfews enacted for all students and professors.

It wasn’t exactly the exciting welcome to campus they’d all expected for the new school year.

When Benny had thrown herself into academia, it had been to escape the allure of her father’s work.

She had found herself slipping into the roll of mafia don with a surprising ease.

Even in the interrogation room with Christian, she’d felt a little thrill at the opportunity.

It hadn’t been fear that had her hesitating at the threshold of the room, it had been the excitement gnawing at her.

The last few weeks with the Crawford brothers had only solidified that academia had been an escape.

The blood magic, the power dynamics.

Boxing with Gideon, learning how to harness her power, digging through ancient tomes to stop an ascension.

Her life had been upended in ways she could never have imagined.

A blissfully quiet, academic life traded for vampires and thieves and demon hunting.

How could she be content now in her little corner of the lab?

She had lied to Jamie. She didn’t miss school.

Benny wanted to finish her program. She wanted to defend her thesis.

The completion of the last five years of her life’s work was important to her.

But the future she had envisioned for herself didn’t seem right anymore.

It was a life without risk. A life worried about a death that would come whether she hid herself or not.

She didn’t know what was next— if there was a next at all.

If she would survive the ritual.

But she knew that if that was all the time she had left, she wasn’t going to hide herself anymore. She wasn’t going to bury herself down deep in an effort to protect herself. She was going to keep learning how to fight. She was going to go down swinging.

“You know, I shoulda given this to you fifteen years ago—”

Her father’s voice snapped her from her thoughts, and Benny looked up, startled by the admission.

Angelo was standing with his back to her, his shoulders hunched, his fingers grazing the spine of a leather-bound book on his bookshelf.

He let them linger there for a moment, and she was almost certain that his hand was shaking.

She frowned, sitting up a bit straighter in the leather chair she had been curled up in since Gideon had left with Luke to go to the warehouse.

“Babbo, what are you talking about?”

Her father slowly pulled the book from the stack, his head bowed as he turned toward her.

It didn’t have any words etched on the binding, and the brown leather cover was plain, only a single wisp of gold embossed where a title would be.

She pressed her lips together as he walked toward her, a look of guilt flashing across his weathered features.

“This was your mother’s,” he said. “A journal she kept.”

Benny reached for the book tentatively with both hands.

“Mom kept journals?” she asked, eyes focused on the soft and worn spots on the edge of the cover, like her mother had left her fingerprints in the leather for her to find. She traced her fingers around them, unable to flip the cover open.

“Notes, really,” he said, his large hand coming up to rub at his jaw. “Stuff to do with her magic. Things she didn’t think had a place in the grimoire.”

“What do you mean?” Benny looked up, startled. “We’re supposed to write everything in the grimoire. That book is all we have.”

Angelo sank into the chair beside her, his hands resting against his chest.

“Your mother was different, Ben,” he said. “That power you got, it scared the shit out of her.”

It used to scare Benny, too.

But that was beginning to change.

“I still don’t understand,” she said, shaking her head, both her hands gripping the book. Her confusion was beginning to morph into a kind of resentment. “You’ve had this the whole time? Why didn’t you say anything? Why would you keep this from me?”

“I don’t know,” he replied. “I kept thinking I had a good reason. That I was protecting you. Maybe in a way I couldn’t protect her—”

His voice faltered for a moment, and Benny felt her chest tighten.

“But I think that was a mistake,” he continued with a huff of breath. “I think I was the one that scared you. Maybe her too. I was so goddamn worried about what could happen to you. To both of you. And it didn’t even fucking matter.”

“Dad.” Benny leaned forward, her hand reaching for his. “None of this is your fault. Not what happened to me, and not what happened to Mom.”

He squeezed her hand tightly.

“That’s not true, Benny,” he said sadly. “Look at who I am.”

She scoffed. “That’s not fair.”

But wasn’t it? Hadn’t she held this against him herself?

“I’m always a target,” he told her. “That’s the nature of this business. And what I do, what I have to do to make sure we retain what we’ve got—it makes everyone around me a target too. That’s how they found out about your mother.”

Benny sucked in a breath.

Her father never talked about her mother like this. Her death was always off the table. She thought back to what Christian said, about her mother’s part in the ritual. Did her father know? Had he been keeping that from her too?

“We came across this shipment,” Angelo said, his eyes focused on her hand wrapped in his.

“A pile of cargo came in from the UK, a transfer to the Met for some kind of display. We had a tip that there was something in that shipment, something we knew we’d get a lot of bids for.

And we got lucky, kid. The value coulda paid every one of our guys for a year.

But apparently we weren’t the only ones after it.

And he had a pack of vampires who were real fucking feral types. ”

She swallowed.

Was this who they were looking for?

“A few of them followed us, tried to track where we kept the cargo.” Angelo sighed. “And I led them right to her. Like a wrapped fucking present under the Christmas tree.”

Benny remembered what Luke said. How he could sense her blood.

“What happened?”

“They took her,” he said as if he still couldn’t believe it after all these years. “That was the reason she never came home, Benny. They grabbed her right from the hospital. A random fucking Tuesday. She called to tell me she was on her way home and then—well, she never made it.”

She would never forget the night her mother died. The way Benny stupidly fought with her about things that felt so meaningless now. But she also remembered the rampage her father went on trying to find her. The blood bath he left in his wake.

She felt that fury now. For a hundred different reasons.

“But you sent a vampire to find me,” she said, suddenly. “How could you trust that Luke wasn’t going to do the same thing? You didn’t even warn him about what I was. Do you know what could have happened?”

“Of course,” Angelo said, affronted. “Jesus Christ, Ben. Give me a bit more credit. The Crawford boys are just like their old man, vampire or not. They’ve got the same code. And once I met them, I knew I’d made the right decision.”

Benny’s brows knit together.

“You knew their dad?”

He nodded. “Eamond Crawford was a decent man. Smart as a goddamn whip with a safe. I don’t think there’s a lock he couldn’t pick, to be honest. We tried to get him to come work for us a couple of times, but he was loyal. To a fucking fault.”

There was a trace of something in her father’s tone. Something dark.

“Gideon hasn’t really mentioned—” She paused. There hadn’t exactly been a ton of time for them to trade all of their family trauma. Even if they had seemed to be making a decent headway in the last couple of days. “I mean, I know he passed, but I don’t know what happened. Do you?”

“I don’t remember much. Your mother—” He stopped himself, rubbing at the nape of his neck. “Well, it happened around the same time. Just a job gone bad.”

Benny chewed on the inside of her cheek.

“It was during a blood moon,” she said, finally meeting her father’s gaze.

His heavy brows drew together.

“What are you talkin’ about?”

“I had hoped he was lying,” she said. “That Christian was just saying it to upset me. But when Mom died, it was right before a blood moon. Just like now. I looked this morning.”

He sighed, leaning back into his chair. “I wasn’t sure. I never—well, I didn’t take the time to really find out. I was like a crazed fucking maniac. I wanted to turn every single one of those bloodsuckers into ash. But I should have dug deeper. Maybe we wouldn’t be here now if I had.”

Benny stiffened. She was beginning to feel similarly.

“Well, we are,” she said, knowing that sounded harsher than she intended. “And unless there’s something in this book that shows us how to time travel, all we can do is figure out how to deal with it.”

Angelo closed his eyes.

“I’m sorry, kiddo,” he said. “All I’ve ever wanted was to keep you safe.”

Benny stood up from the chair, the book tucked in one hand as she looked down at her father.

It was hard to hold on to the anger she felt bubbling beneath the surface.

Because she knew. She knew how much he loved her.

But she spent so much of her life worried about her fate, and so much of that came from him.

“I think it’s time to go back to Philly,” she said.

Angelo looked at her for a moment before he nodded and rose from his seat.

“There’s one more thing,” he told her before crossing toward a large mahogany desk near the window.

She watched as he reached into one of his side drawers and pulled out a small jewelry bag, a crushed black velvet with satin strings.

“This drawer has been locked for years, you know. I lost the key sometime around the funeral, and I’ll tell you I’m good with a lock pick.

But I’ve never been able to get through this one.

Not without taking a sledgehammer to the whole thing.

And this morning, it just fucking clicked open. ”

He huffed a breath, the disbelief etched into his features.

“But it was always meant to be yours,” he said, the bag laying in the palm of his hand.

“What is it?” she asked.

“It was your mother’s,” he said, offering her a slight smile. “You’ll remember. She wore it every day. She said it was meant for you. When you were ready.”

Benny’s nose wrinkled as she took the velvet satchel from her father, fingers pulling at the satin ties, her eyes stinging with fresh tears.

She knew, the memory flooding back to her.

The thin gold chain. The round pendant and the small peridot, all in gold, all etched with perfect precision.

Aurora. The goddess of the Dawn. Riding in her chariot, her hand outstretched as the peridot rested in her palm, like she was bestowing it upon the sun as a gift.

She clutched it in her hand, looking up at her father through blurry tears.

“What happened to Mom isn’t going to happen to me,” she told him. “I promise.”