Page 42 of Toxic

“Some people would prefer a quicker death,”hesays.

“Some people are alsocowards.”

He chuckles, surprising me. “I guess we both know you’re far from acoward.”

“Are you going to tell me who they are? I think you owe me atleastthat.”

He leans back in his chair, his legs spread and his hands resting on his thighs. Posed that way, he owns every syllable of hisnickname.

“Telling you any more than you already know will only put you in moredanger.”

The rope. The blood. My murdered child would say otherwise. “I’d rather know what I’m involved in than be in the dark. Besides, it’s about time you tried honesty for achange.”

“Sal,”Gracin begins, “the man who hired Terelli and theothers?”

I carefully place the fork on my plate—food forgotten—and gesture for him to continue. I keep my hands in my lap so he can’t see them shake. Even hearing the man’s name causes a tumult of emotions to rise in mychest.

“You’ve met his son.”His fingers clench on his thighs, the first sign of emotion I’ve seen from him since I woke up in hishouse.

“Ihave?”

He nods and takes a sip of his glass of scotch. “Sal—Salvatore, fromBlackthorne.”

I can’t say I’m shocked about thatconnection.

Gracin continues, unheeding of my silence. “I guess you could say he didn’t take it very well. He was never fond of his son, but the slight to his family . . . his name, isn’t something a man like Salforgets.”

He gets to his feet and goes to the window, leaving his food untouched. “I told you I wasn’t a good man, Tessa, and Imeantit.”

“You did tell me that.” I reach for the glass of water and chug several gulps as hegoeson.

“The men who hired me to kill Sal’s son planted me at Blackthorne. I did the job I was hired to do and planned to get out as soon as the opportunity presenteditself.”

“Do you break out of jail often?” My tone is sarcastic, but I’m genuinely curious. I know how hard it was to get him out. I can’t imagine anyone who’d willingly get arrested on the chance that they couldescape.

“Not jail, but I’ve had to get out of sticky situations before. If you didn’t help me, I would have figured out another way. The paramedics that drove me away? Theyweremine.”

I don’t even want to know how he orchestrated that one, so I move on. “Why didn’t Sal just have you killedhimself?”

He smiles then, and the quirk of his lips is so achingly familiar it causes me physical pain. “They tried, remember? I’m really hard to kill. Plus, they couldn’tfindme.”

I don’t have a response. I mean, what do you even say to something like that? So, I hastily serve myself some of the sponge cake Marie placed on the table instead. Gracin keeps looking out thewindow.

“How did they even know I was in LosAngeles?”

At that, he turns and shoves his hands into his pockets. “If I had to take a guess?” he asks, glancing at me. When I nod, he says, “Because I’d been spotted there. The fact that you were even still alive told them you meant something to me. They are good at what they do, almost as good as I am, so they knew if they found you, I would be close behind. You weren’t hardtofind.”

I wince, the sponge cake turning to dust on my tongue. The news reports hadn’t been kind in the weeks following Gracin’s escape and Vic’s death. They spun a story of a whirlwind romance that drove me to break Gracin out of prison and murder my husband so we could run away together. It wouldn’t have been hard for Sal to draw conclusions from there, mistaken though theymaybe.

“But how did you track me down to California? It 's not really nearMichigan.”

He turns, hands tucked casually into his pockets. “If you thought you could hide from me, you were very much mistaken. I’m very, very good at what I do,Tessa.”

“What, exactly, do you do?” I was afraid to know, but I’m done hiding from myfears.

“I kill people for money, Tessa. Lots ofmoney.”

“So, Salvatore. He was what?Ajob?”