I shook my head. “I have to hand it to you. Clever, Tuck. Very, very clever.”

   He gave a modest shrug. “I do try to be efficient about these things.”

   White-hot rage burned in my heart that he had so thoroughly used me, along with more than a little embarrassment, especially since I hadn’t realized what was really going on until I’d been tied to that chair in Porter’s cottage. The only saving grace was that I’d rescued Elissa. But the real irony of the situation was that I probably wouldn’t have been able to save her if Tucker hadn’t manipulated me. Without that lipstick trail to follow, I never would have connected Rivera and Porter to the Dollmaker, and I never would have found Elissa in time. So as much as it pained me to admit it, I owed Tucker.

   At least enough to let him walk out of here alive today.

   “How is Miss Daniels, by the way?” Tucker’s black gaze flicked past me, and I knew that he was looking at her on the other side of the restaurant.

   “She’s still alive,” I snapped. “Not that you really care.”

   He shrugged again. “No matter what you think about me, what Porter did to those women was an abomination. I wanted to stop it the moment I learned about it.”

   “So why didn’t you?”

   His mouth puckered, as though he’d bitten into something rotten. “Let’s just say politics and leave it at that.”

   “Politics? Really?” I snorted. “Is that why you went back to the mansion and beat Rivera to death?”

   For the first time, a genuine smile played across his face, although his black eyes remained stone-cold. “Oh, no. That was just fun. Believe me, Damian had it coming. He’d hurled one too many insults my way over the years, when he was nothing but a lousy drunk. The only useful thing about him was his massive family fortune, and his problems were starting to outstrip even that.”

   I could almost sympathize with him there. I would have enjoyed hurting Rivera too. I waited for Tucker to go on, but he didn’t elaborate, and I knew that he wouldn’t say any more about Rivera. So I decided to change course.

   “Tell me one thing,” I said. “Since we’re having such a civilized conversation.”

   “What?”

   “Why didn’t you kill me when you found me lying next to Porter on the riverbank?”

   Tucker blinked, as if he hadn’t expected me to remember that. I’d thought that the man in black had seemed familiar, and later on, after Jo-Jo healed my concussion, I’d remembered that he’d been bundled up just like the man in the car that had driven away from Northern Aggression. Once I’d realized that Tucker was the one who’d planted the lipstick at the nightclub, the connection had been obvious.

   “I didn’t think that murdering you when you couldn’t fight back was very sporting,” he murmured. “Besides, you’d done the hard work of killing Porter. I figured that you’d earned a brief reprieve.”

   “Is that also why you brought my knives to me?”

   He shrugged again. “Damian gave the knives to me after Porter took them off you. I had no use for them.”

   “No, I suppose you didn’t,” I said. “But do you know what’s really funny? How many times you’ve tried to kill me versus how many times you’ve helped me. I’d say they’re about even now.”

   He frowned. “What do you mean?”

   I might not have one of my knives in my hands, but I could still hurt him. “I’m talking about the night that Mab burned my family’s mansion to the ground. How you saw me in the woods but pretended you didn’t. How you dropped some money on the ground and just walked away.”

   The vampire shifted in his side of the booth, actually looking uncomfortable, as if I’d caught him doing something that he didn’t want anyone else to know about—ever.

   All around us, people ate their food, sipped their drinks, and carried on with their own conversations, but a tense silence fell over our booth. I kept quiet and waited, hoping that I’d rattled Tucker enough to get him to start talking, but of course I hadn’t. Frustration, anger, and annoyance rushed through me at his continued silence.

   “Why did you come here?” I snapped, tired of Tucker and all his damn mind games. “What do you want?”

   For a moment, I thought that he wasn’t going to answer, but he finally looked at me again.

   “You were right. I did realize that you were spying on us in Rivera’s office that night.” Tucker drew in a breath and slowly let it out, as if he was dreading what he was about to say. “I came here because I wanted to explain about your mother.”

   I couldn’t have been more shocked if he’d lunged across the table and slapped me across the face. In an instant, all my frustration, anger, and annoyance crystallized into cold, cold rage. On top of the table, my hands curled into fists, my nails digging into the spider rune scars embedded in my palms.

   “Really?” I snarled. “You want to explain about my mother? Well, maybe you should start by saying why you didn’t save her. Why you let Mab Monroe and the rest of your precious Circle fucking murder her.”

   For the first time since I’d known him, Tucker’s face twisted with regret. Once again, I thought that he wouldn’t answer me, but to my surprise, he began to speak in a flat, emotionless voice.

   “Ashland society is a very tight-knit circle, as I’m sure you know,” he began. “My family used to be one of the wealthiest and most respected in the entire city, at least until my father gambled everything away. He was a drunk, you see, just like Damian Rivera, although Damian was at least smart enough not to spend all of his mother’s money.”

   He smiled, but it was a dark, humorless expression. “But my father insisted that we keep up appearances and maintain the same lifestyle that we’d always had, even though doing so put us deeper and deeper in debt. He too was a member of the Circle, but without any real money to his name, he quickly fell through the ranks, losing all his power and position, until the others regarded him as little more than a pet. And then, when he died, I became their pet, forced to pay off his many debts.”