The Serpent's Curse by Lisa Maxwell (read an ebook week .TXT) 📕

sign that was supposed to come from the back door of the Bella Strega. Next to her, looking every bit out of place, was Theo Barclay, who had refused to leave after he’d helped her free Mooch from the Tombs.

It had been a mistake to bring him into this. Viola knew that to the pit of her soul, but she hadn’t known what else to do. When she’d returned to Paul’s after confronting Nibsy, only to find Theo waiting for her at the corner, Viola had taken it as a sign. Ruby had sent him, or so he’d claimed. She’d wanted to make sure that Viola was safe and well, as if an assassin needed a soft schoolboy to keep her safe. But after failing to heal Jianyu, after confronting Nibsy, Viola hadn’t had the strength to push him away. The next thing she’d known, she was in his carriage, telling him far more than she’d intended to, and he was agreeing to far more than was safe.

“Do you think your friend did what you’ve asked?” Theo wondered, examining a bin of candy that the peddler was selling. The man who owned the cart was eyeing them both, but Theo especially, with his well-cut suit and fair hair.

“If you’re not going to buy that, you should leave it be,” Viola told him, purposely ignoring his question. “And I wouldn’t exactly call Mooch my friend.”

The truth was that Viola felt like expecting Mooch to uphold his promise was like chasing butterflies. He was as hardened by the streets and his experience as any of the Devil’s Own, and the Bella Strega—even with Nibsy Lorcan at its head—represented safety in a dangerous city. Mooch would be a fool to risk his place, his home, even for the favor Theo had done by getting him out of the Tombs.

Theo placed a couple of coins into the peddler’s outstretched hand in exchange for a paper sack of the candy, and Viola pulled him onward. He offered her a piece, but she waved him off.

“I still don’t know how you convinced the judge to let him go,” she said, shaking her head in disbelief.

“Judge Harris knows my father,” Theo said with a shrug. “Besides, there wasn’t any real evidence against him. It was all circumstantial.”

As if that ever matters, Viola thought.

“It’s been too long,” she said, growing more impatient. They’d already looked at all the carts, and if they went through the vendors again, it would certainly draw attention. If the firebrand of a boy was going to help them, he would have opened the back door of the Strega by now.

“Let’s give it a minute more,” Theo said, popping one of the hard candies into his mouth. “These are quite good.…” He sounded mystified.

“Confetti,” Viola said, absently wondering how anyone so rich could have gone through life without tasting such a common bit of sweetness. “Let’s go before—”

The door of the Strega opened, and Mooch appeared, his red hair gleaming in the summer sun. Theo pocketed the candy and started to move.

“No,” Viola said, stopping him. “You are not coming with me. Not in there.”

He blinked at her with the frown of a man unaccustomed to not getting his way. “Of course I am.”

“No,” she told him, shaking her head. “The Strega isn’t simply some saloon filled with your common ubriaconi. Mooch, he can burn a house down around you, and others are more deadly still. They’re not friends, not anymore, and I won’t risk your life.”

“I’m not sure that’s your decision to make,”  Theo said, visibly bristling.

Mooch was growing impatient, but Viola would not give in. “I will not be the one to tell Ruby what became of you if this goes poorly. If not for me, please, go. For her. Ruby will need someone to come home to.”

Theo’s jaw tensed, but finally he relented. “I’ll expect a full report.”

“Bene,” Viola said. “Whatever you want. But you must go. Now.”

She didn’t wait for Theo’s agreement this time, but turned and made her way toward the impatient boy waiting at the back entrance of the Strega.

“What took so long?” she asked Mooch. The meeting her brother had set up with Nibsy should have started already.

“You told me to wait until it was clear,” Mooch said with a cocky shrug. “Nibsy didn’t leave like you said he would. Not right away, at least.”

“He’s gone now?” she asked.

“Went out the front a few minutes ago.”

Viola frowned. If Nibsy was late for his meeting with Paolo, her brother would be in a wretched mood later. But there was nothing she could do for that, and there was no time for her to worry about things she could not change.

“Thank you,” she told Mooch, meeting his eyes and trying to soften her expression. “I wasn’t sure if you’d—”

“I owed you one favor for getting me out of there. No one else came,” Mooch said with a shrug, but his voice was empty of emotion, hollow as Theo said his expression had been when they’d brought him into the courtroom. Then Mooch’s mouth went tight. “But don’t think this means I’ve forgotten what you did to Nibs on that bridge. You took that damn lying thief’s side over the Devil’s Own, and you made sure that Nibsy’ll never walk good again. This don’t make us friends. It only makes us even.”

“Of course,” Viola told him, hiding her frustration. She didn’t regret her actions on the bridge, but there was no way to convince Mooch—or any of the Devil’s Own—that she’d been right to protect Esta. Not when Nibsy was whispering his lies into their ears.

It might have been less trouble to just kill him, but Viola understood that his death wouldn’t be enough. Make me a martyr, Nibsy had taunted, and he’d been right. To break his control over the Devil’s Own, Viola knew she had to expose Nibsy for what he was first, or else the vacuum of his death would destroy everything Dolph had tried to build.

“My