“What?” Gin shouted. “That’s so wrong!”

“What are you complaining about?” Dak asked her. “You’re retired, remember?”

His sister shot him a look that would’ve eaten paint off a wall.

“That doesn’t matter. I still think it’s unfair.”

Carolina spoke up. “This is the wrong business for fairness, Gin.”

“I don’t like it either,” Dak said. I was thinking I might not have to say anything at all. “The council once put a hit on my wife.”

His mother nodded. “I can see that. However, sometimes there are gray areas when it comes to a job. It’s not easy to come up with reasons all the time. You will just have to trust that the council knows what it’s doing.”

That stopped us all short. Trust wasn’t exactly a typical family trait with the Bombays. In fact, it was usually quite the opposite.

“Well, I think that’s bullshit,” Gin spit.

Carolina snapped, “You will not swear around Sofia!” She even covered the sleeping infant’s ears.

“It is bullshit, Mom.” Dak’s temper was rising. “I think there should be a family meeting about this.”

“We’ve never had a family meeting to decide how the council does things. Not in four thousand years,” Carolina said calmly. “The business is evolving.”

“And what if we refuse?” Gin asked. Clearly she forgot that she was the only Bombay ever given retirement. But I admired the fact that she was sticking up for the rest of us.

“Don’t tell me how to do my job,” Carolina snapped.

Dak stood up and pointed at his mother. “This is wrong. And you know it.”

“What do you think, Coney?” Gin asked.

“I think I’m tired of this whole mess.”

Dak frowned. “What do you mean?”

I stood up. “I’m sick of the fact that we can’t get involved with people without the scrutiny of the council, wanting to know everything.”

“And what about your vic, Coney?” Carolina asked calmly. “Why didn’t you clear your assignment?”

It was a good question. A fair one. “I just didn’t feel like it.”

Gin and Dak looked from me to their mother, who stared openmouthed at me.

“Coney, you know the rules,” Carolina said steadily. “We have a client who paid us to have Vic killed. You don’t get to say no.”

I shrugged. “Well, this time I did.” I understood this was earth-shattering. Dekker wasn’t a saint. He was a bad guy. But there was more to it than that. And maybe after four thousand years, it was time to say, Enough.

“Do not put us in this position,” Carolina pleaded. “I don’t want to sign your death warrant. I don’t want to do that to your mother. She’s already lost Richie.”

“Do what you must,” I said, wondering if she would kill me right then and there.

“Mom?” Gin said weakly as her brother sat down and dropped his face into his hands. “Mom, you can’t take Coney out. He must have a good reason for not killing his vic.”

“You aren’t going to do that, right?” Gin repeated. I knew what was going through her mind. It was the same thing Dak and I were thinking. This would either be the end of the Bombay family business or the end of me. The shock crackled in the atmosphere that hung around us like lead weights.

Romi shouted from the yard, and Louis came running in. “Grandma! Romi got a splinter in her elbow!” He tugged on his grandmother’s sleeve, and she passed the baby to Dak and left.

“Coney, are you really going to stand up to the council?” Gin asked.

“Yes. I’m done.”

Dak spoke up. “You know, our generation of the family has really been through the shit. And I’m willing to go to bat for you, Coney.”

“I thought we’d gotten rid of the bad council,” said Gin, referring to a coup that had forced our grandparents into early retirement.

“Why would Mom behave just like her mother?” Dak said.

My mum was on the council too. Which meant that she knew about this assignment and hadn’t told me. Another wave of shock engulfed me. How could this have happened? And what in the hell were we going to do about it?

Chapter Thirty

Dak, Gin and I wasted no time. We dropped the kids off with Diego and Leonie and locked Dekker in Gin’s basement. Afterward we picked up our other cousins Liv and Paris and strategically retreated to my latest Wal-Mart parking lot home. We needed to talk through this newest family development. But in true Bombay form, none of us felt safe discussing it where we might be overheard.

“I’m so sick of this family,” Liv said as she held Sartre in her arms.

“What are we going to do about it?” asked Paris. It was a good question. Something had to be done. The five of us agreed we didn’t want to blindly answer to the council anymore.

“Thank God you got this assignment.” Gin flipped through the file. “I would’ve taken him out without talking to him.”

Dak nodded. “All my files have had a laundry list of bad deeds that would make Saddam Hussein blush.”

“So why now?” Paris asked. We all turned to stare at him. “Why didn’t we fight this a long time ago?”

I ran my fingers through my hair. “I don’t know if you guys should be involved. This is my problem.”

“It’s time. I think I speak for all of us when I say we want retirement,” Liv said.

“I’m tired of the fact that it’s taken for granted that you can’t trust anyone in the Bombay family,” Dak replied. He looked tired. Shock would do that to you.

“I’ve always trusted you guys,” Gin said slowly.

“I don’t want to be responsible for killing off an entire generation of Bombays,” I said. “I’ll do it alone.”

Paris jumped to his feet and started pacing-no easy feat considering there were five people crowded into my RV. “Well, we have to do something. I’m tired of it too.”

Liv reached out and patted her brother on the arm. There was something about that gesture that soothed me. And I realized that Gin was right: I’d always trusted my cousins-the Bombays of my generation. This was a new thing in the family. As far as I knew, that kind of camaraderie had always been discouraged before.

“I’m not going to kill Dekker,” I declared. “In fact, I’m not going to kill anyone anymore.”

My cousins turned to stare at me. Was the solution really this simple?

“Okay…” Paris spoke up. He was always the most practical and cautious of us. “But how are we going to do that without getting us all killed?”

“Good question,” I said. “We will have to work together.” That sounded good. How would we do it?

“Coney?” Gin asked. “What made you question this particular hit?”

Dak looked at her in that brotherly way that implied she was nuts. “I’d like to think that any one of us would have eventually done that.”

She shook her head. “Not necessarily. I mean, with all the training that’s been forced on us throughout our lives, it’s been ingrained in us not to question anything.”

We all thought about this for a moment. No one wanted to admit it, but she had a point.

“Something about this hit stood out,” Gin persisted in a way that made me itch metaphorically. “What was it?”

I knew the answer. I wished I didn’t, but I did. Veronica made me question the hit. And while I would have liked to believe I was smart enough to think critically regarding assignments, the truth was, we were trained to avoid dealing with the truth when it was inconvenient. Bombays were so brainwashed we might let something like this go by once-hell, maybe even twice-before asking about it.

“I’ve gotten involved with someone who made me realize you can’t judge someone by their file,” I said slowly, unsure how much I should reveal.

My cousins prompted me silently with their stares. There was no easy way out of this. So I spilled my guts. I told them everything. About how this woman made me question everything around me. And how Dekker had become my father confessor. And most of all, how I was just sick and tired of the violence and death that surrounded us.