“Tomorrow. We’ll get up and start a plan for them all. We can do this, Lips. We can get him out of there alive.”
When the car pulls up to the ballroom, I look around at the exterior of the building with disinterest. If you’ve been to one of these things, you’ve been to them all. There are screens set up everywhere with reels of dresses and fake smiling faces showing on them. As much as I love looking a certain way and finding all of the best fashion, this feels so empty to me.
Aodhan parks the car himself, not trusting the valet at all, then comes to open my car door for me. The predatory look in his eyes is perfect, the exact reason I went with the strapless option, because there’s something he loves so desperately about the exposed skin of my shoulders.
I’m sure it’s all of the dirty thoughts of marking me up, biting and grazing with teeth until everyone knows just how good he’s fucked me into my sheets.
I grin back at him like the lovesick idiot I am.
It almost feels like a double date as we walk down the path and up the grand steps to the front entrance together. Never mind the fact that I have a list of men to speak to about business with the Crow, because Harley and Aodhan are doting and loving to us both, and Lips blushes enough that it really looks like a sweet little getaway for us all.
When we get up to the doors, the screens all turn black at once.
There’s a moment where I immediately think we’re about to be murdered, a spray of bullets into the crowd and good night for us all, but then the video starts.
Thevideo.
My eyes squeeze shut as I clench my jaw tight, desperate to keep the bile creeping up my throat from coming out.
Oh God.
There’s sound too.
I don’t care that there are people standing around everywhere waiting to get in, looking and watching and seeing this nightmare happen to me, my hands cover my ears to attempt to block out the sounds because this is my worst fucking nightmare all over again.
The Jackal’s taunts.
Aodhan telling me to sit back down, the cavalry's here.
My snapping retort, the grunting, the straining, every little part of that moment is playing on dozens and dozens of screens around the ballroom.
And then it’s not.
Hands cover my own, a low and raspy murmuring instantly has my heartbeat slowing because even if my mind is gone, my body knows that Lips is safety, love, and family.
“Head back to the car, Aves. I’ve got this under control.”
Aodhan bundles me into the car, snapping at Harley in his rage, but Lips is already up the staircase, her back straight as she stalks through the crowds. They can’t know who she is, there’s no indication on her that she’s the Wolf, but instincts have them scrambling out of her way anyway.
Harley’s hulking frame charging in after her probably helps with that.
“Thank God Ash wasn’t here,” I mumble, and Aodhan threads our fingers together.
“I’m getting pretty fucking tired of that tape being used against you, Queenie. Whatever your plans are to deal with Amanda, we’re moving on itnow.”
I want to agree with him but that’s not how this life goes.
No matter how badly we want it to.
Chapter Thirteen
Lips must’ve called Ash to warn him about what had happened, so when we arrive home, he meets me at the door. I’m shaken but ready to throw myself between him and Aodhan the second the inevitable fighting starts up, so I’m shocked when he just steps forward and wraps me into his arms.
“It wasn’t the edited one this time around. It was the original,” Aodhan says, and I press my face into Ash’s chest a little harder.
Harley steps up behind us and snaps, “With fucking sound too! There’s a whole new layer of ‘no fucking thanks’ to the entire situation. Lips dealt with it.”
Ash tenses and then curses, and I pull out of his arms a little to glance at whatever has upset him.
