“What the shit is that?” I ask, staring at the surname next to Honey’s.
Charlaine shifts and clears her throat. “I was going to ask you that. You don’t think…” her voice trails off and she shakes her head. “I mean, she wouldn’t, right? Not this fast?”
My eyes snap up from the computer to her face. “Wouldn’t what?”
“Get married. I mean, she wouldn’t marry Zeus would she?” she asks.
“Marry who?” Addie whispers, but I ignore her. Taylor bends low to murmur in her ear and her eyes widen before she goes quiet.
“She wouldn’t,” I say. I know she wouldn’t. Not willingly. If she is tied to Zeus it has to be forced. Even if she is angry with me, thinks the worst of me, she wouldn’t give herself to a man like Zeus.
I know she wouldn’t. My girl is soft and kind, pure in the way she loves. She wouldn’t sell herself to a man like Zeus.
“Are you sure?” Charlaine presses.
“Yes,” I growl. Honey isn’t married to Zeus. That isn’t how this fucking goes. She is going to marry me. I have the ring ready for her. She will go to a fancy designer downtown where everyone will bow and scrape to please her, she’ll wear my ring and the dress she wants when she gets married.
I’ll give her the world when she saysyesto me. Zeus does not get thatyes.
And if he’s forced it from her, he is a dead man.
“Make arrangements for Saturday,” I tell Taylor and Addie. The pair of them nod and Addie forces herself up from the couch and sprints towards her desk with Taylor on her heels.
“Law, look…” Charlaine starts. Her voice is soft, I know she is trying to tell me that I need to be ready for what I’ll walk into on Saturday. She thinks Honey has married Zeus, but she doesn’t know my girl like I do.
“Don’t start with me, Charlaine. I told you. She’s not fucking married to him and it’s not her birthday.”
“Then what’s with the party? It even requests offerings, so that’s like a gift, right?”
I glance towards the screen to see she is right. The subscript beneath the birthday announcement details all offerings to be left in the Great Hall. The dress code is formal. There are no details other than that.
I scowl and scan the screen again, but the words don’t change. It is the same fucking short birthday invitation that it had been a minute before.
“Yes, it’s a gift. Zeus likes to be dramatic.”
“I mean, with a name like that…can you blame the man?”
I glare at Charlaine and she holds up her hands. “Just kidding. I’ll knock it off, but honestly, other than his name and the club, he’s kind of boring. I didn’t find much else on him than those initial investments and I’ve been digging, Law. It’s like he just materialized in New York in the early nineties and that’s it. He made the club and vanished.”
I nod. “That’s normal for him. No one is even sure he exists until they meet him in the flesh. I thought he was a front for Connie,” I admit.
“Mysterious. Cute.”
“Annoying,” I correct. I like my enemies where I can see them. Not protected by the walls of a club that I am tied to now. I own part of that club, but there are parts of it that I’ve never even seen.
That has to be where Zeus exists. Where his world really and truly is. And that is where I’ll find Honey.
“What are you going to do?” she asks.
“I’m going to that party.”
“But what if you…I mean, what if she’s,” Charlaine starts again.
“She won’t. That’s not Honey.”
Charlaine’s eyes narrow and her face goes tight. I know she thinks I’m confused. That I haven’t just gone soft but that I’ve lost sight of reason and logic when it comes to my woman. That the only way to interpret the invitation is that Honey married Zeus to take his name.
“Don’t fucking look at me like that,” I tell her. We’ve known each other a long time, been through more than one tough spot where neither of us should have made it out alive. She knows better than to think I’ve lost sight of reason.
