“Fuck off, Callahan,” I heard myself say, angry.
He shrugged and walked away, like he hadn’t just inflicted emotional damage.
I turned back to the dance floor. Someone pressed something into Selena’s palm. What was that?
She closed her fist around it and then made her way over to her friends. A guy bumped into her, and she nearly fell. He grabbed her around the waist, dancing with her from behind. She let herself lean back against him, scanning the room. Her gaze landed on me.
A jolt ran through me.
The guy behind her was handsy, and she wasn’t stopping him. The challenge in her eyes dared me to do something about it as she leaned even farther into him.
Then she picked the pill up from her palm and put it on her tongue, closed her eyes, and let her head fall back.
Someone jostled my shoulder, and I broke my glare at Selena to see one of my new team members standing beside me. He was a lesser player, not a breakthrough talent by a long shot. What the hell did he want?
“Have you met Selena? The campus bike?” he chuckled, and instantly pissed me off.
I didn’t like her either, but there are some things a man should never say about a woman, and that was one of them.
I turned a cold expression on him, staring, unblinking, until he coughed and his neck went red.
“I mean, it’s just a joke I heard. It’s shitty,” he trailed off.
“We’ve met briefly,” I replied curtly, turning away from him.
“Best steer clear. She’s trouble, you know. She was mixed up in a lot of shit last year. Had to leave town for the gossip to die down. Now she’s back and seems like she’s on a path to self-destruct.” The guy took a swig of beer.
“What shit?” I wondered.
He went to speak and then seemed to think better of it. “I’ll tell you some other time.”
“So, you don’t know,” I surmised.
“I know, I know all kinds of things. My brother’s a cop,” he said with a grin, like it was a flex. “Let’s just say, she’s got a reputation in this town,” he continued. “I’m Nick, by the way.”
I ignored his outstretched hand.
A reputation? It was the opposite of what my father wanted for the family. Interesting.
Selena had moved away from the groping guy and found her friends. They were all dancing, all drinking, and yet, only she had that edge that was impossible to ignore. It was because the other girls were partying to have fun.
The little heathen was partying to disappear.
There was a lot more to her than met the eye. She had secrets, and secrets could be used in lots of ways.
If she wanted to disappear, I’d be happy to oblige her. I’d make her and her mother disappear from the Sinclair family completely.
Poof. Gone.
That was the plan anyway. That was what made sense. I looked again at the dance floor. The fucking groper was back, this time pushing her T-shirt up as he danced behind her. Her eyes were closed, her head back. She was so out of it, she had no idea some guy was a few inches away from cupping her goddamn tits in public.
Sure, they might belong to the most annoying woman I’d ever met, but they also belonged to the Sinclair family now.
They belonged to me.
Before I could think twice, or remember the bloody plan to let Selena and her mother embarrass themselves enough to get my father to go for a quickie divorce, I was elbowing through the crowd. Her friends were distracted, talking, dancing with their boyfriends. I grabbed the groper’s arm and twisted it sharply behind his back.
“Walk out this house right now, don’t look back, and never, ever think of approaching this girl again, and you’ll still have the capability to wank. Fail to do so, and you’ll lose that possibility forever. Your hand will be a blood bag of smashed pieces so tiny, no one will ever put Humpty Dumpty together again, got it?”
