My throat tightens.
My ridiculous bird. My little white chaos demon who somehow understands more than half the men in this building. I start toward the office, but Diablo catches my wrist.
Lightly.
Still, I stop.
He lets go immediately.
Good.
He sees my face and learns fast.
“We need to talk first,” he says.
“No, you need to talk. I need to check on my bird.”
“Darling.”
That voice.
The president voice. The man who gives orders and expects the whole room to bend around them.
My body remembers a time I bent too much. Not for him. Not really. For Rico. For fear. For every version of love that taught me quiet women survived longer.
I turn fully toward Diablo.
“Careful,” I say.
His jaw flexes.
Behind him, Alpha looks up from the altar table but pretends not to. Crypt suddenly finds his laptop very interesting.Key Rat walks by, hears the tone in my voice, and reverses direction like a rat with survival instincts.
Diablo lowers his voice. “Carmen sent roses to Eclipse with a threat aimed at Lady. She leaked Shady’s past. She has Mutherfukers moving through a flower business tied to old Solano money. She knows where we are weak.”
“Yes,” I say.
“And you’re her real target.”
The words land cold.
Not because I don’t know.
Because I do.
I knew it when Lady was tied to a chair. I knew it when Carmen smiled at me in the hospital. I knew it when Diablo said he ended the engagement and Carmen looked at me like a debt that needed collecting.
I’m not the queen.
I’m the insult.
Diablo chose the bartender.
In Carmen’s world, that is worse than betrayal. It is humiliation.
“She already had Lady taken,” he says. “She will come for you again.”
“She never stopped coming for me.”
