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“Don’t you think I should have been the one to decide that?”
“Normally, yes—”
“Normally?”
There was some kind of commotion across the club, but I didn’t look up. I was too busy looking at my husband. “Team Basarab here.” I pointed back and forth between the two of us. “We’re supposed to be on the same side—”
“We are on the same side—”
“Until it’s inconvenient for you—”
“Inconvenient?” Louis-Cesare’s eyes fla
shed. “Inconvenient?”
“Oh, boy,” Zheng said, and sat back.
“You almost died!” Louis-Cesare said. “Am I not allowed to take care of you? To make decisions when you are hurt and in pain?”
“It depends on the decision. Look, I know you’re used to deciding for the family—”
“And you are family!”
The commotion was getting louder, but a glance at the door to the foyer revealed nothing, and anyway, I was busy. Zheng needed to keep his damned club in line. “Yes, but not subordinate family! We are partners. Partners talk, they tell each other things—”
“I intended to tell you as soon as there was anything to tell—”
“Again, not your decision. What if Mircea was kidnapped, too? What if all this was some kind of move against the family—”
“He was not kidnapped—”
“You can’t know that—”
“He can know that,” Zheng said, looking apologetic.
“Mircea is a master mentalist,” Louis-Cesare reminded me. “The whole family would know the moment such a thing happened—”
“Unless someone . . . got the drop on him,” I said, which, okay, wasn’t likely, but in that case, where was he? I hadn’t thought about it before, because I’d been a little busy, and because Mircea and I didn’t live in each other’s pockets. But I should have, because this wasn’t the sort of thing he’d just ignore.
That would have been true even if we hadn’t been drawing closer these last months, which we had. It had been almost like having a normal family for the first time, or as normal as a vampire clan got. And yet . . . Dorina was taken, and he said nothing? Did nothing? Even if just for family pride, he would have had to respond.
“I don’t understand this,” I said, and Louis-Cesare nodded.
“Neither do I, but Radu does. He was my next call, after Gerald gave me nothing—” I pulled out my phone, but Louis-Cesare just shook his head. “He won’t tell you anything, either, except that Mircea is busy.”
And that was no doubt true, because Radu doted on his one and only Child. If Louis-Cesare couldn’t get anything out of him, it was unlikely that I’d have better luck. But what the hell?
“Busy? What could be more important than—” I broke off, because I couldn’t hear myself think. “What is going on out there?”
“That’s what I’d like to know,” Zheng said, getting to his feet.
Which was when a small woman with a big voice came into the room, walking backwards, while yelling at—
“Oh, shit,” I said, because I’d forgotten about them.
Bahram and Rashid stumbled into the room, being beaten on by what looked like every toon in the place. Stilettos—of the type that Jimmy Choo makes—were brandished, fists were flung, and purses were slammed upside heads that were cowering under arms, or at least Bahram’s were. Rashid was dumb enough or proud enough to lower his guard for a moment, and got nailed by a large Birkin.
“It was justified!” he said, staring around.
