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My heart cracks as I imagine how Rogue will react when he finds out just who my brother is. Anger…well deserved, at Alec for using me to spy on him. Anger at me for hiding who I really am. Hurt. Disappointment. Betrayal—
“Shit.” He reaches across the console to grasp my chin. “Please don’t be sad. I didn’t mean to upset you. I just want…”
He drops the subject along with his hand, which lands on my knee. I know what he wants. I’m hurting him. I can’t help it. I can only hope he’ll forgive me. So I give him something. I have to. “I’m scared. This thing with someone breaking into Ro’s. It’s scary.”
“I won’t let anything happen to you.” He pulls over out front of the building Rochelle lives in. His thumb depresses the clip on my seatbelt, before I’m pulled from my seat onto his lap. His hands thread through my hair. “I’d do anything for you. That bastard won’t ever get near you.”
That’s not what I’m scared about. I’m terrified that Rogue won’t ever be able to forgive me.
Chapter Eleven
Rogue
Ivy’s hand is tucked securely in mine as we take the elevator that enters directly into Ro’s penthouse. You would think with the security downstairs and the private elevator that comes with the apartment that once belonged to her grandmother—screen goddess Selene Kitt—that she would be safe here.
She should have been safe here. She shouldn’t have had to come home to find Hawthorne had invaded her space like he can get to her at his whim. I glance up at the camera in the corner of the steel box. The elevator and the fire escape into the stairwell are the only ways in or out of the penthouse and both are equipped with surveillance, so surely we have the bastard on camera. God, please let his slimy mug be caught on camera.
Riot’s waiting in the foyer as the doors open. His dark hair, which is longer on top, sticks up in every direction and hangs in his eyes simultaneously. His jacket is askew and crumpled. The energy that rockets off him as he stops pacing when he notices us is nuclear. Anger and fear, and if it’s anything like what I’m feeling, he’s just as worried about what he’ll do to Hawthorne if he gets his hands on him as he is about Ro.
With a groan, he throws himself at me. “Thank God you’re here. This is insane.”
I let go of Ivy’s hand to catch him. His normally chill demeanor is missing. “Where’s Ro?”
“In the living room. I gave her a sedative. And we shared a joint. She was hysterical.” He pulls himself together again, but the anger in his gray-blue eyes mirrors mine. “There were mouse guts all over her pillow. Blood.”
Ivy touches my arm. “I’ll go sit with Ro. You do what you need to.”
“Thanks,” Riot and I say in unison.
She leaves us standing in the foyer and disappears into the living room when I point out the way.
“Show me,” I demand as I itch the space between my jaw and neck.
“It’s fucking awful,” he warns as we skirt the living space on our way to the room Alec tore apart. He balks in the entry, takes a big shuddery breath before he turns the handles and lets the double doors swing wide. “Don’t touch anything. It’ll be better for the cops—”
“I know how it works.” I step inside the chamber.
The first thing I notice is the feathers. White, fluffy snowflakes all over everything. They coat the furniture and the bed and the carpet. They stick to the corners of picture frames and in the windowsills. They stir under the warm air pouring out of the ducts. “What the hell?”
“He slashed her bedding,” Riot explains.
“Jesus. Fuck.” I turn to take in the curtains that are hanging in ribbons. The tipped over armchair with its stuffing poking out through the suede and its legs broken off. Finally my eyes land on the gruesome centerpiece of this violence.
A little white mouse lays on its back on the one pillow that’s still whole. Its tiny paws are curled up. Its belly sliced open from neck to tail. Its entrails have been pulled out like so much stuffing and spread across the white linen. Its blood has been smeared on everything.
“He wrote her name in blood? Who the fuck does that?” Bile rises with my anger. I cover my mouth as I swallow that bitterness down. Hawthorne is deranged. Dangerous. This is…
“Sick,” Riot says from where he stands right behind me. “Do you think it’s a message?”
“Yeah.” I straighten and run a hand over my jaw. Hawthorne’s an asshole and a coward, but this…he has to be freaking out that the public are going to wash their hands of him when the article lands on every phone, tablet, and computer. “Yeah, I think he wants to silence Ro. Bury the article. Keep her from making public what really happened between them.”
Because the minute the article goes live it will be picked up by every media outlet across the globe. It’ll trend on Google. The court of public opinion will be in session and he will not survive unscathed. His career will be over. Movie roles will dry up. Production companies will blackball him. In our world that article is the safer, faster way to get justice for Ro.
Or so I thought.
“Fucking damnit,” I grind from between my teeth as I smack my fist into the wooden panel of her bedroom door. It splinters under my knuckles. This thing with the breaking in and the dead mouse…it makes him dangerous, possibly unhinged. There is no way to make light of this situation. What we really need is to find his fingerprints all over this shit.
“I could do with a drink.” Riot sounds defeated. Whatever adrenaline and anger that’s pumping through him, it’s wearing him out quickly.
