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I haven’t heard anything else from above me.
I haven’t let myself.
I blink, focusing on the small clock on the corner of the screen. It’s almost time for my morning routine to start, so I carefully save my work, straighten my desk, and change into workout clothes before heading down to the gym in the basement. I don’t exactly enjoy exercise, but I do appreciate the way that pushing my body to its limits each morning blissfully empties out my brain.
I’m distantly aware that I’m working at less than my normal full capacity, my body a hair sluggish from lack of sleep, but I push through anyway. I learned a long time ago that the monster inside me will consume me from the inside out unless I master it, and the way to do that is to build up routines and maintain control at all times, leaving it no chance to overtake me.
Besides, the body is just a tool to the will. And nothing breaks my will.
Once I’m finished in the gym, I shower and head to the kitchen, where I prepare an omelet and two slices of whole grain toast, fill and start the coffee maker, and focus on not thinking anything at all.
Eventually, the others start waking up and filtering down to join me in the kitchen.
“Morning,” Maddoc grunts as he heads for the coffee pot.
I nod a greeting, taking another bite of omelet, then following it with a bite of toast. Omelet. Toast. Omelet. Toast.
“Dante up yet?” Maddoc asks once he’s finished his first cup and poured a second, turning to face me.
He leans back on the counter, regarding me in that steady, unflappable way he has that made me start to trust him, despite all my misgivings, back when I was living on the streets.
“I don’t know. He hasn’t come down yet,” I answer, killing my curiosity as fast as it arises—along with the rage that flares hot on its heels—when my next thought is to wonder why. And which room Dante spent the night in.
It doesn’t matter.
Less than a minute later, Dante saunters in with a drowsy-eyed look and a lazy smile that I’ve seen more than one woman swoon over in the time that I’ve known him.
“Morning,” he drawls, lifting his chin in our direction in greeting. He scratches his stomach, exposing his abdominals and the trim line of hair bisecting them, and I avert my eyes before I can look for any marks Riley might have left on his body.
Bite marks.
Scratches.
Anything that might accompany the kind of moans I heard through the security cameras the night she touched herself. The kind of moans that my headphones would have blocked out, if they’d been coming from Dante’s studio last night.
I tighten my fists, forcing sudsy water from the sponge I hold, and push both the memory and the curiosity back where they belong. Away.
“Good morning,” I respond evenly once I’m back in control.
Now that they’re both here, I could tell Maddoc and Dante about the plan I’ve worked out, but I find myself holding off. It isn’t until Riley enters the kitchen a few moments later that I realize I was waiting for her.
Dante gives her a lascivious once-over that makes her blush, then offers her a pre-doctored cup of coffee, his fingers brushing hers when he hands it over. “Ready to make today your bitch?”
“I’m always ready,” she says with a smile just for him that looks far too intimate, making me wonder if Maddoc is blind. Surely, he can see that there’s something going on between them.
It doesn’t matter. We’ll do this, and then she’ll be gone.
I tap the counter, getting my brothers’ attention. “I’ve figured it out.”
Maddoc’s gaze instantly sharpens, and Dante manages to drag his attention from the woman and give me a feral smile, both of them clearly just as eager to deal McKenna a blow as I am.
Riley looks back and forth between the three of us, her delicate eyebrows drawn together in confusion. “Figured what out?”
“Pretty sure Logan means he’s plotted out exactly what we need to do to pull off Chloe’s rescue, princess,” Dante tells her.
He knows me as well as I’ve ever let anyone, he and Maddoc both, so of course he understood my non sequitur.
Riley’s eyebrows shoot up in surprise, and her warm brown gaze whips around to meet mine. “You have? Already? Even though you just found out about it last night?”
