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I turned to the turncoats. “Have you heard anything else from your contacts who are still working with my mom?”
Dámaso waggled his phone. “It sounds like she got to the arena just a few minutes ago. We left right in time.”
Ursula shuddered. “She’s going to be hunting the city for us—me and Dámaso as well as the five of you.”
“Has there been any word from Frankie?” I asked, holding on to the tiniest shred of hope that maybe he could change sides again and give us an inside advantage.
Ursula grimaced. “Nothing at all from that jackass.”
“Okay.” I clasped my hands in front of me and paced from the bed to the wall and back again. “We can’t keep practicing while my mom is looking for us. It’ll be too easy for her to find us that way.”
Jasper frowned. “If you’re going to suggest we give up on Worlds after everything—”
I held up my hand. “No. I’m just talking through our options.” I heaved a ragged breath. “We could notify the police and hope they round her up—or at least her people—but she probably wouldn’t risk coming here unless she or an ally in the Devil’s Dozen has at least a few officers on their payroll, so that tactic might not work out in our favor after all. And even if not, it wouldn’t be that hard for her to avoid them while she searches for me.”
Rafael tipped his head to the side. “Didn’t the Storm say he’d send people to help if we needed it?”
“Yeah. But I don’t know how they’ll find Mom and her people to take them out either. She’ll know he’s on my side by now—she’s probably going to avoid any of the Devil’s Dozen’s usual haunts.” My stomach knotted. “Her whole focus is destroying me.”
“So far none of these options sound very good,” Niko said gently.
“I know.” I rubbed my forehead. The truth of the situation was creeping up on me; I just didn’t want to accept it.
But there was no getting around it. Mom had forced my hand. I couldn’t simply lay low and dodge her attacks.
It wasn’t just my life on the line but my men’s and my loyal allies’ too.
I dragged in a breath. “I can’t keep running away from her and pretending my family legacy doesn’t exist. Worlds is coming up fast. Even if there was a way to practice in secret, we couldn’t risk showing up at the competition if she might come and open fire on all those people. She’s already shown she doesn’t care about killing innocent kids to punish me.”
Rafael was watching me, his mouth set at an even grimmer angle than usual. “Where are you going with this, Lou?”
I raised my head and met his eyes. “We have to end this conflict completely. I have to face her head on and make sure she’ll never be a problem again.”
A momentary silence fell over the room. Ursula cleared her throat. “You mean kill her.”
Nausea swept through my gut, but I couldn’t deny it. “I wanted to be done with the violence, but she keeps flinging more at me. The longer I’ve avoided that one step, the worse things she’s done. It’s time—and then maybe I really can leave the rest behind for good.”
Quentin grasped my arm and gave it a reassuring squeeze. “If you decide you’d rather just take off and forget about Worlds, I don’t think any of us will argue with you. We’re sticking with you no matter what.”
A lump rose in my throat. “Thank you. You have no idea how much that means to me. But no matter where I go, she’s going to keep tracking me down. I can’t live like that.”
Jasper inclined his head. “Then you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do. None of us will judge you for taking that step either. I know this isn’t how you’d have wanted to handle the problem.”
“That’s right,” Niko said firmly. “Whatever you decide, we’ll stand with you and do whatever we can to help. It won’t change—”
The peal of his phone’s ringtone cut him off. He fished his phone out of his pocket and glanced at the screen. His eyebrows leapt up.
“It’s one of the skating officials I’ve been talking with. I’d better take this.”
He took a few steps away and launched into a conversation in brisk but cheery Japanese. I couldn’t understand a word of it, but that didn’t stop me from trying to read his body language.
Of course, Niko was always so animated it was hard to guess how the discussion was going. I watched as his shoulders sank and then perked up again. His hand waved in the air even though the person on the other end couldn’t see his gestures. I couldn’t tell whether he was putting a good face on horrible news or happily accepting welcome news.
My heart drummed in a heavy rhythm. By the time Niko finished the call and turned back to us, my mouth had gone completely dry. Even with the threat of wholesale slaughter hanging over me and the people I cared about most, I needed to know the verdict.
Niko’s broad grin soothed my nerves in the instant before he spoke. “We did it! The consensus is that you should be allowed to compete—and that’s their formal position going forward. They are considering you to be on probation, but as long as no new sex tapes start circulating, I think we’ll be okay.”
Jasper’s eyes lit up. “That’s fantastic!”
