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“I know, it looks like vomit. But it’s actually delicious. Well, delicious for something on the Keto diet.”
“Remind me againwhyit is you thought you had to go on a diet?” Taylor’s gaze slides up and down my frame. “It’s not something some douchebag guy said, is it? I mean, Tempest, you’re in fantastic shape. I’d even say—” Her mouth snaps shut.
I’d even say you’re TOO thin.
I can see the unspoken words in her eyes.
“Look, I don’t have an eating disorder or anything, Taylor.”
“I wasn’t?—”
“I’m just trying different elimination diets for food sensitivities, that’s all.”
I ignore Dr. Han’s voice in my head, encouraging me to tell family and friends about what’s happening with me.
Taylor clears her throat, turning to nod her chin at my bed with all the clothes strewn across it.
“I was trying to pick out what to wear tonight.”
She frowns. “You want me to come with you?”
Yep, there’s the big sister vibes. My brothers are fiercely protective of me. But “protective” to them means putting on armor and dueling with anyone who’d try to hurt me using swords or battle axes. With Taylor, it’s a sweeter, human touch.
She was instrumental in helping my brothers deal with everything when Layla died. And she was my biggest lifeline after what happened to me, when I couldn’t be around men, not even my brothers. She’s the sole reason I can be out in the world these days instead of staying the shut-in I was for about six months afterward.
Still, I shoot her a look.
“You don’t want to come to this shitshow.”
“ThehellI don’t! You need backup in there.”
I grin. “You mean besides Alistair and Gabriel?”
“Let me restate,” she sighs. “You need backup who isn’t drowning in testosteroneandwho can think further ahead than one swung punch. Besides, Danteismy client.”
Considering the…historybetween my family and Dante, it’s crazy that he uses Crown and Black at all for his personal and business legal needs. That said, she’s really the only one he interacts with, according to Gabriel.
Itisa tempting offer. My brothers are, obviously, coming tonight. But having Taylor there would definitely give me a bit more comfort. Maybe it’s a girl thing, or maybe she’s right: she can have my back rationally without immediately going to the thrown fists place like Gabriel and Alistair would if things went sideways.
But it’s not that I don’twanther there. It’s that I can’thaveher there.
I need space tonight when I go to Dante’s house. Not because I want to impress his guests.
Marrying the head of New York’s most secretive kink club might not have ever been on my bucket list. But ever since the day I pricked my finger and signed my blood across that page, I’ve started to consider some of the potential upsides to getting inside Dante’s world.
Upsides likeaccess.
At first, after what happened to me when I was seventeen, I wallowed in the “random bad luck” of what had been done to me and to Nina. But slowly, with therapy, and in the survivors’ groups I went to, I started to realize what had been done to us maybe wasn’t so random after all.
It was the rings that clinched it for me.
That’s one of those weird, horrible details I’ll never forget about that night. Even if the rest of it is a terrifying blur, what I do remember with utter clarity is the gold ring with the lion’s head carved into it, with two little gems for the eyes and “AC” engraved on the band.
The man who hurt me wore one. I’ll never forget the feel of its weight as his fingers tightened around my wrist, pinning me down. And he wasn’t the only one.
…The men who raped and killed my best friend not three feet from me wore them, too.
To most people, these would be insignificant little details in a horrible, painful story. But to me, they’re clues. Breadcrumbs.And I can’t stop following the trail, even if I dread thinking what I might find at the end of it.
