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CHAPTER 6
Icould hardly believemy eyes. The mystery woman that Adair had sent us on a wild goose chase to look for was...Madeline? Adair was carrying her in his arms, and her head was resting on his shoulder. She looked sick, her normally flushed face was devoid of color, and her forehead shone under the dim lights, telling me that she was sweating profusely.
“What the hell happened?” I asked as I reached for her, surprised when Adair jerked her out of my reach. There was a protective glint in his blue eyes as he gripped her even tighter to his chest.
“Some bastard slipped something into her drink.” He said and glared at the crowd that the bastard in question had slipped into only a few minutes before.
Marcus, who hadn’t gotten a good look at her yet, glanced down at Madeline’s face and made a sound, pointing a shaking finger at the unconscious beta.
“That,” he said with some difficulty. “Is Eric Zhao’s little sister.”
I had never asked Madeline for her last name, figuring that it was none of my business, but now I wished that I had. We only knew Eric Zhao tangentially through Marcus, and it was a flimsy connection at best. Eric Zhao, however, was famous in San Francisco, along with the rest of his pack. Zhao’s pack, Pack Russo, owned and operated Russo Enterprises, a multi-billion dollar company that made obscene profits every year. More than one of my normal patrons worked at Russo Enterprises, and the Russo building was a constant, hovering presence that I could see from the windows of Golden Gate Grind.
I also didn’t know that he had a sister, so I never put two-and-two together between Madeline and Eric.
“We need to call her brother immediately.” Marcus pulled out his phone, no doubt to call Aria and get connected with Eric Zhao, but a slender hand shot out and grabbed at his phone. It took all three of us a minute to realize that Madeline had been the one to stop Marcus.
“No,” She said weakly, barely cracking an eye open at us. “Don’t call him, he can’t know.”
“Madeline, he’s going to find out eventually, besides if you need to go to the hospital, your brother will probably need to be there to talk to the doctors.” I urged her, still feeling the itch in my fingers to yank her out of Adair’s arms.
Madeline’s brown eyes opened now and she began to sit up in Adair’s arms. “No, no hospital either. Too big of a chance of running into Matteo there. Just...take me home.” Sitting up quickly became too much effort for her, and she flopped back down into Adair’s arms and closed her eyes again.
“honey, you gotta stay awake.” Adair shook Madeline a little bit, but her head flopped back and forth and I realized that she’d passed out again.
“Madeline, sweetheart, you gotta tell us where you live so we can take you home.” I squeezed her hand, but Madeline was unresponsive. She wasn’t carrying a purse or wallet, so I figured she must’ve lost it somewhere.
“What do we do?” I asked Adair, and we both looked at Marcus, who was generally the voice of reason when Adair and I were about to make a poor decision.
Marcus held his hands up and shook his head. “No, absolutely not. We are not going to bring her back to the house, she needs to be put in the hospital for fuck’s sake!”
“We can keep an eye on her, and if she needs to go, I’ll drive her to the hospital myself.” Adair said, his blue eyes pleading with Marcus, who scrubbed a frustrated hand through his hair.
“Itisbetter if we keep an eye on her, one of us would need to even if wedidknow her address.” I chimed in, knowing that if I wasn’t able to keep a watch over Madeline and make sure that she was okay, that I’d be climbing the walls of our apartment all night.
Marcus, swayed by my reasoning...or maybe the desire to get out of the club, finally said: “Fine. But you two are watching her, if she vomits it’s on you two to clean it up. I’m going to go speak with security and give them our number so they can follow up with her when she’s feeling better.” With that, he turned and disappeared into the crowd.
We once again crossed the dance floor, and I couldn’t help but notice how many people paid no attention to us as we carried an unconscious woman through the crowd. Had Adair not stepped in, Madeline would have probably been taken out of the club and had things done to her that made my insides twist with rage, and no one would have even batted an eyelash.
I would be calling the owner of the club in the morning. We paid way too much for our VIP membership for them not to employ adequate and competent security.
Madeline barely made a sound when we reached the elevator, and Marcus joined us just before the doors closed.
“How is she doing?” Marcus asked, as we descended to the lobby. He didn’t try to reach out and touch her, and I could see the clear discomfort in his green eyes. Marcus had too many issues with betas to be able to touch her. In fact, he pressed his back to the wall, and began to fiddle with his phone to distract himself from the fact that he was trapped inside of an elevator with a strange beta.
I gave his hand a squeeze, feeling guilty about putting him in this situation.
“She’s okay, her breathing is even at least.” Adair replied as he held her tightly to his chest.
When we made it downstairs, the car was already waiting for us in the valet lane. The valet handed me the keys without so much of a word about Madeline in Adair’s arms, and we piled into the car, Marcus in the passenger seat, and Adair in the back with Madeline. I took the wheel, revving the engine of Adair’s sportscar, and I couldn’t help but turn and throw a giddy grin at Adair.
“Rio....” I heard my head alpha warn with a growl as I threw the car in drive and took off at a speed that I was pretty sure would earn me an earful later.
Was it childish of me to pout about not being the one in the backseat with Madeline? Probably. I was irritated that Adair had commandeered Madeline like he was the only one who could touch and hold her, and I was jealous. Even though she was in a shitty situation, and was currently going in and out of consciousness, I was jealous.
I slowed as I pulled into traffic, feeling immediately guilty for acting like a possessive alphahole.
“And here I thought you were going to burn rubber in Adair’s nice car.” Marcus joked from the passenger seat without looking up from his phone. He was answering emails, again, his favorite coping mechanism. We really needed to do something about his inability to turn his brain off from work. It had gotten worse in the past couple of months, ever since Hezekiah Jordan’s trial, and most of the time he came home so exhausted that he passed out on the couch just like he had this morning.
