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“Those bastards,” he said, and quivered with unspent anger. “Those fucking bastards.”
“I can’t stand this,” I replied and pushed away from him. “I can’t fucking stand this betrayal. My heart is going to split in two!”
I whirled around in the doorway and ran from the room. I couldn’t see them for one minute longer. I couldn’t understand how they’d done this to me, to Ryker, to all of us.
Ryker called my name and ran after me. I surprised the first waiter I ran into and shoved him out of my way. His tray tipped to one side. He recovered, but over-corrected. The way he flailed his arms would have been amusing under any other circumstance, but even as the tall champagne flutes slid off the tray and shattered to the floor, I felt nothing but betrayal and shame.
The second waiter was expecting me and his hand snaked out to grab my arm as I ran past. I skidded to a halt and whirled around to face him.
“Let me go!” I hissed and yanked away. He released me, but I fell against a guard instead of freedom when I escaped.
The guard didn’t have time to react to me before a fist landed on his face. Ryker threw it over my shoulder from behind, giving me a first row seat to seeing it land. The mask cracked, and I saw skin underneath, but the guard went down before I had a chance to take a closer look.
“Let’s get the fuck out of here,” Ryker said, taking my hand in his. “This is our only chance, let’s use it.”
We ran together through the main room. Again, the element of surprise was on our sides and we made it through by shoving and pushing through the crowd of Organization members, waiters, and guards.
Nobody expected us to fight back. It was as if we were the first to have ever tried it.
It couldn’t have gone on that way the whole way back, though. They caught on fast enough and we were met with a group of them in the corridor outside.
Ryker was on fire. Despite his pain and everything he’d endured, he was in full fighting form. I tried as much as I could. At that moment, I realized I needed to learn how to defend myself. I needed to know how to fight.
Ryker handled his own, punching down guards, slamming their faces into the walls, drop kicking them as they came at him.
I slapped and punched as much as I could, but they swatted me away like I was a minor annoyance. The pile of guards grew as Ryker knocked down the fourth one out of seven. I was knocked backwards and fell onto my ass, crying out in pain.
My head was spinning, and I lost my balance. I almost fell completely down as the floor seemed to shift beneath me, but a strong hand grabbed hold of my arm and jerked me to my feet.
“What the fuck?” I cried out as an Organization member in a black leather leopard mask yanked me towards him. The mask was beautiful, covering half his face like the others, but inlaid with diamonds that glinted as he moved, and edged with rubies around the ears and whiskers.
“Stop fighting me,” he said in my ear. His voice was deep and commanding, not in the overly staged theatrical way that Thackeray said it, but in the kind of way when a man knows he’s in charge and has been for a very long time. “I’m here to help you. If you can calm down and pay attention to me, dear, I’ll get you out of here.”
CHAPTER11
“How areyou going to do that?” I yelled at him and twisted in his arms. “How the fuck are you going to help us escape?”
“I have my ways. You have to trust me,” he said, and held me tighter against him as I struggled to break free. Ryker had dispatched the last of the first wave of guards and was preparing for the next.
The man holding me put his hand over my mouth and I tried to bite it. I squirmed and wriggled to twist away from him, but he held me firm. “Hold still,” he commanded. “Watch.”
Another four guards came rushing out of the lounge room, their batons held up high and ready to strike. The man holding me yelled at them, “Stop!”
His voice was loud and again filled with power. He was used to ordering around the likes of them, and they knew it. All of them halted on the spot, holding their batons with frustrated confusion. I wished I could see their faces at that moment. It would have been good to see their reactions to being kept from me.
“You there, come with us,” he told Ryker. The guards looked at each other, still confused as they stood at the ready. They wanted to attack Ryker, they wanted to capture me, but they couldn’t go against an actual member of the Organization. And clearly a senior one at that, somebody who held power.
“Where are you taking us?” Ryker asked, walking over to stand in front of us. The man holding me was tall. He looked Ryker in the eyes and tensed up under Ryker’s piercing power. “Why don’t you let her go?”
“I’m getting you both out of here, but we have to go now!” the man said.
“Penny,” I mumbled against his hand. “We have to get Penny!”
“Let her go,” Ryker warned. The two of them were both so tight, as if they were elastic drawn to the breaking point.
He released me, his hands falling away.
I stepped into Ryker’s arms and looked back at him. “We have to get Penny,” I said. “I can’t leave her behind.”
