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“What?”
“Can you schedule all the remaining tests you wanted to do for this afternoon? We have to leave here by six.”
The doc raised his brows. “That’s a bit short notice, I’d have to move a lot of things around and I’m not sure—”
“Move them,” I told him, leaning into that Saint power. “Corvus will submit himself to every test you want to run, and then he’ll come home with us, but you will send a nurse to check on him every morning until you’re certain he’s in the clear.”
Corvus pinched the bridge of his nose, clearly put off by my non-negotiable suggestions, but he’d finally shut his stubborn mouth so that was a win.
The doc’s bedside manner mask slipped as he nodded, revealing just how pissed he was at this entire arrangement, and being the one on the hook for Corvus’ recovery. I hated to think what Diesel St. Crow would do to him if Corvus didn’t completely pull through from his injuries. It wouldn’t be pretty.
“Thank you,” I called after him earnestly as he left the room.
Corvus stood, going to fetch the shirt that went with the jeans Diesel left for him and pull it on. “Pretty fucking happy with yourself, aren’t you?” he asked without looking in my direction at all.
“How does it feel to give up some of that control, Bones?”
At his nickname, he jerked his eyes up, and I watched something inside of him tighten with hope.
“Like I just swallowed a bitter pill.”
“Get used to it, you’ll be swallowing a lot more of them before we finish this.”
I wouldn’t make him suffer too much. I played a crucial part in our monumental fuck up, but there was one thing he was right about, and it was that I wouldn’t stand forany manspeaking to me the way he did that night on the Docks. I deserved to be reprimanded but not like that. Not fromhim. Not to mention that the jackass tried to kill himself to stop me being raped, as if one was worth the other.
As if stopping my pain and torment was somehow worth his entire fucking life.
Thatwas what I was mostly angry about, despite how it also broke my heart in the most brutal, beautiful way.
Okay…andit was kind of amazing to watch him grovel.
Ava Jade, bringing big bad men to their knees since 2022.
“Speaking of bitter pills,” Grey said, crossing the room to sit in the chair Corvus had vacated, opening a laptop. “Are we ready to get started? I’ve hit a wall with what I could find based on the information AJ gave us already. I need more to go on.”
He spoke so matter-of-factly, I knew I couldn’t be the only one to pick up on it. There was no emotion there. He’d cut himself off from me, and I didn’t know how to stitch us back together.
My heart hurt, watching himnotlook at me as he adjusted himself in the chair, likely opening up a notepad on the screen to take any notes that might help him later on.
My guys watchedme and with the searchlights of their stares blazing into me, I felt like I had an audience of thousands instead of just three.
“Take your time,” Corvus said, all the stubbornness he’d been holding onto gone now with something more important for him to focus on. I could tell, even more than the others, that he’d been starving for this moment. His analytical mind hungry for information it could store and use to our advantage.
No time like the present to disappoint him.
I imagined myself as an omniscient presence in the room, watching myself speak instead of doing the speaking myself. It was easier to get through it that way, telling it like a scary story rather than as something real and tangible. A thing I’d experienced.
If I let the disgust—the absolute rage—show on my face while I told them how he’d kicked me while I was down and unable to move, touched me while I was tied down, and every other sick thing he’d done to me, it would only hurt them too. Exacerbate their rage.
And right now, I needed them thinking clearly.
We all needed to be thinking clearly if we were going to beat him.
I didn’t like how quiet it’d been since I escaped. Quiet wasn’t good. It meant Drake was planning something and we needed to stop whatever the fuck that was before he could follow through.
When I finished, none of them spoke. The room had a dark aura hanging over it, the sort of shadows not even the deep orange glow of the sunset through the curtains could cut.
“You set yourself on fire to escape?” Rook asked, his dark eyes stroking the length of the bandage on my arm with something close to reverence even though his face was a shade of pale green I’d never seen before.
