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“No,” I mumbled, hugging myself. “I feel stupid it took me so long to figure out how to say what I’ve been feeling. I’m too old for Kiera to keep having to explain my own emotions to me.”
“I don’t know if what Dylan did was emotional abuse or just being really stupid and everything has been too chaotic,” Mason said gently. “I agree it crossed some lines that were red flags and if everything was okay, would have been clear signs. I also wasn’t there, and you’ve said you don’t read the situations well always.”
I nodded, that all seemed pretty fair.
“But you’ve been emotionally abused, muffin.” He opened his mouth but then shut it, catching himself. Right, now we were telling people that I was the child of an angel and demon, so my real family was tricky. “You’ve had a lot of problematic situations. A lot of this was triggering for you and made you feel trapped. Whatever was going on, he clearly wasn’t listening.”
I felt better when Phillip snorted.
“I’m sorry I took the shots at you that I did. Youreallydidn’t deserve that even after hearing a fraction of that. I don’t know what the fuck is going on with Dylan. I know he spun out about being the one to cut open ISLE, but it was needed. No one thinks he’s a traitor.”
“People do,” I sighed, shrugging when he gave me a shocked look. “I’ve felt it around some of you guys. People are assholes. I’ve had people say it to me a lot too because I bust bad supes or strippers. You get the shit for arresting supes and shifters. It doesn’t make you in the wrong, but it still hurts. Hell, Dylan was calling me a liar and I didn’t fucking lie to him.”
“You both had everything too volatile to start such a deep relationship when it was your first,” Phillip muttered.
“Yeah, exactly what I said. Repeatedly,” I reminded him.
He looked like he had a lot more to say, but I was glad he left after promising he’d handle everything with the demon who had been hurt by that shifter. So basically, to do his job and keep things professional.
Seriously, and women were the ones who brought drama to everything?
7
A few days later I was being shown around one of our clubs in my Rae cover that I never got to use for the last case. Luckily, it was a club that I actually hadn’t spent time at since we tore down old clubs and rebuilt. So while it was the typical design and layout of a Heavenly Entertainment club, my curiosity of how this one was going was genuine.
And so far, I wasn’t finding anything wrong, but it all felt… Off.
“The new girl asked a lot of questions,” Matty told the manager, Lisa, thinking I was too far away to hear. “She might be a corporate plant.”
“No, she’s too young,” Lisa answered. “There’s no way this chick is coming from corporate when I’ve been overlooked again and again. They don’t let you through the door unless you’re over two hundred.” She snorted. “Or apparently if your demon parent fucks an angel like Jasmine’s. I can’t get over that shit.”
“It explains why people say she’s so powerful. You’ve met her, right?”
“Yeah, and she is powerful for under a hundred. Rae is like forty at most. I checked into her and the story’s legit. It’s a shame for Stacy, but she should have updated her fucking papers,” Lisa grumbled. “The young ones ask a lot of questions if they’re smart so they don’t get caught in anything bad. It’s business as usual and let her do her thing for the few months she’s here or if she stays.”
That whole conversation felt off. If things were on the up and up, asking a lot of questions would be agoodthing because I was focused and ready to do a good job. People didn’t like questions being asked when they had something to hide.
Well, unless they were introverts and socially awkward like I was, but when it was regarding business, it was a red flag.
A big one.
And I was not happy that there were any red flags at one of the clubs I was majority fucking owner of.
I’d met Lisa years and years ago. She’d been the manager of the Jackson, Mississippi club for… A couple decades now? It was one of our first clubs. Our first in the US if I remembered it right, and I normally did.
Itwasweird that she was a demon and hadn’t been promoted to corporate. Fine, some didn’t want to and wanted to keep managing clubs, but they got bumped to bigger clubs, not just saying in a place like Jackson.
Unless they wanted that. No shade if they did. Good for them and we wished them the best.
But demons were pretty well known for having a strong drive for wanting more. Shocking as that might seem, we tended to not be all that chill and just ride the status quo.
And one of the first things out of Lisa’s mouth was her bitching she hadn’t made it to corporate yet? Natalia was right that something was up with this club.
When I’d suggested that Natalia do a bit more in-depth with the managers of the clubs and even get any gossip she could to help our sweeping for rats, a demon who worked there, Stacy, actually approached her on the side. There wasn’t actually a problem with Stacy’s papers.
No, Stacy wanted to transfer clubs and didn’t want Lisa to know that.
That was another red flag.
