Chapter 8
CHAPTER EIGHT
ERIN
No one speaks for a moment after Isobel says it. Bought. The word needs no translator.
Lucian moves beside me.
I feel him before he touches me, that terrible shift in the air that means violence has found a body to wear. Every man in the room seems to feel it too. Blaze straightens. Rafe’s gaze cuts to Lucian. Bayne’s attention sharpens from lethal amusement into something colder.
Lucian doesn’t reach for Isobel. He reaches for me. His hand closes around the back of my neck, warm and possessive and steady.
I need it. I lean into it before I can stop myself.
Isobel sees that too. Of course she does. I wish she’d stop watching us. I’m glad she is. She needs to know what I am to him. Then, she needs to go home, back to her Ice Palace.
If she’s ice, I’m fire.
Don’t let the shutters hit you on the way out, babe.
“I am going to say this once,” Lucian says. His voice is so calm that the room gets colder. “You will never speak to her that way again,” he threatens. “She’s not a transaction. And she’s no replacement.”
A small part of me thrills. Because the defense comes easily to him. The claim.
The fury. The public warning. It always does. I need to trust that.
Isobel’s gaze flicks to his hand on my neck. “I didn’t call her that. Carlos did.”
“You repeated it.”
“Yes,” she says. “Because she asked me to.”
I should have left her in the snow.
Isobel keeps her eyes on Lucian. “Carlos says things like that. You know why.”
“I don’t, but I’m guessing you’ll enlighten me.” Lucian pulls me to his side, wrapping an arm around my shoulders, pulling me close.
“He knows you’re weak when you’re in love. And—he wants you weak,” she says.
Love.
She wants everyone in this room to know he loved her once.
Loved her first.
Just not best. I hope.
Blaze gives a dark laugh. “Congratulations. You delivered.”
“I survived,” Isobel says.
The room goes quiet again.
Those two words change the shape of her cruelty.
I want to hate her more cleanly than this. Sharp and sure. Instead, the wounded girl in me wants to hear her out. She is making both things difficult.
Rafe tires of the tension in the room. “We need to move on to important things.
Things that matter.”
Blaze says, “Agreed.”
Lucian looks uncertain, like the state of what Isobel thinks of me needs to be resolved first.
“Lucian, let’s move Isobel to the library,” Gregory suggests.
His timing is always perfect. We all need to breathe.
Bayne disappears, returning with men. Isobel leaves with the men, giving us one backward glance as they escort her to the library.
Lucian’s arm stays around my shoulders. He hasn’t told me if I’m going to the library. I assume he will. For now, I lean my head against his shoulder.
He kisses the top of my head.
Cass wheels into the room and I’m happy to see she’s wearing the pale orange loungewear set she loved so much. She’s got the silver jacket over the back of her chair for flair. She fills the room with the scent of a fruit stand.
Like she wanted to use all the gifts at once. We both know how quickly we lose nice things.
Mack follows behind her, Ryan riding piggyback on the huge man.
Cass stares at me with the attention only sisters possess. “Rin,” she says.
“I’m fine.”
Lucian’s grip tightens around my shoulders.
“Yeah,” Cass says. “And I’m doing a tap dance right now.”
That almost gets a laugh out of me.
“Where is she?” Cass asks, both of us knowing full well she’s hoping to catch a glimpse of Isobel now that Mack’s let her out of the room. “Isobel.”
“She’s in the library,” I say, “Who’s Isobel?” Ryan asks. “Is she a bad guy?”
“Yes, very bad,” Cass says while I say, “She’s a visitor,” and Lucian says, “Don’t worry about it, little man.”
Ryan says, “I’m hungry.”
Kids don’t worry long. We laugh. I look at Lucian. “What time is it, anyway?”
“Dinner o’clock,” Ryan answers.
Cass looks from me to Lucian. She sees the color drained from my face and the stony silence in Lucian’s.
“You know, I think Ryan is right. You all look like you could use a break. And a meal.” She snickers to herself.
“And knowing you two bunnies, dinner will follow with,” she holds up air quotes, “Dessert.”
“Shut up, Cass,” I say, then correct myself before Ryan can, “I mean, please stop talking. For a long time.”
“Bunnies,” Ryan says. “What bunnies?”
Lucian says, “Let’s eat.”
“We have to feed her, too,” I say.
“Yeah.” Cass rolls her eyes at me. “I’ll see if we have something expired.”
Blaze and Cass feel the same about Isobel’s arrival and they aren’t quiet about it. I like that. I’ll take any form of loyalty right now, even petty comments.
“I’ll send her food.” I’m not going to starve the waif. “But she eats in the library.”
I don’t think I can stand to watch the perfectly elegant way she eats. Watching me the entire time with those gray-green eyes.
And I know I won’t survive her sitting at the table with our patchwork family.
My empathy has boundaries.
The store has been packed up. The dining room transformed from a meeting room to our gathering space.
Our staff had everything on standby, and soon we’re all in our usual seats, the ones we all claimed our first day here at Red Shutters.
Our inner circle. The meal smells delicious and homey.
No one talks for a minute as we tuck into the good food.
Slowly, the regular chat and joking kick up.
For a bit, it feels like everything is how it should be. Then I remember Ice Barbie haunting our library. I ask someone to send her a plate and a hot tea. And plenty of ice water.
Dinner ends too quickly. Cass and Ryan are escorted to the back bedroom. The others go back to their posts or on to the library.
It’s just Lucian and me. I hold my breath, waiting to see if we’re going to fight.
This time he doesn’t try to lock me in the tower.
Lucian holds my hand like a shield, leading me down the hall to the library. We’re both quiet. He hesitates before the heavy wooden door.
He turns me to face him. His big hands press into my shoulders. “You okay?”
“Yes.” I look away. “I’m fine.”
He cups my chin. I look back up at him.
“The truth,” he says.
“Am I okay?” I smile weakly. “What is okay anymore?”
He kisses my forehead. And the simple, comforting gesture of love is all I need to keep going. I’m the one to open the library door.
Lucian leans down until his mouth is almost at my ear. His breath brushes my skin.
“You sit beside me.”
“Always.”
We settle into the room, all wood and leather and luxury. She sits like a queen at a throne. Perfectly poised.
Her cream-colored coat is folded neatly over the back of her high-back chair. Her matching dress is sleeveless, showing off her slender arms, and made of silk. Her legs are elegantly crossed, her manicured hands neatly folded in her lap, nails painted an elegant pale pink.
She wears a kiss of blush and lipstick, and the rest of her makeup is the kind you can’t tell she’s wearing any. At least a man couldn’t.
She’s taken out her bun. I worry she’s done it for him. A curtain of her blonde hair hangs flawlessly over her right shoulder.
Did Lucian once tell her he likes it when she wears her hair down?
I scoot my chair closer to Lucian’s. He doesn’t wrap a comforting arm around my shoulders. But his arm presses against mine.
I’ll take it.
The interrogation begins.
“What did Carlos keep you alive for?” Rafe asks after seeing that Lucian is clearly not speaking.
Isobel’s gaze stays on Lucian. Steady. With a false sense of confidence. “We were working together.”
The words settle over the room like ash.
No one breathes. No one speaks.
She just confirmed she had a part in killing Lucian’s men.
And almost killed Lucian.
Gregory says what we already know but want her to confirm. “The video was you leaving the warehouse that day.”
“Yes,” she says.
Gregory, the least violent of all of us, looks down at the table as if he wishes he wasn’t.
I want to kill her myself. Lucian sits beside me. I reach for his hand, squeezing it hard enough to hurt.
He doesn’t move.
“I didn’t know what his plans were that day,” her voice shakes, “At least not all of them.”
My words do. Sharp and swift. “Did you ever really love him?”
“Erin. Don’t.” He pulls his hand from mine.
“No.” A laugh escapes me. Not funny. Choked. “She stayed with a man who tried to kill you, Lucian. Do you get that? Whatever you felt for her, it ended with death and destruction and her running off with Carlos.”
His jaw flexes.
“I was with Carlos, first,” she says, looking at me instead of Lucian. “Lucian stole me from him. The first betrayal belonged to Lucian.”
I don’t want this.
Isobel notices the faint shift in my posture.
“At least, that’s how Carlos saw it,” she quickly adds. She smooths a hand over her silk-covered thigh, ironing out wrinkles that aren’t there. “I didn’t, of course.”
Lucian’s face pales. My stomach ties in knots.
She looks right at me then. “I loved Lucian. I still do.”
And the room starts to go dark, circles closing in around my vision. A loud roar fills my eardrums even though no one makes a sound.
And I see my future floating away like smoke.
“Excuse me.” I stand on shaky knees, running from the room.