Chapter 56
FIFTY-SIX
ISAAK
One hour earlier
A bored-looking guard shoves my bagged clothes and belongings at me through the opening on the other side of the bulletproof glass. “Hope you enjoyed your stay,” he says without even looking away from the TV in the corner.
Sarcastic guards. Great. Just what I needed to end the last sixty-four hours of hell. I grab my shit and limp to the changing room off to the side of the office. I already signed all the bail documents, notifying me of my next court date.
I’m still on the line for stalking and kidnapping. Fucking ridiculous. There’s no way they can make the charges stick without Kira as a witness, though. While she might’ve broken my heart with her decision to go back to fucknuts, I can’t see her testifying against me.
As soon as I’m out, I’ll talk to Domhn. I’m not too prideful to beg him for a lawyer, even if it means being indentured to the bastard for the rest of my life to pay him back.
I change out of the jail uniform as fast as I can and back into my civvies. It only manages to make me feel nominally human again. I gotta take a long, and I mean long , shower. Or maybe a bath. The kind with fucking bubbles. But first, a shower.
Or, fuck it, maybe I’ll just get completely drunk. I could always take the tequila in the shower with me. I’ve got some bottom shelf shit in my cupboard that should take me right to blackout, do not pass go.
I get the hell out of there as soon as I’ve shoved my feet in my boots. The door opens and I’m breathing free air again. I suck in a deep lungful even though my battered ribs have me wincing the next second.
“Took you long enough.”
I look up in surprise and see Domhn standing there with his fancy-ass car, with Quinn all but flying at me. She’s in all black, but it’s not her club gear. I barely have time to brace before she’s throwing her arms around me.
I grunt in pain, and she immediately lets go and leans back to look at me. “What the fuck did they do to you in there? Domhn, we’ve got to get him to a hospital.”
“We can’t get him to a hospital!” Moira cries, running up beside her brother and Quinn. “He’s got to stop the wedding!”
“I got fuck all to do with that wedding,” I growl back at Moira.
Moira looks shocked. “But she’s the love of your life.”
I snort, but cut off right before saying as if you’re one to talk . There’s no reason to take out my meanness on her. “She told me to my face she chose that peckerwood over me. That she never loved me.”
“She was bluffing,” Quinn says suddenly, eyes connecting with mine.
“She wasn’t,” I bite out. “I was watching for her tell.”
But Quinn’s dark eyes don’t waver. “She doesn’t have one. I checked her cards that were left on the table at Poker night. She would’ve beaten you if she’d showed her cards. Flush over straight.”
“What?” I bark, confused. “Why would she—?” But then my words cut off, thinking back, and instantly getting it. She’d wanted to play that night. And prove me wrong. That she did have a poker face. But she was so good that unlike a man, she wouldn’t have had to shove it in my face that she’d actually won. If I thought she had a tell, she could manipulate me for many games to come.
Say like, in a game where it mattered.
The question was, why had lying to me two days ago mattered?
Fuck. I clench my fists. Son of a—FUCK! Everything suddenly makes sense. Someone powerful keeping me in jail with no phone call—the fuckhead’s dad was a senator. The guys coming at me in the yard. Then her saying all that shit I didn’t want to believe she meant, but she wasn’t biting her lip, so I thought she?—
Dammit. She always was too smart for her own good. All the while, she was just trying to save me from that little shit.
“Take me there,” I growl. “Now.”
“We can sort it all out later,” Domhn says. “You don’t look like you’re in such good shape, lad.”
I storm toward Domhn’s car and yank the front passenger door open. “Drive.” I ignore the pain radiating through my body as I climb in.
Moira and Quinn are already hopping in the back, and Domhn has no choice but to get in.
“There’s not much time if you want to fix it before the ceremony,” Moira says urgently from behind us.
“Seatbelts,” is all Domhn says, and then, like a good brother in arms, he fucking floors it.