Chapter 7
BIANCA
Six hours in, my ass is numb.
Strange fingers in my hair. Strange fingers turning my face toward better light. Hands at my waist, my ankles, my nails, talking over me while they pluck and paint and polish like the body in the chair came without a person inside.
Outside the window, two birds chase each other through the roses. One flies off. The other follows because apparently leaving really is that easy for everyone but me.
Wanting to trade places with birds is becoming my new thing.
A plane passes overhead and I watch until it disappears. Everyone on it is going somewhere. Maybe not somewhere good, but somewhere that’s not here.
I hate them a little.
My hair is long again. Whatever they used to undo Rebecca’s hack job worked fast enough to qualify as dark magic, and now it falls almost to my waist, heavy and familiar against my back.
I won’t pretend I hate that part. I’ve missed my hair with a quiet, stupid ache I would rather eat glass than admit aloud - especially here, where anything I like is liable to end up in a file labeled useful leverage.
I can braid it again.
Five women orbit me. One for nails. One for hair. One who has removed every scrap of body hair I possessed with the focused malice of a tax auditor. One for the spray tan. One painting my face into something soft and expensive.
Check. Check. Check. Check.
The blonde - the dickhead’s assistant - checks their work.
She doesn’t speak to me so much as issue statements in my direction between notes on her tablet.
She takes calls just outside my hearing, returns with the pinched expression of a woman whose natural habitat is beside a clipboard, then examines me for flaws.
Healthy enough. Normal enough. Sane enough to put beneath ballroom lighting.
“You must remember that your actions reflect on Dr. Montgomery.” Her eyes stay on the tablet.
“Any attempt to cause a disruption or leave without prior approval will be flagged immediately. You have other people to consider, so your behavior needs to reflect compliance. He asked me to make it clear that actions have consequences, and you are expected to behave accordingly.”
You have other people to consider.
My pack? My family?
The sentence I’ve been saving for his ballroom - Emmett Montgomery is a rapist - sits loaded behind my teeth. Weller’s shoulder hit the floor hard enough to make him swear when he pushed himself up. I smash the piece of gum I’m chewing between my molars until my jaw aches.
She gives me the threat in the same voice someone might use to explain valet parking, then taps her screen and moves on. I keep my face empty, unwilling to give her even a hint of the despair.
Inside me, something with claws rolls onto its stomach and starts sharpening them.
Behave. Like I’m eight years old and about to embarrass Daddy at a dinner party.
I blow a bubble. It swells until the girl doing my hair pauses, then pops obnoxiously across my lips.
She gave me the gum. And I chew it like an act of civil disobedience.
Ms. Stick-up-her-ass releases a deep breath through her nose.
“They’ve worked miracles today. You hardly look like the girl who arrived this morning.” Her gaze skims my face. “Good bone structure helps.”
“I grew it myself.”
The makeup artist hides a smile by reaching for another brush. Blondie does not.
There are more guards around now. Every one who crosses the lawn looks straight up at me like they hate me personally.
Word travels, apparently.
Owen nearly folded Tommy’s wrist backward in the park.
Weller choked Ellis, which I never saw coming.
Have to admit: very hot. Then Ellis shoved Weller and made him eat shit.
Weller, who prides himself on his appearance and holds himself a little differently than other people.
It rubbed me the wrong fucking way. So I took my anger out on that asshole’s ear.
No one is ever fucking with them again. Unless it’s me. And they like that so I don’t feel bad.
“You and your party will be escorted to the ballroom at seven sharp,” Blondie says.
“Your father expects you to be pleasant. Well-mannered. Quiet. There will be important people in attendance. This is a professional environment, not a reality television program. If you cannot follow instructions, you will spend tomorrow in solitary confinement.”
My father.
What the fucking fuck.
No. We are not normalizing this. Emmett Montgomery is not my father. He will never be my father.
I’m eager to check my phone. Winston has been keeping me updated.
Mom has tried the gate three times. I’m furious with her, but I also keep picturing a guard putting his hands on her, and then all I want is for her to go home and lock the door.
Dad still doesn’t know the truth - somehow, impossibly, he still doesn’t.
Mom can’t save me. I’m terrified that won’t stop her from trying.
One disaster at a time.
First, I get out. Then I deal with every other problem stacked behind it like a leaning tower of fucking pizza.
“During the presentation, you will sit at the front table. You are not expected to speak unless directly addressed. If someone asks a substantive question, you will refer it to Dr. Montgomery. Understood?”
“Understood.”
My voice could flatline a heart monitor.
The presentation.
I don’t know which parts he wants to display. I hate the thought of anyone in that room seeing any of my personal details. A bunch of rich losers blowing smoke up each other’s asses.
My sperm donor takes the cake. He turned me into his demented little dolly.
Maybe I was always predisposed to violence, but I became a murderer because of him.
I lost myself because of him. I lost five years with my family.
With my mates. And I can’t stop circling the ugly truth.
He let her torture them. He knew they were mine and gave them to her anyway.
In some sick way, I think he wanted to punish me because he lost my mother.
I don’t know what he’ll show. I don’t know who he plans to show it to.
All I ever wanted was to be a normal omega with a handsome-as-fuck pack of alphas. I didn’t want any of the rest.
My fingers settle over my knees beneath the robe. The skin there is slick with lotion, but the scars still rise beneath my touch. They couldn’t buff those out.
“Ah. Your dress has arrived.”
I’m finally permitted to stand. Blood comes back into my legs in hot, needling waves. Someone opens the robe and guides my arms out. Beneath it, matching lingerie - lacy, expensive, and selected by a stranger. Awkward.
Nope. Not dwelling on that thought. There are limits to the amount of homicide a girl can schedule for one evening.
As they turn me and lift my hair, I go somewhere better.
Smoke woke me before dawn.
Not enough to trigger panic. Enough to make me sit up, sniff once, and follow it barefoot to the kitchen, where I found all four of them committing crimes against baking.
Freddie stood at the stove in his boxers, golden skin and sleep-mussed hair, trying to rescue something in a saucepan.
Owen attacked a cloud of smoke with a dish towel like it had insulted his mother.
Tristan leaned against the counter and judged everyone with the detached cruelty of a man who had contributed nothing.
Weller - immaculate, terrifying Weller - had cake batter drying on one cheek.
It was, regrettably, precious.
“What is happening?” I asked.
Freddie spun around. His whole face broke open, dimples and all. “Happy birthday, baby. Go back to bed.”
“What is burning?”
“We’re making you a cake,” Weller said, as if the evidence supported that claim. Then he bent and brushed his mouth over mine, soft enough to make my chest hurt. “Happy birthday.”
“No icing, Princess.” Owen lowered the towel, shoulders dropping. “We tried to make some with what we have, but it tasted like shit.”
“It’s fine.” I couldn’t stop staring at the cake.
Its top was several shades too brown. It listed slightly to the left and had collapsed in the middle like it had lost the will to live. Four exhausted men had made it for me at five in the morning, and they filled the kitchen with the dense, impossible scent of us. And cake.
Two of my favorite things.
“It’s perfect. It’s?—”
Tristan came up behind me and folded both arms around my waist. He nosed into my neck, drew a slow breath up the column of my throat, and the shiver went straight through me to my toes.
“Soon,” he murmured, “we’ll get you any cake you want. We’ll keep an entire bakery on retainer. You’ll never go without sweets again.”
“I love the cake.”
I did. God, I did.
It was the first birthday cake anyone had made me in years. I never told Ezra or Megan when my birthday was, because I’d stopped caring. Because caring meant remembering the last birthday that mattered, and that birthday marked the beginning of the end of everything good.
Here’s the part I hate: the cake worked.
It slipped under the wall like smoke.
I stood barefoot in that wrecked kitchen, going soft as butter beside the stove for four men who were still lying to me.
They’re trying to shield me. I still don’t appreciate it.
Yes, maybe I have a temper, but I want to know the moves.
Their secrets are like peas at the bottom of a hundred stacked mattresses. Every time I settle, I feel it.
“Ms. Quinn. Suck in, please.”
A hand brushes my hair aside while another works the zipper up my spine. The dress seals around me inch by inch until breathing becomes a negotiation.
Baby blue.
Not merely close to the dress I wore to the graduation party at Montgomery’s pool five years ago. The exact shade. The same impossible blue from the girl who believed the worst thing that could happen to her was being knocked into the pool on the most important night of her life.
I can put the images side by side. A before and after.
“Lift your chin.”