I start toward my wife again—mywife—but just as I approach her, her eyes go wide, and she stands.
“Mom?” she blurts out.
I turn, following her gaze, and when I catch sight of her mother, I’m hit with a bolt of surprise.
The woman’s posture is rigid, and she’s heading our way.
“Mom?” Casen and Quinn echo, their tones full of shock. “What are you doing here?”
She ignores her sons, her eyes zeroed in on Halle. The room grows quiet, every eye in the place locked on her.
The air goes strangely still, like even the environment knows something isn’t right. We’re all frozen, except Freya, who’s still making a beeline for Halle.
I shake my head free of the cobwebs and move, quickly putting myself between Halle and her mother.
“Move!” Freya demands. Her eyes are bloodshot, her skin waxy as her gaze jerks around the room.
“No.” I put a hand behind my back and give Halle a nudge so she’ll stay where she is.
She grips my arms, peeking around me, but her view is cut off when Laith and Thayer flank me, coming without hesitation to help me protect my girl.
“I need to talk to my bitch of a daughter.”
“Why are you here?Howare you here?”
Freya leans to one side, then the other, trying to see around us, but she can’t see much of Halle. We’ve made sure of that.
“I told you I’d been on my best behavior.” Her lips curl in a cruel smirk. Her smile has the slightly unhinged quality of a person who has nothing left to lose. “I asked around while I was on the inside,” she goes on. “Talked to some people. Got me a lawyer. Cheap one, but he’s decent. He told me it wasn’t random that I got caught. Someone snitched on me, and who else would want to more than you, Halle girl?”
“What?” Halle wraps a hand around my bicep and givesme a shove. I move a few inches, but only because she’s freakishly strong.
Her grip on me tightens. “I didn’t turn you in.”
“Don’t lie!” Freya’s shout echoes through the event space.
“Hey, now. We don’t need any of this fuss,” Thelma says, stepping forward from where she and Cynthia have been standing on the side of the room. “This is getting out of hand.”
Freya turns her way, reaching into her bag. “I’ll show you out of hand.”
In what feels like slow motion, she pulls her hand out and brandishes a gun. It takes a moment to register in my brain, but Thelma is already stepping back, hands in the air.
Thayer inhales sharply beside me. “Fuck.” The fear in his tone has me zeroing in on Salem and the kids over Freya’s shoulder.
“Hey.” I raise my hands. “There’s no need for that. Put the gun away, and we can find somewhere to talk. How does that sound?”
Eyes narrowed, she opens her mouth to respond, but snaps it shut again when Quinn shouts from behind her.
“Mom,” he pleads. “It wasn’t Halle. We did it.”
I wince, silently cursing him for speaking out. She whips around, gun wobbling in her hand, making me think she doesn’t even know how to use the thing. That only makes her more dangerous.
“I don’t believe you,” she snaps.
Dread washes over me. In the space of a heartbeat, the best day of my life has devolved into this.
Casen and Quinn slowly make their way toward us, hands raised. I do everything I can with my eyes to tell them to stop, to stay where they are, but they’re too focused on their mother to notice.
Fuck. Why didn’t I look into Freya more after she threatened Halle? I know better. But naively, I believed she’d be locked up for quite a while longer, and I never could have imagined she’d show up with a gun.
