“Reassurance, I’d have said,” Knox added. “For some reason, he seems to believe that Jez is on his side.”
“No way.” The words were out of my mouth before I even thought about it.
Jez’s eyes narrowed. “’No way’?” she echoed. “’No way,’ what?”
“I don’t want you within a mile of that slimy little fucker,” I said, my hackles rising at the very idea.
She stepped up to me and very deliberately poked a finger into the center of my chest. Since I was still sitting down, she didn’t have to reach up to do it.
“Let’s get one thing straight,” she said, poking me again for emphasis. “Just because we’re not trying to kill each other anymore, it doesn’t mean you get a say in where I go or what I do. I’m not locked in your attic now.”
And, yeah... I flinched at the reminder.
Good god, was this how it was going to be now, being mated? Suddenly, all the stupid TV romcoms about omegas ruling the nest made a lot more sense.
“Whuz goin’ on?” Gage slurred from the bed.
“Knox is about to do something clever, and we’re fighting about the details,” Jez told him. “Go back to sleep. We’ve got this.”
“Kay,” Gage muttered, his eyes sliding shut again.
I stared at Jez in disbelief.
Knox stepped in before the free-for-all pussy-whipping could continue.
“Heath—I have a twelve-person team on standby to transfer Paolo to the private clinic. I need you to lead it, since having me limping around like an invalid wouldn’t help with the impression I’m trying to make. Jez has already agreed to go with you—”
“And I also promised not to slit Paolo’s throat while no one was looking,” she interrupted. “I might try to make him cry, though.”
“I have no problem with that,” Knox told her. “But maybe wait until he’s in the ambulance. We don’t want to scare him off completely.”
Knox and Jez were...bantering? What the hell?
If I tried to unpack all this, my brain would explode. I made a conscious decision to move past it.
“Paolo’s agreed to testify against Vozzina?” I asked, because if he had, that washuge.
Jez examined her fingernails, which were still cracked and torn after clawing at rubble. “I told him the only way to get out of this mating with his gland intact was to make sure his mate died. Then I asked him how many capital crimes he could prove Lorenzo was behind.”
I continued to stare at her. “Who evenareyou?” I demanded, only half joking.
“Right now, she’s our key to getting Paolo away from the Vozzina pack,” Knox said. “The nurse down the hall said they were about to transfer Gage to the pack room. Let’s get himsituated, and then I’ll let Bud brief you both on the details of the extraction operation. I want that little shithead moved as fast as possible.”
Two hours later, Jez and I were in the back of a car—part of a convoy heading southwest toward Saint Anthony Hospital in North Lawndale.
Every time I so much as drew breath to suggest she stay in the car during the transfer, I received a glare so murderous that I snapped my jaw shut. Eventually, I bowed to the inevitable and changed my approach.
“Why are you so set on this?” I asked. “I get that Knox asked you to do it—”
“He didn’t,” she said shortly. “I offered.”
I frowned at her. “Then why would you voluntarily get anywhere near this little pus-bag, after everything he’s done?”
She didn’t even blink. “Because I want Lorenzo Vozzina dead. And I want Paolo to suffer and be humiliated in the court of public opinion. I can’t get either of those things if Vozzina manages to kill him before he can testify. Also, Paolo wants me there, or else he’ll pitch a fit and maybe back out of the whole thing. So, I’m going.”
It was a completely rational assessment, with only one hole in it.
“You should know that Illinois doesn’t have a death penalty,” I said.
