Reaching out instinctively to cover one of his gloved hands with her own, she rasped, “I don’t know much about any of you yet, but I don’t think you should be separated, either. You’re a family. And family helps each other. If I can, I want to help you, too. But first we’ve got to get my man out of jail.”
Eyes wide and white in his striking face, Cesare turned his hand over to hold hers with such a gentle grip, she wondered if he thought even the slightest pressure would break her bones. “You want to be part of Fracture?”
Fracture? God, whoever picked that name had a sick sense of humor.
She shrugged. “Are we about to do some crimes together?”
“Yes,” they answered as one.
Cecilia let out a hoarse chuckle. “Then sure, I’m a member of Fracture. Why not? A family that crimes together stays together, right? That’s how the Amauris do it, anyway.”
Vesta stood up from her seat. “Understood. Do you require a weapon?”
A nervous laugh burst from her lips for all of a second before she remembered. “Um, no,” she mumbled, pulling her hand back to pat the pocket of her puffy jacket. “They didn’t frisk me, so… I brought my own.”
CHAPTER
THIRTY-ONE
“You have ten minutes.”
Atria tossed her long hair over her shoulder. “Fifteen.”
“Princess,” Kazimier sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “I’m breaking so many rules already. Please.”
Patting his chest, she gave him a sympathetic look as she walked toward the interrogation table. “Don’t worry, big guy. We’ll figure this all out. Now please shut the door and go get yourself a coffee. You didn’t sleep at all last night.”
The captain shot Sloane a glare. “And whose fault isthat?”
It was probably his, Sloane decided, but the question sounded like one of the kind that Cecilia often threw at him which she didn’t actually want an answer to, so he kept quiet.
The captain muttered something under his breath before he stepped out and shut the heavy metal door. Silence fell heavily over the room as Atria took her mate’s seat.
Dressed in a flowy outfit and sandals, she looked entirely out of place in the stark interrogation room. No discomfort appeared on her face, however, as she folded her hands together on the table and met his eye.
There’d been some good humor in her when she spoke to the captain, but it seemed to have vanished completely in the timeit took her to sit. Her brown eyes were cool and her expression entirely neutral when she said, “I don’t appreciate how much stress you’ve put my mate through the last few days, Sloane. He’s dealing with enough right now. He didn’t need this.”
Under normal circumstances, he wouldn’t have felt even a twinge of guilt. But the circumstances, such as they were, hadn’t been normal since he laid eyes on Cecilia. If he were in Atria’s shoes…
Sloane supposed he wouldn’t have been happy with him either.
“Any stress my actions caused was unintentional,” he carefully replied.
“I bet you didn’t even think about what this would mean for him, or the team.” Atria’s lips pursed with clear displeasure. In a clipped voice, she continued, “Not only was thisbad,Sloane, it was also incredibly selfish. I thought you were a leader, huh? This isn’t what a leader does.”
Sloane didn’t flinch. That involuntary response had been beaten out of him by the time he was ten years old. But that didn’t mean he was immune to discomfort — and Atria’s censure was very uncomfortable.
“I didn’t have a choice,” he explained, fighting the urge to squirm in his seat.
“Oh, didn’t you? I seem to recall asking you a few days ago if you needed some help, but…” She gestured expansively to the room. “Here we are! You’ve been arrested for kidnapping, my mate hasn’t slept in three days, and I’m pissed because all of this could’ve been avoided if you’d justsaidsomething.”
Sloane gnashed his teeth. “I couldn’t.”
“Why?” In an uncanny mimicry of her mate, Atria sat back in her seat to cross her arms and raise her eyebrows. “Because you knew telling me you wanted to kidnap and abscond with a woman wouldn’t fly with me? Sloane, what were youthinking?”
The urge to confess everything came up as strongly as the urge to vomit, but Sloane swallowed it back. Bending over the table as much as his shackles would allow, he whispered, “You said that I could tell you anything and you’d keep it a secret.”
“That isnotwhat I said,” she challenged. “I said I’d only tell if whatever it was posed a risk to yourself or someone else. If you’d told me you were going to terrorize an innocent schoolteacher, I absolutely would’ve told Kaz.”
