Valentine moves fast like a whip and grips her face in one of his hands, bending down and staring at her. Maybe glaring is more accurate. The tension in his hold has me about to step up and challenge him to be gentler, more considerate, but Layne drops a hand behind her back, asking me to trust.
She keeps smiling softly at him, perfuming the air with her chemically altered scent, as he peers deeper into her soul.
Valentine is a ball of tension. His face is lined with it, but he’s trying to hold it together for her. He stays scarily still and silent as he continues staring into her eyes, but thankfully, his eyes eventually close.
He takes a small step backward as the sound of his anger and frustration rumbles again, like thunder in a retreating storm. Much like the first rumblings in a storm, once he makes the ominous sound, the noises don’t stop.
But Layne doesn’t let him retreat far away. She steps into his space and encourages him with her sweet presence to let everything out. He won’t. Valentine has more control than that, but you can see a part of him wants to. His throat bobs as he works through everything inside his head and heart.
Each time he makes another sound, she steps in closer to him, until her head is against his chest and his hands cradle her head to hold her there.
And now I can hear his words over his anger. “What the hell happened?”
“You found me,” Layne says softly. He has no choice but to lean down and focus really hard to hear her as she continues to speak. “When it’s me and you, and our pack is safe and the dogs are fed, I will tell you play-by-play everything that happened, but first, I need you for something else.”
“What?” His question is snapped like a cracking whip. His impatience cuts.
Not using her words, Layne wraps her hands behind his neck, pulls him down, and buries her nose against the side of his throat, right over his scent gland. She breathes only the scent of her Alpha.
He thaws. Of course, he does. She reaches through his violent mood, and in one move, she gives his very dominant side the one thing it needs—her.
Everything about him lessens, including the atmosphere around us. Valentine’s hands stay gentle, his fingers moving slowly through her hair, and each second they stay intertwined in each other, he returns from the bullshit in his head to being with us. Layne takes another inhale of his scent, and her knees nearly give out. He responds with a strong hold around her, but his scent leaks of his relief, which also reaches her. He pushes a hand under her chin, so he can see into her eyes, and as he drops his forehead to hers for them to share one more fortifying breath together, they return to us as themselves.
Layne looks at each of us, her eyes full of sparkle again, and then she opens her mouth. “Diego has my engagement ring. I shot Santiago. There’s a bag in the van full of money. And there’s a whole lot more bullshit waiting for us in the hangar.”
Dante laughs while Valentine snaps.
“Excuse me,” he barks.
And Layne leans against him, ignoring his outburst and Dante’s laughter. “Right? Talk about a day. Honestly, you couldn’t script this shit.”
“Wind it back, wife,” Valentine snarls, glaring down at her.
Not her, but the fuckery she just explained. She gives him a quick kiss on his chest before taking a couple of steps away, so she can see each of us better.
“Oh,” she says, talking with a fair amount of sass, “and I met Ronin. He’s a delight, isn’t he?”
“How?” Valentine asks, his eyes lasering.
“Well.” She spins around and starts to look upward, searching until she finds what she wants. She backs into Valentine and grabs his hand, using it to point. “See that? That’s the private jet I was supposed to be put on. The Russians are involved, but I killed the one who was meant to get me on the plane, I think. I have no idea how Ronin and Santiago are involved, and how they ended up here, but they saved me. I think?”
Dante shakes his head, trying to keep up, but he also takes an obvious step closer, wanting her full attention for a minute. “Back it up, babe. Diego?”
She lets go of Valentine’s hand and walks straight into Dante’s arms, wiggling her way in until his arm is over her shoulders. “Right? Now, let me see if I can remember his exact send-off. I mean, it was great, very theatrical, full of threat too.” She looks away again, thinking hard before her mouth twists into a scowl and her mood drops to near glacial. “Oh, now I remember… ‘I hope he fucking destroys you painfully. Daily. Until you are nothing but a husk’ were the exact words he used. I’m putting money on him being a rat. He probably sold out my location out to Rocco.”
I hiss under my breath as everything falls into place. “Fuck. He’s the one leading the Bratva here.”
Valentine grunts. But the inflection clearly indicates he wants a more detailed response than the one I provided.
“He’s playing both sides. Even the timing makes sense. Diego is the one who started all the bullshit about the Irish fucking us over. After what our wife just said, I suspect Diego’s been pushing Vitale to use the Russian ports because he’s already got an alliance going with them. He and Rosa must have been returning from a meeting with the Bratva when they ran into Layne. It was pure fucking coincidence, but it also gave them an even bigger smokescreen to hide behind after meeting her.”
Dante gives her one last kiss before he takes a step away, needing the space to think. Same as Valentine, they both start pacing, and at the same time, a new wave of violence settles over their matching features.
Valentine buries his hands in his suit pants, thinking out loud and bouncing the theory for accuracy. “He’ll be pissing in Vitale’s ear that she was a rat, bait to get into our family and she’s now run off, taking our family secrets with her. As far as Diego knows, our wife is on a plane right this minute, and his treachery hasn’t been discovered.”
“Fucking bingo. He’s going to be so fucked up by the time we’re finished with him, he’ll wish he was fucking dead,” Dante snaps coldly.
Unintentionally, I bark out a laugh. But what he said was pointless. It’s a given in my mind, but still, I say it out loud for everyone, in case they need reminding. “You’re not fucking wrong. And not because he’s been dealing with our enemy, but because of what he did to Layne.”
