“Do you know that Wes attacked Pride during lunchtime and tried to get out?”
Fangs slowly turned to face me. “That would explain why the boy is bloodied up and on the couch.”
I nodded. “Who switched him into handcuffs, anyway? I thought we had gotten rid of all of them once we started doing zip ties.”
Fangs’ eye twitched. “One thing at a time.”
I shrugged. “Either way, Pride would be dead if Viper hadn’t intervened, so you can only blame a man for keeping a lid on things for so long. His girl’s been psychologically tortured by this man, and now he tries to escape?”
Fangs stalked toward me. “And why wasn’t I notified the second he attacked someone?”
“Been a bit busy cleaning up the mess,” Viper said flatly.
Fangs shot a look over his shoulder, but I was with Viper on that one. “We were cleaning things up. This legitimately just happened. I mean, just within the span of the past fifteen or so minutes. You weren’t intentionally left out of the loop.”
Our president’s glare came back to me. “Yeah, really looks like you’re taking care of it.”
Viper scoffed. “Why can’t we just kill the bitch and be done with it?”
Fangs spat back. “Because we need him for leverage. We need him to get to Bullet since no one seems to know where the hell that motherfucker actually is.”
Viper shook his head and stormed toward the door. “Whatever. Not like you’re going to do what we agree on in church anyway.”
“Hey!” Fangs exclaimed.
I stepped in front of our president before things got worse. “Look, he’s just worried about his girl. You can’t fault him for that, especially when we were supposed to be out of these trenches months ago.”
He gnashed his teeth at me and pointed his finger in my face. “What in the absolute fuck were the two of you thinking?”
“Well, I was thinking that I agree with Viper. We need to know more, and we need to know it fast.”
“Then, do it without killing the only lifeline we’ve got to settling this bullshit.”
“If you’ll dismiss me, I’ll spend my afternoon deep-diving into the accounts on his cell phone. I should have more answers for you once I’m done.”
Fangs pointed to the door. “Get the fuck out of my face and don’t come back to talk to me until you know where the money is coming from, going to, and who’s responsible for it. It’s only a matter of time before that knucklehead realizes they’re financially cut off. We’re officially on a timestamp. Now, get out of my fucking face.”
I couldn’t get out of that room quickly enough, and as I soared up the stairs toward the media room, Wes’s words bounced around in my mind. Did he really mean it when he said that no one we cared about was safe? Because if he was being serious, that mean Rose was in a hell of a lot of trouble she knew nothing about.
And she had just tied herself to me with a fake fucking engagement.
10
ROSE
I wasn’t sure how long I stared at that message. I wasn’t sure how much time had passed between receiving that text from Blake and calling Caleb.
But when I heard his voice in my ear, it snapped me out of my trance.
“Rose? Can you hear me?”
I cleared my throat. “Sorry. Yeah, I can—I can hear you.”
He shuffled around. “What’s going on? Talk to me. Something has obviously happened.”
I drew in a curt breath. “I’m going to send you a screenshot of a text that I got from Blake. It won’t say his name, though. He’s got a nickname in my phone.”
“Shoot it to me.”
