Everyone else in the room has their phones recording the conversation anyway, and I’d be shocked if Adrian didn’t assume as much, honestly. That’s the downside of working with paranoid people; they’re just paranoid enough to know there’s a reason that they’re always on edge, but never confident in the source of their paranoia, soeverythingis the enemy. The bright side? That means if you direct their attention onto a source that makes them assume that they were right all along, leaving them satisfied in their own superiority, they’re less likely to notice the real source until it’s too late. A smokescreen to conceal their actual downfall.
The look Adrian shoots me would make a lesser person flinch. “What. Do. You. Want?”
Scoffing, I slide my chair back and rise to my feet. “I asked them if you could come over so that we could talk like reasonable adults, but it’s clear now that was a stupid idea. Obviously Mom doesn’t realize what a backstabbing pervert you are, so I don’t know why I bothered trying. This was a waste of time.”
I make it all of three steps before he breaks. “Wait, what did she say?”
Got him.
“What does it matter? You’re clearly not the same person she remembers.”
This time, I nearly make it out of the room before he quietly presses, “Please?”
Hesitating in the doorway, I take what little blip of my conscience that still remains and promptly set it on fire. I wasright,which means I need to lean into those instincts if we want to pull this off. Adrian Ronen hated me from the second he saw my face, one that looks so similar to my mother’s that he was confident in telling my mom’s mates about me without any other facts to base the assumption off of. Which means thatherface was seared into his memory even twenty some odd years later. My best guess? He loved her and couldn’t have her, and is either using me to draw her out of the woodwork, or he wants to punish me in her place by throwing me to the same wolves that she managed to escape from.
“Not much. I was giving her the abridged version of what was going on, and she kept avoiding actually answering any of my questions. But when your name came up, her tone shifted and she asked how you were doing, that sort of thing. So I told her the next time I saw you, I’d try to find out since it was clear she wasn’t going to talk about anything else with me.”
Seconds pass, thundering heartbeats and low reverberations from various chests keeping the room from falling into silence as night descends in full force and their other halves press against the surface, wanting out to tear Adrian limb from limb. Yet they behave far better than expected, not forcing the shift. Either the guys are starting to get a handle on how to coexist with their counterparts, or their wolves are starting to settle down now that we’ve proven that they won’t be sealed away again. Whatever the reason, tentative hope flares to life in my chest, and unconsciously, my gaze darts to Reid’s empty seat at our table.
No one moves a muscle, waiting for some sort of signal that will throw the meeting in one direction or the other. Eventually, I’m forced to take a step, and then another. I make it a dozen paces down the hall before his curiosity wins out and Adrian’s chair crashes to the ground as he jumps to his feet. There’s a strangled sound as someone catches him in a chokehold before he can rush after me.
“She’s not even yours!” he shouts, the sound of his struggle with Kaige and Hunter echoing down the hallway. “Why haven’t you killed them like you were supposed to?!” His voice catches with his next grunt of pain. “Just bring her back.”
Closing my eyes, I take three deep breaths before turning on my heel and returning. “And why does it matter to you where I live, Adrian? You hate me. Go about your life and leave me alone; you’ve done enough.”
He meets my hard stare, a storm passing through his eyes and his skin paling further, highlighting the scar on half of his face. And all through it he searches mine for answers that I can’t possibly give, and a part of him knows it. “Because I wish you were never born. You were damned long before Annika tried to carve out my eye during her escape.”
There’s a physical pain where my heart is supposed to be that I metaphorically punch into submission. He’s baiting me, and doing a damn fine job of it too, but I can’t hand him a bargaining chip after this entire meeting was concocted to rip his power away and leave him at our mercy. So as much as I desperately want to demand answers, I remind myself that everything that comes out of his mouth could be a lie twisted to gain the upper hand again, to get inside my head.
“Set me up a meeting with Carter Stonewood, and I won’t go to Malachai about your... extracurricular activities. I imagine Pack Ronen’s alpha won’t appreciate the shame you bring to his legacy, or conspiring behind his back. And I’ll keep my mouth shut when I meet my fathers about the part you played in their mate’s disappearance.”
The guys’ confusion is a physical entity, but they’re wise enough not to voice it, so I take mercy on them. “Because if their reputation is to be believed, if Adrian had tried to stop her, which he clearly did by that scar, yet didn’t succeed, the Slaughters would have killed him for the failure if they’d known. Which means his guard was down for her to get the strike in at all, and if I know Mom, she has no qualms about fighting dirty and manipulating people. So, I’m guessing she used Adrian to get the hell out of dodge, then carjacked him and left him behind. Sound about right, Adrian?”
The pain in his eyes is too raw to fake, so even though he refuses to speak, I tilt my head in understanding. Returning to my seat at the table, I take a deep breath and gesture for Kaige to release the death grip on the guy’s throat.
“I’m sorry. Trust me, I know firsthand what she’s like, so I can sympathize. Hate her all you want; God knows I do. But at least be enough of a damn adult to realize that you’re projecting your issues on me when I haven’t done anything to you. You’re the one that’s been taking shots at me and pretending like its revenge. Hate to break it to you, Adrian, but hurting me isn’t going to hurt her like you seem to think it will. My eighteenth birthday, my present was a five A.M. wake-up call and an empty suitcase. So if you’re going to hate me, at least let it be because I’m blackmailing and using you, not anything to do with my family whose actions I have no control over.”
Low growls have become the soundtrack to my life, so they hardly even register as more than background noise as I wait to see if Adrian’s willing to take the olive branch. Admittedly, it’s a weak-ass one that would break at the slightest increase in pressure, but it’s the thought that counts. I’m not going to cede control for the sake of a story I’d honestly love to hear, but I also don’t have to be a total bitch to the guy that tried to help my mom escape the miserable life she was forced into, sold like a sex slave meant only for wolf-releasing and breeding purposes.
She made me a bitter person, too. I just chose therapy instead of letting her ruin another twenty- six years of my life by being obsessed with a convoluted revenge scheme to get even.
“So, what do you want with Carter Stonewood?” he eventually asks, eyeing me with cautious interest now that he realizes the guys aren’t calling the shots. Kaige and Hunter aren’t even my mates and listened to my silent gestures, so I can imagine the loop it’s throwing him that Slade and Damian are for the most part here for moral support.
“As you’ve so well proven, thereareno actual solutions to our current problems, simply because everybody hates everybody for something someone did in the past. But that asshole never got the beat down he deserved for what he did to Emmy, and it'll make all of us feel better to let off some steam before the next strike comes.”
Adrian’s smile is slow to come, and malicious when it’s fully developed. “Now that’s a plan I can get behind without any extra incentives. You have a deal, Ms.Laroque.”
