Out of nowhere, her joy vanished in the blink of an eye and was replaced by something so dark I couldn’t even characterize it other than to say it drained the life out of her.
She didn’t just stop dancing as if to catch her breath; it was the whole aura around her that changed. And when she turned, seeking me out, the sheer terror in her eyes—I’d never felt fear so clearly transferred between two people without a spoken word before.
Everything in my path was a blur as I raced down the stairs and across the club. The girls were crowded around Lily, but as I approached, I could see their comforting touches were anything but calming. It made me see red toward whoever in her past had ever dared to make her feel this way.
I whipped off my suit jacket and did my best to tie it around her waist, since I knew picking her up and carrying her out of the club would have further exposed her and drawn more attention. I wedged my arm under her legs and wrapped my other around her back, picking her up off the floor and into my embrace.
Lily’s body trembled at first before the tension that was so deeply coiled in her posture began to unravel and surrender to what I hoped was the realization that she was in the safety of my arms.
Getting back to the hotel was like acting on autopilot. I followed Cameron and Jenna’s security detail as we were ushered out of the club and straight into a waiting limousine. My brother, Arizona, Boden, and Lakelyn did their best to provide a protective shield, but it felt like a circus of activity, with flashing lights and hushed whispers nearly knocking me off balance.
No one spoke on the short ride back to the hotel, but I felt the weight of their worry and concern, loud and clear.
The whispers ghosting over me as we exited the club couldn’t be right. I had to have misheard, or the voices murmuring had to be wrong. It had to be a case of mistaken identity because the girl I knew would never do what they suggested.
My chest was heavy with guilt as I let my eyes drift down to her resting figure tucked under the blankets while I internally kicked myself for ever leaving her side in the club in the first place.
While the memory of the fear that flanked her expression, tangled with the distress etched so brutally in the creases around her eyes, and tensed her posture still haunted me, it had since been replaced by a look of calm.
Sure, her mascara had left black streaks down her cheeks, the remnants of her anguish still visible, but she looked at peace, as if her mind had taken her to a place of protection. It was all I wanted for her: a quiet strength that could settle her anxiety and help her heal. Help protect and keep her from reliving another moment in the eye of the storm.
Climbing off the bed with my phone in hand, I slipped quietly out of the room and into the main living space of the penthouse. I didn’t want to leave Lily, but I needed a minute to curb the rage that was starting to bubble over, and I didn’t want her to pick up on my energy. What I hadn’t expected was to find Cameron on the couch, furiously typing away on his computer, still in his dress pants with his white dress shirt unbuttoned and left hanging open.
I knew I should have let him be, since he was clearly working on something that must have been super imperative,given the early morning hour, but that didn’t stop me from plopping myself down on one of the other couches.
“How’s she doing?” Cameron asked without looking up from his laptop.
“Sleeping peacefully, thankfully.” I sighed with relief.
“That’s good. Panic attacks can be draining as fuck.”
“I just wish . . .” My words trailed off as every wish I had overlapped and tangled together in a web I couldn’t decipher.
“I get it.” His eyes met mine with silent understanding. “Jenna’s been through some unimaginably dark stuff, and as much as I’d give away everything I have to fix the past trauma and erase it, I can’t. It’s the most helpless feeling in the world.”
“So I’m learning.”
“Some advice, if you’re open to it?” I leaned forward and rested my elbows on my knees. “I’m guessing in your profession, you’ve had extensive training on PTSD?”
I nodded.
“It might not hurt to take a refresher, because when it affects someone you love, it’s got a different lens. Also, it’s important to listen, don’t rush to solve or fix the problem, just show up and sit in that space of pain with her, and reassure her that you can handle the past and love her because of it. What Lily’s experienced is one of the worst violations a woman can experience, and the lasting psychological effects?—”
“Wait.” I sat up straight. “Are you saying you know what happened to her?”
“I didn’t at first.” He held his hands up in defense. “I heard something as we were leaving the club and followed that lead.”
“Was she—?” Bile churned in my throat as the word I couldn’t bring myself to say out loud weighed heavily in the air between us.
“Not that I’m aware of, but?—”
“Just tell me, Cameron. Please . . . I don’t know what I’m dealing with here.” Every second that ticked by without knowing what I was facing stretched like an eternity.
“It’s not my place, but what I can tell you, and please pass the message along to Lily as well, is that while I can’t do anything about the people who have seen the material, I can tell you that I’ve wiped it from both the surface and dark web and indexed any caches. Anyone attempting to access the files, whether on their phone, computer, external drive, USB drive, or cloud backups, will trigger a fail-safe. Their device will be hit with malware that bricks it completely. The same goes for anyone who tries to upload or redistribute any new material.”
“What the fuck.” I slumped back into the couch cushions, with my hands on my head, trying to process everything Cameron had just said and all the technical jargon.
How could someone wipe stuff off the internet so quickly? Only a person with elite-level clearance and or covert-ops precision could ever pull something of that magnitude off.
