He expelled a strong burst of air, lowering his head and pressing his forehead to my neck. “I’m sorry.” He smoothed a hand down my side again, sitting up and helping to cover me.

  I was quivering but moved my head up and down. I croaked, motioning, “Go. See what’s wrong with Matt.”

  He frowned. “You sure?”

  Another motion up and down. “Yeah.” My voice was hoarse. “Leave the guards. They’ll bring me down. I just need a second.” I might’ve needed more than a second.

  “Okay.” He leaned in, kissing me before pushing himself up. “Don’t take too long. If something’s wrong, we’ll have to go before press finds out.”

  “Okay.” My hand was weak as I tried to smooth out my hair.

  Kash stopped, turned back. He took in the sight of me and grinned. That grin was everything. It held so much promise, but also fun. We’d been fooling around up here like high school kids. Maybe doing more than what we should have at that age, but it was still fun. It was a respite from all the other worries, and I wanted more. I just wanted more. That’s all I was feeling and thinking then, and when I gave him an answering grin, he turned and headed out.

  Promise. I saw it in his eyes, and I couldn’t wait to hold him to it.

  I was excited to head back to his place tonight.

  Standing, I found a small bathroom off the entryway, and after using it, I tried to smooth out my appearance. I looked totally and completely laid.

  I laughed softly to myself, trying to make my dress look normal again, and I headed out.

  Three guards waited for me, and like the trek before, all eyes were on us as we joined the rest of the club. I ducked my head down to avoid seeing whoever was there. I had seen a few nasty looks before and I didn’t want to see them again. I didn’t want to feel nasty or to let their problems take away what had just happened upstairs.

  It was beautiful up there.

  It was special, important.

  I was still telling myself that when suddenly I heard a shout. Someone screamed.

  People began running.

  The guards closed in around me.

  A woman sprinted past us, and she was hip-checked out of the way. She would’ve hit me just from her mad dash to the front of the club.

  The front of the club …

  This wasn’t good.

  Matt. Kash.

  Where were they?

  I started picking up my pace, then I was running as well. The guards moved with me, but they slowed the whole group down. People were folding in around us. They didn’t care about me, they cared about whatever was happening in the front.

  I felt my phone buzzing.

  Pulling it out, I saw it was Kash.

  I answered, shouting, “Where are you?”

  The shouts and screams from inside the club deafened me. I couldn’t hear him, just barely making out a shout. Then he hung up.

  We were still trying to push our way out. I grabbed for a guard. “Matt and Kash. Where are they?”

  He didn’t answer, just took my arm and helped me to keep going ahead.

  My phone buzzed again. Kash.

  Outside. Now.

  I showed the guard my phone and he nodded. He already knew, touching his earpiece.

  Kash let me know, making sure I was in the loop, but he must’ve been in communication with the security team. As we got closer, everyone was trying to pile out.

  If enough people started panicking, there’d be shoving. Stampeding could happen.

  It was like a bottleneck effect. Only a few would get out unharmed.

  The guards must have had the same thought, because suddenly we were changing directions.

  A worker was waving us out, the same staff member who had helped Kash and me leave through the back door last time. Her eyes were panicked, but she was trying to keep it together. Holding a door open, she motioned us in, and once we got past the door, the hallway was empty. We could hear more shouting from the back kitchen area.

  “What’s happening?”

  She was hurrying down the hallway, but spoke over her shoulder. “We’re not sure. Matt Francis collapsed and began convulsing. We have an ambulance en route. Mr. Colello is with him.”

  “But that wouldn’t have started the rush out there.”

  A turn.

  Another turn.

  She said, as she pushed through a side door, “There were popping sounds. Could’ve been gunfire or fireworks. We don’t know. That’s what set everyone off. Mr. Francis’s ambulance…” She trailed off, stepping out into an alley.

  We all saw the flashing red and white lights together.

  My heart clenched up. Matt. Matt was in trouble.

  I started for the ambulance.

  A guard was with me. “Miss Hayes, no.”

  Yes, I know. It wasn’t safe.

  Fuck being safe.

  My brother was hurting.

  “I’m going.” I shoved past them and began running.

  “What—what’s going on?” the staff member asked.

  I heard the guards running behind me, and I pushed to go faster. I just had to get to the ambulance before they got me, but they were there. I barely got a few feet away. One touched my arm, and I whirled around. “No! I mean it. No! I’m going to that ambulance and I will scream bloody murder if you don’t let me.”

  They stared at me. One clipped his head. “Stay in the circle.”

  I nodded back. Decision made. We were going.

  They started first, and I caught sight of the staff member. She was coming with us. I paused. “What are you doing?”

  She hesitated. “Mr. Colello told me to take care of you.”

  I frowned.

  But then we were heading to the main street again. Time for questions would have to be later—and once we got there, I was thinking it’d be much, much later.

  Paparazzi were lined up on the streets.

  Flashes of light went off as we rounded the alley corner. The ambulance was sitting in front of the club. The doors were open, people were streaming out. And in the middle of all of that, a stretcher was being loaded up.

  “Matt!” I began running again.

  Kash was off to the side, talking to a cop. His head snapped up at my shout, and a storm quickly clouded in. He was heading to cut me off, a hand up. I started before he even could. “I don’t care. I have to make sure Matt is okay.” I dodged around him, but it wasn’t Matt on the stretcher.

  “What?” I was confused.

  A girl stared back at me, oxygen on her and a sheet covering her. She was sweating, tears on her face, and pale. Really pale. She was terrified. A guy was next to her, holding her hand, and at that moment the back door was shut. The paramedic walked to get in the front seat, and they pulled away.

  “Where’s Matt?”

  Kash had my arm in his hand. He ignored me, speaking to the guard over my head. “You were supposed to take her back.”

  “She wouldn’t cooperate.”

  Kash’s hand tightened on my arm, a reflex to that answer. He growled, “You’re supposed to make her.” His eyes cut to the staff member. “What are you doing here?”

  “I’m not on duty tonight. I came in because you asked.” She motioned to me. “You said to watch her for you.”

  His jaw clenched.

  He nodded to the guard. “Call for the car.” He said nothing to me, drawing me away from the crowd and back to the alley. It wasn’t empty anymore. Others had followed us, and they were streaming out, sprinting past us. Some were bloodied. Most sweating. Crying.

  But all were scared.

  Kash’s hand slid down, catching mine, and he tugged me away. We went down another block and turned into a second alley. This one was empty. The guards were on their phones. All of them. The female staff member was still with us, and Kash turned to scowl at me.

  “I don’t care, okay?” I bristled, ready for a fight. “They said Matt was in trouble, then the riot started. I’m already worried about my mom. I’ve already lost enough. Not…” I quieted, a tear falling. “Not Matt too. Not him too.”

  His eyes gentled, but he still didn’t talk.

  A guard came over. “Car’s coming down this back alley. Streets blocked off up there. The cops were quick to respond. They’re trying to contain the crowd.”

  Kash let out a curse, running a hand down his face. “This was a nightmare. Was that gunfire we heard?”

  The guard was back on the phone, then shook his head. “They don’t know yet.”

  The staff member approached, looking up from her phone. “Some workers found empty firework shells in the mens’ bathroom, in the basement. That’s probably what it was.”

  “Timing’s suspect.” That was Kash.

  He wasn’t happy. He wasn’t happy at all.

  But a car was coming down the alley, an SUV to be exact, and we moved aside as it stopped before us. Kash opened the back door. I started to get in, but Kash held me back. He motioned to the girl. “Get in, Torie. You’re with us then.”

  He urged me in after, and followed to slide next to me.

  Torie? I glanced at her.

  As if reading my mind, she flashed me a grin. “Hi.”

  Okay. “I’m Bailey.”

  Another grin from her. “I know. I work at Naveah. Kash warned me a girl might be coming in with Matt Francis. Asked me to watch out for you, so I did.”

  “You told Kash we were at the club that night?”

  “I did, but he already knew.” Her eyes trailed past me. “I’m assuming your security notified him almost immediately.”

  Kash didn’t respond to the slightly veiled question. He was on his phone.

  His phone began ringing and he grunted into it. “Can you contain it?” Silence. He was listening. “I don’t know.… I said, I don’t know. I stayed back for her.” Pause. “We’re going now.… Yes. She is too.” Another beat of silence.

  That jaw clenching again. It was sexy, but scary in this moment.

  His eyes closed. He took in some air, then his voice dipped low—eerily low, but still sexily low. “If you want to start telling me how to keep your daughter safe, you and I are going to have a whole new level of problems.” He was quiet. “You got that?” He didn’t wait, saying right away, “We’re two minutes away. You want to know how she is, you ask her yourself. You want to know how your son is, you come ask him yourself.” And he hung up, dropping the phone in his lap and turning to look out the window.

  I was stunned.

  That was Peter on the phone. Peter asking about me, then asking again. They got into a spat. Over me. Me. His daughter.

  I was getting squeezed on the inside again. Pressure was pushing in from all angles.

  “What needs to be contained?”

  Kash’s shoulders lifted up, then down, before he said, so quietly, such a contrast from the anger that was literally spewing from him, “Press got your name. Word’s out.” And then, “They know you’re Peter Francis’s daughter.”

  FORTY-FOUR

  Camille Story was the one who broke the news.

  And that was after I had hacked her. She had a whole offline file of everything. Smart. And annoying. But it almost didn’t matter, because that night all that paparazzi got pictures of me standing by the ambulance, Kash’s hand in mine. Peter’s program to delete Kash’s picture crashed. It was overloaded that night, so when Kash said word was out, word really was out.

  On him.

  As I sat in the waiting lounge, while Matt was being worked on by the hospital, I was seeing what I could do. And after an hour I had to come to the conclusion that it wasn’t much. I only had my phone with me, and Kash’s picture was everywhere.

  He was the big story. Not me.

  Press already knew about his image. There’d been articles posted about Kash, but I had to guess that it wasn’t as much as they wanted to publish. Writing an article on Calhoun Bastian’s grandson would’ve made me fear for my life, too. I wouldn’t have had the nerve to write the story, so I almost had to give respect to the ones who were reporting on him.

  I had to assume they already knew who Kash was, since someone having a picture that doesn’t load for years is kinda big news. It makes you wonder who the hell that guy was. Now the world knew, and after the first few stories were posted, the rate of more and more posting was astonishing. Calhoun Bastian couldn’t go after all of them. Safety in numbers, that sort of thing.

  So, in a way, I was almost not news at all.

  My boyfriend couldn’t say the same.

  He was news. He was huge, big news. And we were already seeing the result of the news spreading like wildfire. We’d been asked to leave the main general lounge right away, not because of Kash but because of all the guards. We were getting enough attention from that, but then we were asked, twenty minutes ago, to leave the second private waiting lobby for a third, way more private one.

  I was pretty sure we were in the doctors’ lounge.

  Thirty minutes into our wait, when we were still in the second lobby, Peter and Quinn had arrived. The atmosphere in the hospital switched again. They came in dressed to the nines. Quinn was wearing a formal dress, with sparkling cleavage and diamond earrings. Her hair was pulled up in a twisted side bun, more diamonds added among the strands for decoration. Peter was in a tuxedo, shiny black shoes, and was even wearing a tailcoat.

  There’d been a nervous excitement that had slowly built and built, but put this couple on the scene and I wasn’t surprised when a guy walking with them screamed “hospital administrator” to me.

  Shit was serious now.

  The nurses kept stopping in, checking on us, their eyes going to Kash and staying. I was pretty sure all the nurses actually working on Matt weren’t the ones coming to see how we were doing. That was all extra. And I knew this because those nurses were working. These weren’t.

  Waiting on Chrissy had meant that the hospital was almost a second home to me, growing up. I knew how the staff and shifts worked there. But all that stopped once the administrator was there. Nurses came in, saw him, saw the reproach in his gaze, and stopped coming in.

  When Peter and Quinn entered the waiting room, Kash didn’t go over to them. He remained in the seat next to mine.

  I was surprised at that.

  Both Peter and Quinn noticed, too, and Quinn’s eyebrows furrowed a small bit. Peter’s face was kept blank, his eyes darting to me as if reassuring himself, then he focused on what the administrator was saying.

  It was another twenty minutes after their arrival, after they were given coffee and anything else they wanted, when the doctor breezed in through the door.

  We all moved.

  “We were able to diagnose the poison your son ingested.”

  “Poison!” Quinn sucked in her breath.

  Kash stepped back, a harsh hiss from him.

  Peter and Quinn both frowned at him.

  The doctor frowned at them frowning at him and kept on, “It was touch-and-go for a while, but once we were able to identify the poison, we administered an antidote. Your son has since stabilized. We have an IV drip giving him saline, and extra oxygen. We want to make sure all his body functions and organs don’t have any lasting damage, but the last set of vitals we got were good. They were very good. We want to monitor Matt for another night, make sure everything is fine. We’ll have him moved to a more secure floor, too.”

  “Thank you, Doctor,” Quinn said. “Can we see him?”

  “He’s sleeping, but once we have him in the room, a nurse will come to get you guys.”

  Peter was staring right at Kash, who was on his phone and moving away from the group. He was speaking in a low voice, one that he was using on purpose so none of us could hear what he was doing.

  He was making plans. Without us.

  I didn’t like it. Someone had hurt my brother. I wanted in on the revenge, but that was ludicrous, right? Kash would handle it—that’s what he did.

  Then Peter cleared his throat.

  He ignored the doctor, speaking over another question Quinn was asking, and spoke right to Kash. “You’re in the spotlight, Kash.”

  Kash stiffened, looking back. He spoke into the phone: “I’ll call you back. Move on my orders until you hear from me.”

  He put the phone in his pocket and raised his head up, looking almost defiant. There was a big “fuck off” look in Kash’s eyes, though. He wasn’t being defiant. He was furious. He was being Kash. This was what he did.

  “It was Bonham. He was picked up on the club’s security feeds, leaving a few minutes before Matt collapsed.”

  Quinn gasped.

  Peter’s frown deepened. “Bonham? But—”

  “The wife,” Kash grated out. His glance skimmed to Quinn before returning to Peter. “Revenge.”

  “Oh dear Lord. Are you serious?”

  “What?” Quinn was looking between the two. “What’s going on?”

  Both men ignored her.

  Peter was saying, “That’s insane. He would’ve known the enemy that I’d be for him.”

  “The man’s at the end of his run. He knows it. The wife was the last straw.” Kash’s eyes narrowed. “He was desperate and not thinking.”

  “Jesus.” Peter turned away, a hand going to his forehead. He was thinking. “His wife now? His home? There are children—”

  Kash cut in. “Already called the police. They have units checking the home.”

  “They had a cabin. I had a meeting set up at the end of the week with Bonham to discuss the board he’s still on. He asked to push it back. Said he would be up north at a cabin till then.”

  Kash looked at me, and then I got it.

  I could do this. I could help this way.

  Taking my phone out, I was already looking. “I’ll get the address.”

  “Here.”

  An iPad was held out to me.

  It took a second to put two and two together. The hand holding it out to me was … my father’s. He waved it again. “You can work faster on this than your phone.”

  He was right.

  I snatched it up, moving to the chairs. I’d process that later. My dad giving me his iPad, having it at the ready, letting me do my thing.

  It wasn’t a computer, but I got the address within minutes