SCARLET
A couple of hours later, we were all sitting in the living room with Niko and Finn. A couple of other guys were down in the basement, cleaning up the mess Seb had made of Gary.
“Sebastian was too distracted to ask all the questions and get the answers we needed,” Elliot said in his normal optimistic tone.
“Enough with the blaming,” I told him. “It’s hard to focus with this,” I said, gesturing to myself, “standing in the room with you.”
That earned me a reluctant smile from Elliot and laughs from the other guys. I glanced around and saw Finn staring at Kenna. I cleared my throat, and he looked over at me. With a slow shake of my head, his eyes went a bit wide before he made a show of not looking in her direction anymore.
“All we know is that they want her out of the way,” Seb said. “That’s all we need to know.”
“They don’t just want me out of the way,” I told them, sticking my cold feet under Tristan’s thighs. It was late, after midnight, seeing as how they had to drive here from London, and Kenna was yawning. “They want me dead.”
“It would be nice to know why,” Elliot mumbled. I shot him the bird.
“The obvious answer is that they want to make sure I won’t make any type of claim to their precious throne,” I said as I rolled my eyes. “Which…” I trailed off, not wanting to admit what I was about to say. But it was about time I started thinking with a critical mind instead of with whatever I had left of a heart.
“What, poppet?” Tristan asked, leaning over and taking a strand of my hair to play with.
“It could possibly mean that Motshan isn’t on my side. Or, at least, that maybe he doesn’t know there’s a side to pick.”
“Not ta be the downer, here,” Niko said, chiming in with his Irish accent. I saw Kenna’s ears prick up like a damn dog. “I highly doubt your family hasn’t informed him there are sides ta pick. But—” He paused. “—that doesn’t mean he has all the information. I’m sure they’ve told him their incredibly biased version,” he told me in a reassuring tone.
“My thoughts exactly,” Tristan said, running his thumb over my cheek. “That doesn’t mean there’s no hope for him. It just means we have to get him on our side.”
“So we bring him here,” I said. “We get a message to him and bring him here. Niko?” I asked, looking to him for support.
“Oh, hell no,” Elliot chimed in first. “That is a disaster waiting to fucking happen. You tell him to meet you here, he brings the fucking army with him. No chance in hell.”
“Why does that even matter at this point? Gary has been here for how long, and you really don’t think he had already reported back where we were? Don’t be daft,” I scoffed. “If they wanted to get here, they could.”
“She’s got a point,” Finn said, still making obvious efforts to not look at Kenna. She seemed to find it funny, scooting closer to him and doing little things to try and get his eyes back on her. “If they wanted to ambush, they’d ambush.”
“And it might be smarter to get ahead of it,” Seb said, leaning forward so that he could see everyone. “They’re going to realize pretty quickly that something is wrong when dear old Gary doesn’t check in. They may already be suspicious. They won’t have heard from him in hours.”
“Good point,” Niko said. “Want me to give Simon a ring? Get him to start working on this?”
“Thank you, Niko,” I said to him as he got the nod from Tristan and stood to make his call outside.
“You’re still putting her directly in the line of fire,” Elliot said.
“If you’re so concerned about her well-being in this situation, Man Bun,” Kenna jumped in, “then you be the one to protect her. Don’t leave her side, and make sure she’s okay. Stop fighting something that is clearly going to happen, and just make sure it doesn’t go wrong.”
“What Kenneth said,” Seb agreed. Kenna leaned up and smacked him upside the head. “Ouch, K-Dawg! Not nice,” he admonished with a smile, rubbing the back of his head.
“Kenna,” I said, grabbing her attention. “Do you want to go home? You don’t need to be here for this. This isn’t your world, and it definitely isn’t your fight.” What I really wanted to do was ship her back to London whether she liked it or not, but I wasn’t going to treat her like a child or like she was somehow weaker than me. I didn’t want her to feel like I was taking her choice away.
“I can take her,” Finn said at the same time that Tristan shut it down.
“She needs to stay here,” he said.
“I don’t want to leave anyway. I feel safer here with you guys than I would feel at home…you know…without a door,” she said.
“I fixed that for you,” Finn said. “You have a door that works again. I went over that night and did it.”
“Thanks,” she said with a little smile, her cheeks reddening.
Fuck my life, I thought to myself. She would want to get into someone’s pants.
“Are you sure?” I asked her, pulling her attention back to me. “Ignore Tristan. If you really want to leave, we can get you to a different safe house. They can spare a few men to stay with you until everything settles down.”
“I’d be happy—” I cut Finn off by holding up my hand in his direction before he could finish his sentence.
“Honestly,” she said, looking at me earnestly. “I’d prefer to stay here.”