“Thanks,” I tell her. “For the most part, they’re happy to have me. I mean, most of them are assholes either way, but they’ve been welcoming. Like King and Cruz’s fathers have been helping me adjust.”
“What about Grayson’s?” she asks, eyeing him warily.
“He’s waiting for a good time to sneak up behind me and slit my throat, but he’ll wait until everyone else has tried and failed first so he can look like a hero.”
“Holy fuck,” she says, sucking in a shocked breath.
“Yeah, we’ll deal with him eventually, but we have bigger issues to handle first.”
Her gaze scans around the room, meeting each of the guys’ heavy stares before coming back to mine. “Like?” she questions, her eyes narrowing in curiosity.
I look back at Carver, still for some reason seeing him as the guy I go to for approval. His eyes drop, knowing exactly what’s on my mind but leaving it completely up to me whether I let her in on the secret or not.
I let out a heavy breath and take her hand, giving it a tight squeeze. “There’s something you need to know,” I tell her, my heart instantly breaking with what I have to tell her. “Did you know that Jacob’s father, Preston Scardoni is one of the eight families who stand against me?”
Her brows furrow as her back straightens. “Wh … what do you mean? No he’s not,” she insists, annoyed that I’m even suggesting it. “Jacob isn’t a part of this.”
“I’m sorry, Ember, but he most definitely is … at least, he was.”
Her eyes go wild, flicking around the room at each of our stares as she throws herself to her feet. “Was? What the hell is that supposed to mean?” she panics, her voice hitching higher. “Jacob has nothing to do with Dynasty. He didn’t even know what it was when I talked to him about it. You’re lying. He’s a good guy. He loves me. He’s a good guy.”
“Ember …” I let out a broken sigh, hating that I have to break her heart. I get up and walk across the room to her, taking her hand once again. “Jacob was his father’s son. You can see their house from here, just like the rest of the Dynasty families. Together, they were planning to take me out. I don’t know what their end game was, if it was to just get rid of me or to take over the leadership like Carver’s father planned. Preston stood by Carver’s father. They’re not good people, Ember. All they care about is power, money, and leadership, and they’d do absolutely anything to get what they wanted, even using a teenage girl’s best friend and playing with her heart. Jacob was the one who put the call into the hitmen the night of the BDSM party, and a few nights ago, we caught him red-handed putting in another call, all while you were inside that party searching for him, and because of that, we had no choice but to deal with him. It was either his life or mine. You have to understand that.”
Tears brim in her eyes. “I asked you that night,” she whispers. “I looked you in the eye and asked you if you’d seen him and you said no.”
“I—”
“What did you do?” she questions, cutting me off, not wanting to hear my pathetic excuses. “What did you do to him?”
My gaze flickers to Carver, unease brimming in my chest.
Seeing my helplessness, he gets up and walks over to us, crowding Ember as he looks down at her hard, broken stare. “We did what we had to do to make sure that he’d never be able to hurt Winter … ever again.”
Ember’s mouth drops and she instantly starts backing away, looking at me in horror. “Y … you killed him,” she breathes, tears springing from her eyes. “All this time I thought I’d done something wrong, but you killed him. You took him away from me. How could you do that to me? You’re supposed to be my best friend, but it’s all been one big lie.”
I rush toward her, desperately needing her to stay and see things from my perspective. “Ember, I—”
“NO,” she yells. “Stay away from me. You … you murderer. You’re dead to me, Winter … or Elodie Ravenwood. I don’t even know who the hell you are anymore. I probably never even knew you at all.”
My heart shatters, and just like that, Ember runs out the door, letting it slam shut behind her.
I crumble to the ground and with Carver being the closest, he’s the first to catch me. “Go,” he roars toward King and Cruz. “Make sure she doesn’t talk.”
They nod and within seconds, they’re out the door, rushing after her as Grayson looks on with a broken stare. Carver looks up at him as he scoops me off the ground and drops back to the couch with me in his lap. “Let me talk to her for a minute,” he tells Grayson. “There’s some things that need to be discussed.”