My sister did not yell.
Mostly because people usually did what she asked. It had something to do with her intense beauty, but also her quiet confidence and kindness. She was the kind of woman who understood the power of the feminine mystique and had long ago learned to control it.
So, I was shocked she was yelling until I saw exactly who she was yelling at.
Priest stood just outside the door, hands loose at his sides, face completely placid even though a passionate, angry Garro was shouting in his face.
He just took it.
And Zeus, who sat in a chair in the corner of the room, let it happen.
“There is nothing you can say to excuse this,” Loulou was yelling, tears in her voice, her anger on the edge of collapsing into sheer grief. “There is nothing that will ever make me forgive you for letting this happen to her.”
Priest blinked.
“Easy, little warrior,” Zeus warned quietly, but he didn’t move from his chair. “Don’t say somethin’ you can’t take back.”
“He deserves worse than my words,” she cried dramatically, her arm flinging in my direction. “Look at what he’s done to her!”
Her eyes widened as she caught sight of me awake and watching.
“Bea,” she breathed before launching herself at the bed. Despite her eagerness, her hands fluttered gently against my face like butterfly wings as she checked me out. “Beatrice.”
“Hey,” I whispered even though my throat ached. “How’s my favourite sister?”
I watched her blue eyes, bright like the ocean under a noon sun, flood with tears.
“I thought you were going to die on me,” she admitted. “And I know, that is one tragedy I wouldn’t survive.”
“Don’t be silly,” I told her lightly, trying to reduce her angst. “You’ve already survived worse.”
Loulou zipped her mouth closed against the force of a sob and shook her head vigorously. “No, no. My man, my babies, and my sister. I couldn’t stand to lose any of you.”
“Well, you don’t have to worry about that today,” I promised as I raised my aching right hand, two fingers splinted against an obvious break, to touch her smooth cheek. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Her face collapsed into a scowl. “No thanks to Priest.”
“Hey!” The word exploded from my mouth like a dart. “Don’t you dare blame him for this.”
“Bea, don’t be ridiculous. He was literally the person who did this to you.”
“And Wrath,” Zeus added idly, some shadow in his eyes as he stared at us that I couldn’t decipher the meaning of. “He was the one to execute it.”
“Priest set it up. He did the legwork!” Loulou snapped.
Zeus cocked his head to the side and leveled a stern look at his slightly hysterical woman. “You don’t know all the details, Lou, and it’s not like you to make dangerous assumptions. Cool the fuck down, and you’ll see sense.”
My eyes darted to the empty doorway, wondering where Priest went. I ached to talk to him, to crawl into the embrace of his strong arms and feel safe once more.
I knew with certainty that the moments I’d spent held tenderly against his chest were the only moments of intimacy I’d ever share with him, and I wished, irrationally perhaps, that I’d been more lucid for the experience.
Zeus unfolded his massive frame from the plastic chair and approached, his mouth pressed tight, his eyes hooded. He was usually a fairly expressive man, but there was a tension to him I couldn’t understand.
Lou made room for him to bend down at my side, and he leaned so close, those dark-ringed silver eyes were all I could see. One of his massive hands gently pushed back my hair from my forehead, and when he spoke, it was in that low, intimate voice rough as gravel that he usually reserved for Loulou or his kids.
“This didn’t happen to you ’cause’a Priest. This happened ’cause’a my club and me. I’m the prez, so it’s me you gotta hold responsible for this fuckin’ tragedy, not Priest or Wrath, you hear me?”
I almost laughed at his martyrdom because it was so like him to take the blame on his monumental shoulders. It was easy to see where his son, King, who faked his own death to get Z out of jail, got it from. Sacrifice ran in the Garro blood.
“I’m not mad at anyone, Z,” I promised him. “I’m not half as dramatic as my sister, you should remember that.”
“Hey,” Lou protested, but there was a smile in her watering eyes that spoke to her happiness that I was well enough to tease.
“It’s kind of insulting, really,” I continued. “That you two want to place the blame anywhere but with me. I’m the one who decided to go out with Brett. Stupidly, I thought he was a good guy just because I always saw him wearing pressed trousers.” I grimaced. “Apparently, he just had bad fashion sense.”