Judge (Shady Valley Henchmen 1)

“And we are going to tell those big, scary, overprotective brothers of yours that we are going to go visit my aunt in Whitney, not Vegas.”

“You’re going to lie to my brothers?”

“Well, it won’t be a full lie,” she said, sending me a wicked smirk. “We do have to swing by to pick up some box of crap she insists I need to have.” I must have given her a look because she leaned over the counter at me. “Dell, they will never let you go without a guard if we don’t claim it is a family thing.”

That was true.

Even if I objected to a guard, they would send one to trail behind me anyway. If they didn’t insist on coming themselves.

I loved my brothers to death. But nothing sounded less fun than going to Vegas with them watching my every move.

“If you don’t want to go, that’s fine. But don’t let that be the deciding factor, okay?” Nyx asked.

“Okay. I mean… okay to going.”

“Babe, I am going to need more than a lackluster okay about an epic girls trip to Vegas.”

“I am tentatively very excited. But we have to run it past my brothers first.”

“Girl, that’s what you have me for. Bypass Conor. Go right to Cillian.”

“Cillian?” I asked, dubious. No, he wasn’t as quick to make his opinions known as Conor was, but he was still the stand-in father figure for all of us.

“Trust me. I mean Rian would be ideal, but we all know he usually defers this kind of shit to Cillian anyway, so we might as well go right to the top.”

“That’s true,” I agreed.

“Come on. Let’s get it over with,” she said, grabbing my arm.

“Right now?”

“Can you think of a better time? Besides, if we get it over with now, we can spend the rest of our shift secretly making our plans. And, perhaps the most important part, choosing our outfits.”

I didn’t know if we caught Cillian in a good mood, or if Nyx just cast a spell on him or what, but somehow, he agreed to let me go to “visit Nyx’s aunt.”

It wasn’t until then that the excitement started to sneak in.

When we were sure no one was around, we decided on which hotel we wanted to stay at, where we wanted to eat, if there were any shows we wanted to catch.

True, it was just a weekend, but we were planning to pack it with as much fun as possible since there was no telling when we might get another chance.

I packed as best I could, given that I didn’t have a whole lot of “on the town” clothes since my town was casual at best. But Nyx assured me that she would hook me up with some of her clothes if I needed them.

On the morning we were set to leave, I was just coming back from gathering my bathroom essentials when I heard the rumble of bikes.

I didn’t want to look.

But I couldn’t stop myself, either.

Moving toward my bedroom window, I glanced out to see four bikes plus an SUV making their way out of town.

It wasn’t weird. They came and went all the time. But something about the SUV leaving with them had me curious about their destination.

Pretty soon, though, Nyx was at my door prattling on about the car ride playlist she created, and how much fun we were going to have, and I forgot all about their possible destination.

“What?” Nyx asked as we were getting out of her car a few hours later.

“Nothing. It’s just… don’t those bikes look familiar?” I asked, pointing toward the ones lined up in the same lot as our hotel. Along with a black SUV.

“I think all those things look the same,” Nyx said with a noncommittal shrug.

“But they have California plates.”

“Babe, we are only like two hours from California,” she reminded me.

I couldn’t shake the strange feeling, but then Nyx was shoving luggage at me, and we were making our way into the hotel we’d settled on.

It cost a small fortune, to be honest, but we decided that if we were going to have a girls weekend, that we deserved a little luxury.

We’d even splurged to get an adjoining room.

“In case of male visitors,” Nyx had insisted.

I didn’t want to rain on her parade and tell her I had absolutely no intentions of taking another random guy to bed, that I was pretty sure—as much as I hated to admit it even to myself—that I was more of a relationship kind of girl.

I loved the concept of being happy alone and only using men for casual good times, but I thought my little depression spiral after my first time trying to do that proved that it just wasn’t for me.

Which likely meant I would be single and celibate forever since there probably weren’t any guys in town who would go near me with all my brothers out there telling them that I was off-limits.