But this wasn’t about Eddie, directly. Eddie had already received a message very loud and clear, courtesy of Silas, Jax and Justice, to give Evangeline Hawthorn a wide berth in the future. One he was still no doubt recovering from. Except he’d shown up in Steven Cavendar’s nightclub the night before. And not only had he been allowed entrance, but he’d also availed himself of his VIP status and all the perks that accompanied VIP treatment.
Drake had done his homework on Eddie and had only grown more disgusted, if such a thing were possible. He didn’t have money, or a job for that matter, or the ambition to do anything more than to live off his parents’ largesse and toss around money without a second thought in his bid to impress women and men alike. He wanted something he had no hope of ever receiving. Respect. He was a parasitic leech and there was no doubt in Eddie’s mind that once he’d set his sights on Evangeline, it was a fait accompli and she’d fall into his lap like a ripe plum just ready to be bitten into.
He’d certainly picked the wrong woman when he chose Evangeline and was barking up the wrong tree entirely. Evangeline wanted, needed, craved a forceful, dominant man, and he doubted she’d even realized it yet. Eddie, even if he had been satisfactory in bed, would have failed her on every other level that it was possible to fail a woman. He was weak, spineless and unapologetic about his lifestyle and what his parents’ fortune gave him by proxy. As an only child, he’d been shamelessly spoiled, and he knew nothing about the real world or where Drake and his men and Evangeline had come from, what they had made themselves into. He was a whiny petulant prick who expected nothing more than to crook his finger at a woman and have her clinging to him like a lifeline.
Until Evangeline. And she had not only stung his pride by making him put on all his charm to seduce her, but she’d made a fool of him and worse, he knew it, though he’d never admit to such a thing. He’d been on a mission to take Evangeline’s virginity and to toss her the day after, never to be thought of again.
“Just how big a lesson did you teach our good friend Eddie?” Drake asked Silas, in a swift shift in thought. “Because I’m thinking if he was out partying at Cavendar’s all night, he didn’t get half of what he deserved.”
His statement ended in a snarl that suddenly had Maddox materializing in the far corner of the room where the nearly hidden doorway stood. He watched the goings-on through narrowed eyes as if deciding whether he needed to intervene.
“I’m surprised he was walking,” Silas said in his characteristic detached, unemotional tone.
Drake scowled. “Are you saying he has magical healing powers, then?”
His sarcasm lay heavy over the now-quiet room.
Hatcher merely shrugged. “A man will do a lot when his pride is involved. After the first several doors were shut in his face, he probably got desperate. And we all know Cavendar is a greedy whore who’d sell his mother for the right price. How Eddie got in and whether he was ambulatory wouldn’t be of consequence to him. Only that he was seen and not shunned. And just as Cavendar can be bought, I doubt the women who Eddie usually keeps company with give a fuck that he looks like he was hit by a semitruck just as long as he keeps them happy. And gives them carte blanche with his parents’ money.”
“Which is precisely why I want you to go have a chat with Cavendar,” Drake said pointedly to Silas.
Silas nodded.
“Report back to me . . .” Fuck. He almost forgot himself and the fact that he would be with Evangeline for the rest of the day—and night. “I’ll touch base with you tomorrow,” he amended. “I expect the matter to be resolved by then.”
Again Silas only nodded.
“Should have just dumped the asshole in the Hudson,” Maddox said darkly, speaking up for the first time.
A gasp from the elevator made all four men swivel in that direction. Evangeline stood next to Jax, who was shaking his head as if to say they were all stupid fucks for forgetting themselves.
Hell. Just how much of their conversation had she heard? But Evangeline never once looked in Drake’s direction. She focused only on Maddox, clear indecision in her eyes, but to Maddox’s credit, he didn’t skip a beat. He strode toward her, took the things she was holding in her hands, and promptly dumped them into Silas’s bewildered arms—something Silas had no liking for because it drew attention to him when he would have silently slipped away, as he did around all newcomers—and then Maddox hugged Evangeline and smacked her noisily on the cheek.