Gavin and Audrey trailed behind, talking quietly with one another. As we neared the elevator that would take us to the ground floor, a man wearing a Pac-Man shirt and gym shorts came around the corner.
His first colossal mistake was glaring at me openly. The second was following that up by disregarding my and Gavin’s presence altogether to focus on Rhiannon.
“Is everything okay?”
“Hi, Joey. Everything’s fine,” she replied with a smile in her voice that pissed me off.
“Are you--?”
“She said she’s fine,” I interjected, stepping up beside her.
Joey’s frown pitched deeper, causing a crease in his forehead. His dull eyes seemed to reassess the situation, but his brain still didn’t deliver the correct message.
“Look, bro, I don’t know who you are or what’s going on, but--.”
I was officially done with him at the word, bro. I reached out and grabbed the piece of shit by his throat with one hand, slamming him against the wall between the two elevators. Before he could make another sound, I had the gun I’d just used to put a hole in Diego’s head pressed against his temple.
“If your lips even look like they’re about to form a word I’m going to decorate this lovely beige wall with the few brain cells you have inside your head.”
“Oh, my god! What are you doing?” Audrey cried.
“Judas!” Rhiannon seethed, looking around to see if anyone else was coming. “You fucking psycho, let him go.”
I almost took a page from her book and rolled my eyes. I glanced back at the two of them and had to suppress a grin. Audrey was pale-faced and being held in place by Gavin.
Rhiannon simply looked annoyed on top of being enraged. It gave me a great amount of joy to see no traces of shock or fear on her pretty face. She hadn’t completely regressed during our time apart. What I was seeking wasn’t buried as deeply as I’d been anticipating.
“You’re both overreacting. Joey here is fine. Aren’t you?” I tapped the end of the gun against his tear-stained cheek to indicate I wanted a response. He surprisingly found some remnants of intelligence and nodded instead of trying to speak.
“See. Now while one of you calls up the lift Joey is going to walk away and reflect on what it means to mind his fucking business.”
Without needing incentive this time, he quickly nodded again, turning into a real-life bobblehead. I lowered the gun and tucked it back into the waistband of my suit pants.
With a heavy sigh, Rhiannon hit the call button for the elevator with more force than necessary.
“Go,” I stepped back and ordered.
Like a mouse scurrying away from certain death, Joey bolted down the hall with his eyes fixed on the floor.
“You feel better about yourself now?” Rhiannon asked, staring up at the digits counting each level as the elevator came down from above.
“I always feel good about myself, principessa.”
A ding signaled the arrival of the lift. The doors slid open, and we all stepped inside.
I kept Rhiannon in front of me, prepared to sedate her if she tried to make a run for it. I didn’t think she’d do something that incredibly stupid, but it was better to be safe than sorry when it came to her.
“I need his file pulled.”
“I’ll have it to you before we touch down,” Gavin replied.
Rhiannon turned her head and looked back at me. “His file?”
Those captivating eyes of hers rendered me momentarily speechless. My delayed response gave her the impression I was purposely ignoring her. With another sigh and a slight shake of her head, she went back to staring at the elevator doors.
It was better she didn’t know what I had planned for him. It would ruin the surprise later on. We didn’t come across anyone else on our way to the parking garage.
The doormen and security guards knew to make themselves scarce the moment we had arrived.
I half expected Rhiannon to begin a tirade of questions once we were seated in the back of our blacked-out SUV, but she didn’t say a word. It was nearing Guinness world record numbers for her when she finally spoke and it was only as we arrived at the airstrip where my Jet was waiting.
She turned her beautiful face towards me, confusion and uncertainty haunting her expression, but she didn’t ask why we were there or where I was taking her. She asked something far simpler.
“Why?”
“I made you a promise.”
She looked away and stared out the window. I would have comforted her but there was no point. The sooner she came to terms with what was happening, the better off we’d be.
CHAPTER FIVE
A boy made me a promise once, that he’d wreck my world and make me love him as he did it.
I hated that kid.
He’d done exactly that and now he was sitting across from me with an infuriating gleam in his eyes. They were too beautiful for an asshole like him to have. Everything about Judas was gorgeous, even his dick.