“Fine.” I strode past him back to the mansion. “I know who’ll have put you all up to this, so I’ll just ask him.”
If Wylder was involved, then he was the one giving the orders. And there he was, standing idle in the foyer as if he had nothing else to do with his time.
He cocked his head when he saw me. “That was a short walk.”
“Fuck you.” I marched right up to him and jabbed my finger at his chest. “Why are you all refusing to let me out of your sight? Did something happen? Was there another corpse left for me on the lawn—or right inside here?”
Wylder’s gaze twitched away from me as if he was checking the room around us for anyone who might overhear his answer. That didn’t bode well. “Can you keep your voice down?” he muttered.
“No,” I said, deliberately raising it. “I want you to tell me—”
He caught my arm, his grip firm but not painfully so. Heat flooded my skin where he touched me. “Fine,” he said under his breath. “You want to know? I’ll tell you. But we’re not talking about it here.”
I yanked my arm back. “Then feel free to show me where we can talk.”
He set his hand on the small of my back and escorted me up the stairs toward his area of the house, moving aggressively enough that my panties might have been soaked by the time we reached the top. Not that I’d ever have admitted that to him. He was still being a total douche. My brain knew that even if my body didn’t.
Wylder stayed silent until we were in his office with the door shut. He moved away from me to the small liquor cabinet and poured himself a glass of the brandy he liked so much.
“Well?” I prodded.
He took a sip, grimaced, and turned to fully face me. “Did you hear that Jasper stopped by this morning?”
A chill washed over me. This had to do with Jasper? Had he “liked” me enough that he’d decided he wanted more? Shit.
But then, no one had told me, let alone come to get me, so maybe not.
“No,” I said. “Why was he here?”
“Because my dad invited him, because he planned to frame you for Jasper’s attempted murder.”
For a second, I just stared at him. Most parts of that sentence didn’t make sense to me even in isolation, let alone all together. “Wait—what with the who now?”
Wylder’s bright green eyes bored into mine. “He set you up. Axel lifted a phone from the guy he made you crash into at the warehouse the night before last. They used it to arrange an attempted assassination. When Jasper came, my father was going to turn over the phone, saying he’d caught you with it, and then turn you over to the Demon’s Wings for punishment.”
I was still having trouble processing all of this. I sank into the nearest chair. “But—why? How did you find out? Why didn’t he go through with it?”
“Thankfully, Kaige the insomniac happened to overhear my dad and Axel talking late last night,” Wylder said, his tone dry yet humorless. “We took care of it before the meeting happened. The phone is long gone and irretrievable.”
So I wasn’t in immediate danger. But… I pressed my hand to my forehead. “I don’t understand—why would Ezra set me up like that? If Jasper thought I’d tried to order a hit on him, he’d want me dead.”
“Yeah. Which means my dad wants you dead.” Wylder threw back a larger gulp of brandy. “He doesn’t like the disturbances your presence here seems to have provoked, and he doesn’t like that you were strong and smart enough to handle Jasper. You’re a wild card, and a capable one, and that makes you a threat. The only way Ezra Noble deals with threats is by crushing them.”
“Oh, fuck.” Through my rising horror, the pieces clicked together in my head. I raised my eyes to meet Wylder’s stark gaze again. “That’s why you all have been on my ass no matter where I go. You don’t want to leave me alone in case he tries something else.”
Wylder offered a tiny shrug. “It isn’t something we can sustain long-term without getting noticed, but we haven’t had much time to come up with a better strategy yet.”
A flicker of anger seared up through my horror at the situation. I sat up straighter. “And it never occurred to you that the most obvious part of any strategy would be telling me the man whose house I’m living in wants me dead?”
“I’m sure we’d have gotten to that eventually,” Wylder said, but his tone wasn’t exactly convincing.
I stood up, my jaw clenching. “It should have been the first thing you did. It’s my life on the line. How the hell am I supposed to look out for myself if I have no idea what I’m dealing with?”
The stubborn bastard just glowered at me. “We were looking out for you.”
“That’s not good enough! What, did you think I’d give away that I knew and screw things up for you? Say the wrong thing to Ezra—as if that’s more likely to happen when I know to be cautious, not less likely? For God’s sake, Wylder, it’s fine if you don’t want to fuck me again, but I thought by now I’d earned a little more trust than that from all of you.”
I swallowed hard, a jabbing sensation running through my chest. I wasn’t just angry—I was hurt. From the second I’d walked into this house, I’d been running myself ragged proving how much I could handle, and they still thought I was safer in the dark about something like this.