“Her men lost control of the situation.” Bastian pulled at the collar of his shirt. “Or they let him loose on her.”
The beast, the monster, the demons in me roared.“Who had eyes on her while I was at the club today? That was supposed to be you, Cade.”
“She handled it,” Cade said without even a damn hitch in his voice. “We have to trust her to handle it.”
Bastian clamped a hand on my shoulder but I shrugged it off as he said, “She’s one of us now. It’s our job to handle it, Rome, but we have to let her handle it too or she won’t ever really lead them.”
“She has my baby in her belly,” I rasped like any one of them would understand, but the oxygen had been stolen from me. It was replaced by suffocating animosity toward everyone. “Don’t any of you get that? One innocent life between all of us. We got one.”
They all looked every which way except into my eyes.
“I don’t have to explain the gravity of this. I won’t because you all know. If we don’t protect my baby, I will drag this city to hell. I don’t give a fuck if she’s a queen or a damn god. We protect that innocent life in her by intervening every single time there’s a risk.”
“We can’t do—”
I grabbed Cade by his shirt collar. “Don’t tell me what we can and can’t do.”
He didn’t even flinch. We all saw Cade as the quiet, good-natured tech geek but I saw the screw that was loose there sometimes. At that very moment, he laughed hard in my face as I pulled him close. The tattoos on his hands were stark black against the strobe lights and I read that chaos on them as he pried my fingers from his shirt. He laughed crazily the whole time.
When he’d freed himself, his laugh died abruptly. “Remember I watch every single movement everyone makes. I study you all. She was safe. I care just as much about her as I do any of you. So fuck off.”
I shoved past all of them while Dante and Bastian tried to tell me to calm down.
My body, my soul, my monster was on a new mission. My tyrant had been in danger and I needed to know that she hadn’t been harmed.
As I walked past the tall podium where hosts were dressed in skimpy costumes ushering people in and out of the fitting rooms, I told them to lock it down.
They immediately jumped to get the area closed off, and I breezed past to find Katalina.
She stood in front of a mirror, wearing that dress from so long ago, the one with feathers curving around her breasts. She’d cut the waist and the skirt too. The fabric stretched tight across her tits and I eyed her flat stomach, wondering when it would grow like the other parts of her had started to.
“You’re not wearing that out there,” I said.
“I’m not in the mood to be bossed around, Rome.”
“I’m not in the mood to kill anyone tonight, either.”
“Neither was I, but here we are.”
“I heard.” When she didn’t say anything in response, I snaked my hand around her waist and ran my fingers over her stomach. “She’s an innocent bystander in all this.”
“Exactly. So I have to find a different way to keep her safe. What we’re doing isn’t working.”
“Building trust is going to take time.”
“We’re running out of time,” she shot back. I saw her mind working, saw her searching for a target. I knew I wasn’t going to like the bullseye she found.
“Dressing like this and flaunting yourself in front of these people isn’t going to help. I’ll end up tearing someone’s eyes out.”
“I don’t think anyone understands my commitment to you all. I think the bratva think they can sway me. They tried to scare me tonight. They wanted Bastian’s partnership eliminated, they wanted that contract gone. And some of them conspired to try to make it happen.”
“They’ll come to understand.”
“Or we make them. We can show them how bound we all are.”
“Katalina…” I said her name low in warning.
She spun to stare at me with fury in her eyes. “What?”