Today, I’d rather be bored.
Kai came in moments ago and set a DVD and a summons on Adrian’s desk, and now we all stand around staring at them as if they will bite.
My first thought is…this is the beginning of the end. The council always wins. My father said that so many times, and at some point, I started to believe it. But this time, if the council wins…it means I lose.
I lose everything.
I won’t let someone else, another man, take everything away from me again.
I grab the DVD off the desk, drawing everyone’s attention, then stalk to the command room to start it up.
Kai and Adrian follow a few seconds later and do nothing but stand silently seething at my back.
I snag the remote from the table and hit play. The video begins immediately, and it takes seconds to figure out what we are looking at: Andrea’s attack.
Bile rises in my throat, and I cover my mouth as the scene progresses. She’s beaten and still fighting. Fighting so hard.
Kai makes a noise and turns his back to the screen. Adrian does the same, but I don’t. I watch. Not because I want to see it, but because someone needs to witness her bravery. Someone needs to acknowledge she fought as hard as she could, and it hadn’t been enough.
Something in my chest hardens. Those bastards need to be ripped to shreds when the time is right.
It takes two hours. Two fucking hours of white-knuckle gripping the table beside me and imagining all the ways these men should pay for their crimes. The final screen is a close-up shot of Andrea’s face. I turn around with still clenched muscles long grown sore to look at Kai and Adrian. They are vibrating with rage, and I can see the need to release it in their eyes.
“You see a victim,” I say, shaking my head, “but I see a fighter. You might be angry but imagine how angry she is. This is her revenge. You won’t take it from her.”
Adrian starts toward me and lowers his voice to a deadly whisper. “You won’t give me orders in my own home, Valentina.”
I square off with him, knowing that he won’t hurt me even this angry. “No, I don’t want to give you orders, but I can see you both calculating how to get revenge for this. But it’s not your vengeance to take. It’s hers.”
He waves at the screen. “The attack was on her, but this…fucking video is for me. It’s a taunt for me, not for her.” He lifts the envelope and throws it back on the table. “It was even addressed to me.”
I slide to sit on the table, my legs shaking so hard I can’t stay upright. He can yell at me all he wants, but I’ll never stop defending Andrea’s right to go after her own attackers. If I’d been stronger, I would have done the same.
I hear her high heels just in time to lunge off the table and block the doorway. She comes up short with over a foot of height on me. “What…the hell?”
I spread my arms across the entrance and shake my head. “Private meeting.”
Her forehead bunches, and she crosses her arms. “Are you in charge now? Have you killed Adrian and taken over without any of us noticing? Considering how far Kai has been up your ass recently, I don’t think that’s even possible.”
I barely flinch at her tone, and I don’t blame her. She’s been in attack first, ask questions later mode since everything happened. “No, he’s in here with me, just slower to get to the door.”
Her mouth twists in a macabre smile. “Stop playing around, Val, and let me in.”
I set my jaw and shake my head again. “Sorry.”
Her eyes rove my tear-streaked face, and no doubt she sees the pain in my eyes. Except she mistakes my sympathy for pity.
“Get the hell out of the way, or I’ll move you,” she snaps.
I hold firm, and she shoves me hard at the shoulders before I even register she’s put her hands on me.
Stumbling back, I land on my ass in the middle of the room. Adrian is in her face less than a second later. “What the hell is your problem?”
The only reason he hasn’t hit her back is because of what he just saw. Hesitation is his own form of sympathy, but again, she doesn’t take it that way. This time, she goes for Adrian’s throat.
Kai finally steps in and gets her in a hold in less than a second. She goes frantic, her eyes wild, her body jerking and fighting against this. But it’s not the carefully disciplined moves she learns every day but the fervent dangerous, formless fight of the trapped.
“Let her go,” I say, getting to my feet, my hands stinging from scraping on the floor.