As usual, no one listens to me. “Let her go,” I say again, this time placing my hand gently on Kai’s forearm. Everyone freezes, and Adrian hauls me back.
It takes a minute, but Kai relaxes his grip, and Andrea scrambles out of his hold, shoving him away. “I don’t know what the hell is go—” Her eyes finally snag on the screen, and she knows.
She knows.
“You…” Her breath shudders out of her. “You saw it?”
She folds her arms around her middle, and I want to comfort her so badly. Adrian refuses to let me go, no matter how much I try to squirm from his iron grasp. Right now, she’s dangerous. A cornered creature looking to claw her way back to reality. I know both that cage and that border intimately.
I turn in Adrian’s grasp to meet his eyes. “She won’t hurt me. When she pushed me, she probably didn’t realize I’d go down so hard. She needs a friend, and I’m the only female in this house who can help her get through this with her soul intact.”
He smooths my curls away from my face with one hand, his fingers gentle but unyielding. His eyes hold a million questions and a million answers, but he gives me one sharp nod and then releases his grasp.
I approach her slowly, hands up in surrender. “It’s okay. We are the only ones who saw it. No one else.”
A choked sob escapes her throat, and she turns away to stifle any more that might come out. I give her a minute before skirting wide to look at her face again. “If anyone knows what you’re going through, it’s me. We already talked about this, remember? What you see on my face now, it’s not pity, it’s anger...it’s sympathy...it’s the need to drive a knife through those bastards’ hearts and then keep them alive long enough to feed them their own dicks.”
I clamp my mouth shut, a little surprised at my own thirst for violence. Her eyes lock on mine, wary but surprised too. “I don’t want them to see it. They will think I’m weak.”
Gently, I cup her elbows and steer her to avoid seeing the boys or the screen. “No one who watches this could say you are weak. Not in a million years, not after how you fought, and how you survived.”
Her shoulders slowly inch away from her ears, her long dark hair shifting around her with the movement. “I want revenge, I do,” she whispers. “But I’m not strong enough to get it yet. I can’t leave this damn building for fear of seeing one of them and not being ready to face it all.”
I want to hug her so badly, but Andrea is definitely not a hugger, so I keep my distance. “That’s okay. You take as long as you need. No one will make a move on these pricks until you’re ready. Hell, and if you’re never ready, I know five very powerful men who would love nothing more than to handle it for you. I promise, if you say the word, they will deliver each of these asshole’s heads on a pike.”
She drags her gaze from mine over to Adrian, then Kai, and back. “Okay. I believe you.”
I nod, satisfied she’s not going to do anything stupid that will get Adrian riled up again. “Do you want to tell them about it or talk about it at all yet?”
Frantically, she shakes her head back and forth. I run my hands up her biceps slowly, back and forth, trying to soothe her. “Okay. Okay. Don’t worry about it, all right. It’s fine.”
I stalk over to the table and hit the button on the DVD player to remove the disc. Then I slide it into the paper wrapper we found it in. When I’m standing in front of her again, I wrap her hands around it. “Kai, I’m sure, will try to see if there are any digital copies that can be destroyed. This belongs to you, but if you can, try to keep it in case we need it for evidence.”
She chokes out a sob. “Evidence to present to who? The same council who did this to me? No. But I’ll keep it for now in case it’s needed.”
I nod, and she turns away, shoving between the men to get out the door. They let her go but follow her with their eyes until she’s out of sight.
Adrian focuses on me again, something new written in his features. “Angel...”
I shake my head and grab the paper, the summons as Kai called it, and hold it out to him. With a grimace, he snatches it and unfolds the edges to scan the sheet. His fingers tighten around the top and bottom, and then he waves it over to Kai, who takes it next.