Page 37 of Royally Ruined

Terror rumbled up my body with increasing speed. “You told me it was to introduce new members of their gang to us.”

“New members, yes,” he said slowly. His fingers kept crushing, and I worried my collarbones would snap. “People like Darien Valentine.TheValentines!”

That tugged at my memory. Words likeimportantandpowerfulpopped up.I recalled they were another crime family, one that stayed in Boston and out of our hair. I’d had essentially no interaction with them.

Oh fuck.

My eyes snapped wide. Maverick nodded grimly. “Yes,” he said. “Now you’ve realized. Darien is their youngest son. Apparently he’d joined the Deep Shots on the pretense of becoming their new leader. You know things were a mess among them.”

The gang had been like chickens with no heads. They hadn’t had a real leader for a long while, but because they weren’t in our way or causing trouble, I’d ignored that fact, assuming someone like Rush would step up eventually.

Maverick said, “The Valentines must have sensed some worth in the gang to allow their son to become involved.”

I found my voice again. “You should have warned me and Hawthorne!”

He let me go, shoving me in the process. “How the hell could I? I had no idea this was going down, I was as blind as you! But I’d assumed my own fucking sons would recognize someone like Darien Valentine, that you two could handleonemeeting without me sitting in on it!” He turned away, head shaking like a rage-blind bull’s. “Darien gets injured on your watch, but you don’t speak a word of that to me. You prance around here with your hands on some girl’s tits, acting like everything is fine!”

“Itisfine. Darien is alive, we can make amends to his family. Money soothes all problems.”

His smile was twisted and toxic. “He doesn’t want money, he wants revenge.”

A dryness spread through my mouth. “On us?”

“On the waitress he claims pulled the fucking trigger,” he snarled. “Darien keeps saying it was a plot! That we set him up! I told him and his father that we didn’t, but all I could get them to agree to was giving up this woman—Scotch, Darien said that’s her name.” Maverick stormed through the room, talking as he went. I heard him, but my attention had shifted helplessly to the messy bed, the place I’d lain with Scotch.

That amazing woman saved her friend, and now Darien wants her dead.

It was a worst-case scenario in turbo drive. Why had I convinced myself that we could outrun this problem? That Darien would admit he’d done something idiotic and let bygones be bygones?

“But Thorne says he doesn’t know where she is,” my father rambled. I tuned in, staring at him in a daze. “We’ll need to find her soon. Before Darien’s family decides her blood isn’t enough.”

Despair had been flooding into me. Now it began to seep away.Thorne hasn’t told him anything about Scotch.Of course; I’d been too distraught to put the pieces together, but if Thorne had revealed the truth, Scotch wouldn’t have been allowed to leave this room. Maverick would have strung her up on the spot.

Silently I thanked my brother. I glanced at the door; my father saw me look and said, “You’re not leaving until we make a plan.”

Breathe in. Stay calm.When I spoke I was all ice. “The plan is obvious. We find the girl.”

My father considered me with narrowed eyes. “You still haven’t explained why you or your brother decided to hide this from me.”

“We were ashamed,” I said quickly. “The meeting went south, we did what we could to make sure Darien stayed alive. I guess we thought that if no one died, we could just have the meeting again when things calmed down, and you’d have nothing to worry about. It was wrong to hide it from you.”

I’m not sure he was convinced, but his shoulders slumped an inch lower. “Do you know where she went? The waitress?”

Yes.“No,” I said firmly. “I was too busy getting Darien out of there before any of the Deep Shots saw and lost their damn minds. You know how they can get, especially when they’ve been drinking.”

That part he did believe. He pulled out his phone, then buried it again. “Reception here is fucking terrible! It’s a miracle Darien’s call came through. I’d noticed some missed ones, but I was too busy with the wedding to play phone tag.” He shook himself and frowned; I knew he was as pissed at himself as he was at me. “You’re not off the hook. Neither is Thorne.”

“I know.”

“We’ll head back home in the morning. Someone at the Dirty Dolls must know where to find her.”

“I’m not waiting until the morning to search.”

He’d opened the door, but now he stopped. “What?”

I bent down and scooped up my gun from where I’d set it under the bed as Scotch and I had stripped. “There’s no time. If the Valentines are threatening us, we need to act quickly to keep things from getting violent.”I need to keep her safe.

His eyes were slits. “This won’t be likebefore, will it? You running solo and getting yourself so deep in trouble that you have to involve—”

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