My brows rose. He hadn't mentioned he was going to speak to the Guild. "What did they say?"
"No reply yet." He gave a one-shouldered shrug. "You know what their waitlist is like."
I stifled an irritated sigh at the edge in his voice. He was still mad as hell at me, and it was bleeding into every word we exchanged. But he was still here. He was still on my side and hadn't turned his back on me yet. Neither had Lucas. They'd forgive me eventually. I hoped.
In fairness, the mercenary guild did have an insane waitlist, but the fact that Zed had a prior relationship with them usually gave us some kind of priority.
"Well, they need to come and collect all their guns, anyway," Lucas commented. "I don't want my mom going home until they're gone."
Running a hand through my hair, I stared out the window. These problems just kept piling up, and it was becoming daunting to imagine how the hell we'd solve them all. Lucas's connection to the Guild, his mother's shady past, Chase waging war on my business and personal life, Zed... being Zed. And Cass. Fuck. Cass.
My chest ached, and I rubbed the heel of my hand down my sternum. We were almost at Club 22, and I needed to get my Hades face on. My plan for dealing with Chase was paper thin, but it was better than no plan at all.
"Maybe you two should wait in the car," I suggested as Zed pulled into the Club 22 parking lot. The glares I got in response said exactly what they thought of that idea, but I just shrugged.
I climbed out of the car and smoothed my hands down the front of my dress. Poker face firmly in place, I strode into my club with Lucas and Zed at my back.
Chase wasn't hard to find, considering the bar had only opened half an hour earlier and was all but empty. He sat dead center in front of the main stage, sipping on a tumbler of Scotch and eyeing up the terrified dancer who was unlucky enough to have the first set.
His one-eyed gaze slid over to me, and he stood from his seat in a smooth, liquid movement. A wide smile split his face, and if I'd been any weaker, I would have vomited right there on the carpet. He made my skin crawl.
"Darling!" he exclaimed, coming toward me with his arms outstretched. "What an unexpected surprise."
Bullshit. Straight up bullshit.
3
My jaw tightened and my sweat turned to ice as Chase fucking Lockhart leaned in like an old friend and kissed my cheek. Shivers of revulsion crawled all over my flesh from where he’d touched me, but I didn't pull away.
"Well, isn't this a welcome change," he murmured without retreating even an inch from my face. Instead, he reached up and tucked my hair behind my ear, then his fingers trailed down my neck in a longing touch. "If I'd known you'd be so easily broken, I'd have killed someone you loved so much sooner."
I swallowed hard, choking back the angry, disgusted retort on my tongue. "What are you doing here, Chase?"
He hummed an amused sound and shifted his gaze past me. "Zayden, old friend. We're so long overdue for a catch-up, don't you think? Why don't you come join me for a drink?" Chase stepped back and indicated to the bottle of Scotch on the small table beside where he'd been sitting and shot Zed a sly grin. "We can chat about all the things we have in common now."
The leer he gave me as he said that and the way he ran his tongue over his lower lip left nothing to the imagination on what he thought they had in common.
"How about I take you for a nice scenic drive out to Mortuary Forest and finish that last discussion we had?" Zed offered, his tone hard-edged. He stepped closer to me, his hand resting on the small of my back as his chest brushed my arm. It probably wasn't intended as a possessive gesture, but fuck if I didn't have to bite my cheek to keep from leaning back into him.
Chase had us all kinds of messed up. Which was his intention, no doubt.
"You look surprisingly healthy, pretty boy," Chase commented, ignoring Zed's thinly veiled threat—their last discussion had ended in Chase repeatedly stabbing Zed with his own blade. The same blade Chase had left buried in Lucas's chest.
"Fuck you, psychopath," Lucas spat back at him.
Chase grinned wider. "I take it you found the little care packages I left around dear Aunt Demi's winery, then? Good. At least you know not to test my patience."
"Fuck your patience," I told him in a flat, cold voice. "Those precautions are keeping you alive, for now, but that won't last forever. I'll ask you one more time. What are you doing here?"
Chase's one-eyed stare shifted back to me, and he cocked his head like I was amusing him. "I thought that would be obvious, Darling. I came to offer my deepest condolences on your loss. It's so hard when you lose a loved one, isn't it?" His smirk deepened. "Even harder when you kill them yourself. Then again, it's not the first time for you, is it, Darling? You barely even look like you're grieving."
I didn't blink. I didn't flinch. I gave him nothing.
"If you're wondering whether I attended your funeral, Chase, the answer is no. You were dead to me a long time before I put that bullet in your face." Reaching out, I hooked a finger under the elastic of his eye patch and snapped it back against his face.
He flinched, his hand coming up to bat me away, but I was already moving, heading for the bar.
"Get the fuck out of my club, Chase," I told him over my shoulder. "In case this wasn't clear enough, you're officially banned from all Copper Wolf properties. My legal counsel should be sending the paperwork over today."
There was a long pause, but I didn't turn to look. That's what he wanted, to see any hesitation from me. Any cracks in my armor. Well, he was shit out of luck; I might as well be encased in adamantium for how hard he'd made me.
No, fuck that. He hadn't hardened me like this; I'd done that all on my own. It was just coming in more useful now than I'd ever thought it would be.
"Very well," he finally said in a slightly irritated voice. "But believe me, Darling, you'll still be seeing me around. Shadow Grove is such a nice city, don't you think?"
On that weird remark, he strolled out of the club like he hadn't a care in the damn world. Maybe he didn't. Maybe this was all just... entertainment to him. Chase Lockhart hadn't been in his right mind even before I shot him in the face. Fuck knows what further damage had been done to his brain in the last five years.
Rodney came over to me at the bar, poured three glasses of Red Head Whiskey for us, and exhaled heavily. "What can I do to help, boss?"
I picked up one of the glasses and gave him a small salute with it. "This is perfect." One swallow and the liquor was gone. "Go chat with the girls; let them know he won't be back. Zed, get his image off the cameras and distribute it to the whole Copper Wolf security team so they know he's blacklisted. Lucas—"
"Already on it," he cut me off, flashing me a smile with his phone at his ear. "Hey Gen, it's Lucas." With a reassuring nod to me, he wandered away to talk to my lawyer about getting those papers filed to ban Chase, or Wenton, from all our venues. Despite how strained our relationship had been since I shot Cass in cold blood, Lucas was quietly stepping up and showing me every damn day that he was more than just a pretty face.