“You’re making me lose,” King yells, reaching for the controller.
I dart out of his arms, more than fucking up his game. “You were going to lose anyway,” I laugh.
I don’t even get a step away from him before he catches me around my waist and instantly pulls me back to him, but I’m not giving up, not yet. I pull the controller in close, laughing as I attempt to sit on it, but King has other plans and just sits on me instead.
“No,” I squeal. “Get your fat ass off me.”
An alarm cuts through Carver’s home and everybody freezes and whips their gazes around to Carver, the PlayStation completely forgotten. King instantly gets off me, pulling me to my feet and holding onto my wrist in a bruising grip, ready to haul me away if need be. “What alarm is that?” I ask, wide-eyed, looking around at the guys who are now on their feet with hard stares across their faces.
“It’s the front gate,” Carver says, pulling out his phone and bringing up the security footage. “Someone is trying to break onto the property.”
“When will this fucking bullshit end?” Cruz curses under his breath, more than done with the random, fucked up attacks. He steps past me and grabs my elbow on the way, tugging me away from King and walking deeper into the living room, far away from the windows. He takes me to the massive fireplace. “Get in.”
“What?” I grunt, pulling away from him, my brows pinched as anger pulses through me. I get that he’s protective and wants to hide me away, they all are, but that’s never how I’ve done things, and I’m sure as hell not about to start now. “I’m not hiding out in a fucking fireplace while you guys are left to handle my shit. If someone is here to make a move against me, then I’m not going to hide away. I face my problems straight on and you fucking know that.”
“Babe,” he groans. “Please, I’m not about to fight you on this. Get in the fucking fireplace.”
My jaw clenches as my hands ball into fists at my side. I’ve never felt the need to throat punch Cruz before. That’s usually something I save for Carver and maybe sometimes Grayson, but right now, Cruz is moments from experiencing what it’s like to be on the receiving end of my rage.
Carver’s voice cuts through my fury and instantly has me turning back to meet his eye. “It’s fine,” he says. “It’s just Preston Scardoni.”
My eyes somehow go wider as the guys seem to relax. I walk over to Carver and peer down at his phone to see the security footage of Preston desperately trying to tear the front gates down with his bare hands.
Carver presses the volume button on the side of his phone, and not a second later, Preston’s voice comes tearing through the room. “You have three fucking seconds to open this goddamn gate and tell me what the fuck you did with my son. I know something is going on.”
“Fuck,” I breathe, my eyes snapping back up to Carver’s. “He knows.”
He shakes his head. “He doesn’t know.”
“But—”
“No,” Grayson says. “All he knows is that Jacob didn’t come home last night and seeing as though you did, something must have fucked with their plans. He’s thinking the worst, but he doesn’t actually know. He’s just assuming.”
“But—”
“No,” Carver cuts in. “There’s no proof. For all he knows, Jacob wrote himself off last night and was too fucked up to get home. Preston is just taking a guess, but he’s got nothing. For him to push this with the heads of Dynasty means he will have to explain why he’s accusing us and come clean about their role in all this. They can’t implicate us without implicating themselves.”
My brows raise and I search his eyes, looking for some kind of hope. “Are you sure?”
King’s hands fall to my waist as his chest presses into my back. “Positive,” he murmurs, his lips right beside my ear before he drops a kiss to my shoulder. He raises his head and meets Carver’s stare. “You might as well let him in. We’re going to have to have a little chat with Preston.”
“Agreed,” Cruz says.
Just like that, Carver presses a button on his phone and the gate slowly peels open. Preston stands dumbfounded for a short moment before racing back to his car and screeching down the driveway.
“Are you ready for this?” Cruz asks. “Facing him after what we did is going to fuck with your mind, and your guilty conscience is going to come out to play, but you need to hold your ground. Don’t let him see you break, and if in doubt, don’t say anything at all. We’ll handle it.”
I nod, loving how he knows me well enough to know that I would have taken over the show and demanded Preston’s attention, but for the first time, I don’t think I know what the hell to say. I made the call to end his son’s life last night, and despite knowing that Jacob was the one to put in the order for an attack last night and the one in the woods, I’m not sure that I’m strong enough to face his father.