Page 52 of Love JD

Tristan picked up after the fourth ring. “Hello?”

“It’s me,” I said, slamming the elevator button. “I need you to be Batman.”

A pause followed that. Then, “Uh, what?”

“Paparazzi snuck into my house and have circulated nude pictures of Isla all over the internet. Shut. Them. Down.”

“What?” he snarled. “How did this happen?”

I stepped into the elevator, already impatient with its maddening sluggishness. “I knew the paparazzi had jumped my wall, but Isla didn’t tell me they’d undressed her while she was unconscious. And we confiscated the camera, but the reporter must have taken back-up photos with her phone.”

“Someone’s going to die,” he growled. “I’ll handle it. Where is Isla now?”

“If she’s not home,” I said with mutinous rage, “you’re not going to be happy with how I handle it.”

“I didn’t hear that,” he muttered. “Tell me when you have her.”

Tristan hung up to do his creepy vigilante shit, and I dialed Isla. Her phone rang, but no one answered. I tried again. And again. And again. By the time I had made it to my car, I’d already chucked my phone to the floor of the passenger seat. Then I broke speed laws getting through Denver toward the house.

My phone rang, and I leaned over, swiping it up like an enraged bear. It was Tristan. “What?”

“She’s at a club called Luryd.”

I flicked on my blinker a split second before turning and changing directions. “I know the place. Do I want to know how you figured that out?”

“You do not. And Zev?”

“Yeah?” I gritted out, my fingers tight around the steering wheel.

“Give her absolute hell.”

I ground my teeth together. “My pleasure.”

I had a familiarity with Luryd, and until recently, had attended it regularly. I still had their gold-plated member card in my wallet. I knew the place well enough that the idea of Isla in the middle of that STD-infested cesspool made me want to raze the entire establishment to the pavement. I came to a screeching halt outside the front, and with evening setting into bronze-gilded shadows, the patrons filed into the discreet building in a steady stream that would soon pack it with the wealthiest residents in the Rocky Mountains for hundreds of miles.

I shouldered past them, not even bothering to flash my card because I knew they would recognize me. The bouncers parted for me, and I charged through the front door, past slower partiers who had already gotten themselves half-wasted, and torpedoed into the main area. If she was in one of the back rooms, I was going to go full King Kong on this place.

I stopped a red-headed waitress who already had a collar around her neck, which meant she’d been spoken for for the remainder of the night. “I’m looking for someone,” I said with a cold flick of my eyes down to her. “She’s about yea high,” I continued, estimating—no, knowing precisely—where she hit me at chin level. “Dark brown hair and a general air of bewilderment.”

The redhead smiled. “Isla?” That didn’t bode well. I nodded once.

For some reason, that amused her. “I put them in a private room. Twenty-three.”

Them? She’s with someone? I didn’t think I could get any angrier, but I outdid myself, really. My fists shook with rage, and I didn’t wait for the rest of what the waitress wanted to say with her pouty lips open and eyes sparkling with humor. In my head, I ran through the charges, fees, and processes for a battery conviction, and after a quick flick of my mind over the details, decided it was well worth it.

Whoever was with Isla was about to get fucked up.

I weaved through silent, dancing patrons, their ears blinking with blue lights as they partied to music only they could hear. It was part of the reason I had liked Luryd so much. If I wanted a private room with my friends, the noise didn’t permeate the walls, and I didn’t have to listen to garbage music while I enjoyed my drink and… whatever else.

It was the whatever else that made me want to peel skin from bones at the moment because the idea of Isla being “serviced” by anyone was an unbearable image to stomach. Isla was a beautiful woman. Too beautiful. If she so much as gave someone a welcoming smile, they’d be all over her like bees to pollen.

The back rooms had been built in a circle around the rear of the establishment, hidden by columns and convenient alcoves. I counted doors, brushing past a throng of friends who called my name. I ignored them, found twenty-three, and wrenched open the tacky brass doorknob.

A gasp filled the quiet room. But it wasn’t because I had barged in on someone. It was because Isla was crying.

She lay over the lap of a thin woman who had sprawled herself across a red couch and gingerly patted Isla’s disheveled hair. The room, like most of them, had been furnished with projector screens, tables, and comfortable chairs in cheesy maroons and black silks.

The blond woman looked up as I barged in, and rather than look outraged or worried, her sharply defined features melted into a satisfied smirk. “Well, well, well. If it isn’t Housemate.”

---