Page 122 of Arran's Obsession

I groaned. “God, she said she wanted to dance and the strip club is closed. Shade, can you ask Manny for a description?”

Shade rattled off an instruction to Manny then spoke the answer he was being fed in his earpiece. “Black hair in tight curls. Short. Tiny dress, attitude, won’t come down. Fuck.”

A fraught Jamieson paced to the door. “We need to pull her out.”

“Manny and his team are handling the fight,” Shade reported, continuing to listen. “It’s getting worse in there, but we can’t leave Genevieve either.”

The worry in their voices infected me with the need to do something. Despite her anger at me, I’d liked Cassie. She had spoken sense and stood up for herself and what she believed in. A worldInow believed in. She was also only nineteen and in a crisis. If she left or was thrown out, anything could happen.

“We can’t leave her. We’re all going in,” I decided.

“No fucking way,” both men stated.

“What if someone grabs her? What if she’s hurt?”

Shade pointed at me. “What if someone recognises and takes you? I vote we lock ye in Arran’s apartment,”

“But then you’d still have to leave me to get Cassie. It won’t work.”

Turning on my heel, I strode in the other direction to the changing rooms for Divine. Inside, I snatched up a baseball cap from a coat hook and bundled my hair under it.

“That’s a weak-as-fuck disguise,” Jamieson commented.

“Manny’s allocating two people to wait the other side,” Shade supplied. “Shite, if this goes badly, Arran’s going to fucking murder us. Genevieve Jones, ye don’t stray more than two feet from our sides. No eye contact with anyone. If anyone even breathes on ye?—”

“You sound just like Arran. But this is probably a good time to mention I saw my brother’s girlfriend here earlier. She left with the cops, but quick, let’s go. Cassie needs our help.” I launched myself through the door.

As Manny promised, two security officers in skeleton t-shirts met us the other side of Divide’s staff entrance. Instantly, I scanned the crowd. Near the main entrance, Manny was pushinghis way through a throng of clubgoers, one scrawny student guy under one arm, and his meaty hand around the scruff of another. Both swung out punches but had no effect on the chief of security.

To think, he’d been babysitting me when this was clearly his element. Behind them, three or four of Manny’s team were deep in the middle of a boiling mass of bodies, some of them still involved in their scrap, others trying to get out of the way. Some sweaty-faced individuals danced on, oblivious.

Above it all, on a plinth at head height to the crowd, though clearly not meant for dancing, Cassie stood, her teeny silver dress matching her heels, and her wild, black curls loose in a thick wedge around her pretty head. She wound her body to the thumping beat from the DJ. A man broke loose from the fight and grabbed her ankle. At my side, Jamieson lurched, thrusting his way into the crowd.

Stalled in her movements, Cassie scowled down at the grabber, then with impeccable balance, stabbed her other heel into his hand. The man howled, though the sound didn’t make it over the music, and he fell away, clutching his injury.

I grinned at her, and at the same second, her gaze fell on us.

Cassie’s eyes brightened, and she mouthed my name, clasping her hands together, a little chaos goblin above her kingdom of admirers, as vicious as any of them.

We reached the edge of the brawling group, ten feet from the plinth, and thick within the crowd of sweaty clubgoers. My dress stuck to me with the humidity and the press of so many people, though Shade and Jamieson fought to make enough space so we could breathe.

Jamieson pointed at his sister then to the floor, an indication for her to come down. The cocky woman cupped her hand behind her ear in a pretence that she couldn’t hear, and Jamieson glowered.

Across from us, someone reared back an arm and tossed a missile at Cassie. It struck her shoulder, and the grin left her face. She clutched her arm and glared, going from fun-loving pretty girl to ice queen in an instant. I’d seen it before, and my hackles rose. I didn’t want her hurt.

Jamieson turned back to me and tilted his head at Shade, rage in his dark-blue eyes, then he turned and dove into the crowd, flattening people in his path to reach the person who’d hurt his sister. Or maybe to help her down, because she moved to the edge of the plinth.

Shade waved across the room to Manny then pointed at the DJ. To cut the music? At the far edge of the fight, Manny’s people pulled two more men out, leaving a gap for a second.

Through it, I caught a glimpse of a familiar face.

I stared open-mouthed into the crowd. I was seeing things, surely.

Then a surge followed, people shoved aside, and that same person drove right through until he was in front of me.

I took in every feature. His hair brown with dark-blond highlights, his eyes green, unlikemine. It had been weeks since I’d last seen my brother.

“Riordan,” I uttered.

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