Page 104 of Overexposed

She also didn’t pull away until she found I was bleeding. Leaving the knife where it was and the room untouched, we retreated downstairs while our security called the incident in to the police.

I called Peter, my lawyer, while Snow pressed a cloth to my arm. Then I groaned when I called Jerry to fill him in.

Seven chose that moment to show up with fuckingpastriesof all things. When the fuck had he gone out for pastries? Gem was also heading home. Paramedics showed up and so did the coroner.

The house was a total circus, but Stella stayed with me. I made the paramedics treat her cut first, then let them look at mine. When the cops wanted to separate us, I shot a look at Seven. He nodded and went with her. He also called another attorney to represent her.

Holy shit. I’d killed someone.

There were going to be consequences, but as much as I wanted to find some guilt for it, I couldn’t. That bitch would have murdered Stella if I’d been even a minute later.

So no, I didn’t feel an ounce of guilt. Not even for the publicity fallout we were going to face.

Stella was alive. I was alive. Seven and Gem were safe. We were all together.

It was a good fucking day.

chapter

thirty-eight

Stella

The story wasn’t going away anytime soon. It was at the top of the gossip sites, the news stations, and even the papers in a lot of major cities: “Fan-club president dies in attempt to murder Seven Harrison’s fiancée. Olivier Griffiths is real-life action hero.” Somehow I’d been upgraded from “girlfriend” to make the drama more dramatic.

Meanwhile, we had to deal with the arduous fallout of the whole incident on our end. Police interviews. Crime scene investigators. Doctors appointments with documentation of my injuries and Ollie’s. Then came the litany of questions: How had she gotten in? Why was she there? Why was that morning the day she snapped?

Ollie and I were separated during the questioning. Seven refused to be removed even when the attorney he hired for me showed up. Peter couldn’t represent Ollie and I both. Even if he was willing, he couldn’t physically be in two places at once.

The questioning seemed to go on forever, or so it seemed. I still wasn’t sure who told them I was Seven’s fiancée. At the time, it hadn’t really seemed that important. Then Page Six announced it.

The hardest pill to swallow in all of this was the fact that the woman who attacked us and died was the president of one of Seven’s online fan clubs, a woman named Karen Tyler. She’d also been employed by the company that provided our house cleaners.

She’d had access to the house and the guys for months. The invasiveness wasn’t lost on me. Seven was furious because what else had she been doing in the house? The police were going to search her place and continue their investigation, but all three guys reluctantly admitted they’d “lost” a lot of underwear in recent months.

Since Ollie and I had basically told them the same story, they weren’t charging him. They did, however, ask him to restrict any travel for a while. It was so late when we left the station, the sun had already set. Gem, however, waited for us in the lot with coffee, food, and a warm hug that I desperately needed.

Gem had gone to see my dad at some point when we were at the police station. With the breaking news, he wanted to be the one to let him know I was okay. He also wanted to relocate him. Since the house was the epicenter of the investigation, he arranged to move Dad into a place nearby with increased security and in-home care.

As for the four of us? We were staying in another mansion that Jerry had secured for us. Increased security included a manned security gate and a patrol. I’d never imagined that would be a life I wanted to live.

The media was everywhere—the press, the paps, all of them. The only time we left was for Ollie’s red-carpet premiere, and we went together, all of us. The questions and the press of the crowd were insane.

One other piece of crazy that came out about Karen Tyler and her attack: she’d been egged on by Dillon. Apparently, he’d been feeding her all the info. While the police were still investigatinghim, he’d been blacklisted. Peter also got a restraining order filed against Dillon to keep him far away from us.

Two weeks after Karen Tyler died, the house was released by the cops and the death labeled self-defense. She’d died trying to attack us, and all Ollie had done was shove her back when she’d tried to charge me. Her death was an accident.

When Peter called us with the news, I did something I wouldn’t have expected in a million years: I burst into tears. Something hot and fierce broke inside of me, and everything came out in a torrent.

Ollie wrapped me up tight and held me while I cried, then he released me to Gem while Ollie went to get us drinks. Eventually, Gem surrendered me to Seven. None of them teased me about the waterworks or the fact that I was the worst crier. My eyes got all puffy and my nose ran. It was pretty damn awful.

“Hey,” Seven said when the crying slowed to hiccups. “You get that all out of your system, Stray?”

I lifted my sore and swollen eyes to glare at him. “Don’t start.”

“I never finished,” he murmured, rubbing a slow circle against my back.

“Pfft.” When I stuck my tongue out at him, he laughed.

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