Page 188 of The Stalker

She walked into the room to find Gabriel and Ariana sitting on one sofa while Sebastian and Lita sat on another with Mirabella in Sebastian’s arms.

Gabriel looked up and frowned when he saw her. “Where’s Hayden?”

“He’s with Harrison and Heather in my room.” She saw the looks of surprise on their faces and added, “Jesse’s standing guard.”

“Okaaaay,” Sebastian said slowly, dragging out the word. “Why?”

Tatiana inhaled deeply and blew out the breath of air as she frowned at them. “I have to tell you guys something.”

She walked across the room and dropped into the chair by the window that had become ‘her’ chair in the time when they were trying to track down Hayden. They were all looking at her and waiting for her to say something.

“There’s no easy way to say this, and I’ll tell you about everything that happened once Hayden is here with Harrison and Heather. He wanted to speak to them first, though, so that he could tell them in private that it was Sarah who was behind the drugging in Los Angeles.”

Four stunned faces looked back at her before Lita said, “No, it wasn’t. Sebastian told me it was the hotel manager who was the ringleader.” She turned to look at her fiancé. “He was convicted and went to jail last year when I was pregnant, didn’t he?”

“Yes, he did,” Sebastian confirmed.

“That was what she wanted. It was all a part of her big plan. She wrangled her way into the hotel staff and manipulated them into drugging you, all while making them think it was their idea.”

“Why would she want to do that to us?” Ariana asked in a sad voice.

Tatiana sighed and looked at her. “She was going to have sex with Hayden while he was high. In her mind, the sex would be so good that he would fall in love with her.”

“That’s fucking disgusting,” Sebastian spat out.

“It’s rape is what it is.” Lita curled her lip as she said it, looking as equally disgusted as Tatiana felt.

“Where is she now?” Gabriel asked.

“She was killed during the rescue. Daniel was taken into custody.”

Silence met her words as they took them in, and she sighed again.

“I know it’s a lot to take in. Some of the stuff that Hayden’s going to tell you will be very hard to hear, but he felt as though he should tell Harrison and Heather the reason behind the drugging on their own. He asked me to come up and tell you guys so that you would know and we wouldn’t need to discuss it in front of them if they didn’t want to talk about it.”

“Shit. Of course, that makes total sense,” Gabriel said.

They sat and waited for the other three members of their group to join them, sitting in relative silence and having disjointed conversations here and there. Tatiana could feel their need to have the blanks filled in emanating from them, but none of them pressed her on what she knew.

When the three other people arrived, the tension within the room thickened, and Hayden smiled at Tatiana as Heather and Harrison sat in chairs nearby. There were exclamations of ‘Hayden!’ and he greeted everyone in the room, giving them hugs in turn until he was in front of Tatiana’s chair.

He looked tired and sad, with dark circles underneath his eyes, and she knew the conversation he’d just had must have taken a huge emotional toll on him, but he still had to relive most of it for his friends again.

He sat in the armchair next to hers and looked at the group in front of them. “So, a lot has happened over the last few days.”

“Understatement of the year right there,” Sebastian said through gritted teeth, and Hayden chuckled.

“True. So, I went through all of this last night with the FBI, and it was really hard.” He looked over at Tatiana, and she gave him an encouraging smile. “The thing that helped me get through it was having Tatiana there with me. So I guess I have to start with some positive news, at least. Tatiana and I are together.”

The expressions of the people in the room were a mixture of delight, confusion, and sheer amusement as they looked at them, and Hayden linked his hand with hers as he smiled at her.

“Any questions?” he asked when he turned back to look at his friends.

Lita was the first one to speak. “About a million.”

“I figured,” Hayden said with an amused grin at her.

“I knew it,” Heather said from where she was sitting next to Harrison.

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