Page 123 of Keep Her from Them

The room held its collective breath. With the phone at an angle, I could just make her out. She had her blonde hair down in soft waves around her heart-shaped face. The picture of her and Dori together on her account had been of a happier-looking woman.

“Dori?” she breathed. “I’m shocked that he still thinks about me, let alone to recommend me to you.”

“Why’s that?” Leo asked.

“That’s highly personal, plus ancient history. How do you even know him?”

Leo’s gaze held Dori’s, who practically vibrated with how rigid he held himself.

“We’re friends. I don’t think you’re ancient history as far as he’s concerned.”

She made a sound of frustration. “I don’t know you to have this kind of discussion, and if I’m overheard… Listen, whatever he said is a lie. For the sake of setting the record straight, he broke up with me by a single message while I was in the middle of the toughest and most gruelling album recording sessions youcan imagine. He shattered me, then blocked me, and left me no method of contacting him. Since then—” Her voice strained, and she stopped.

Dori burst off the wall and snatched the phone, carrying it off down the room. Wild-eyed, he held it up so Elsie could at last see him. “That was a lie. I thought you’d blocked me. I couldn’t get in contact with you at all. I tried every way possible. When I couldn’t get through on your phone, I called your management team, your publicist, all of them. You’d gone ahead and got engaged, and the way I found out was that video appearing online.”

Dead silence filled the line, then a sob. “No, that isn’t what happened.”

“It is! Believe me, I bled to see you. I came to your goddamned engagement party to reach you just to be sure?—”

“You did what?”

Dori slid to his knees on the music room floor. “You didn’t know?”

The three of us made to leave. The contact had been made, our job was done.

Something sounded her end of the line.

Elsie spoke in a rush. “The engagement was fake. I only agreed to it as a publicity stunt because I was upset over losing you. Your breakup message had come in that morning, and I was broken. I mean destroyed. But it went too far, and now…”

Voices sounded on her end of the line, abruptly cutting off her speech.

Her voice was the only clear one, with the emotion completely gone from her tone. “…Leo Banks. We’re talking about a collaboration. Why would you need…Victor!”

Dori scrambled up and tossed the phone to Leo who caught it and centred his face on the screen, right as a man appearedbehind Elsie in the frame. The influencer she was engaged to. He took in Leo then walked away.

“Don’t be long,” he told her. “We have shit to do.”

Dori took the phone back but stayed with us. He touched his gaze on each of us, and I gave him a nod, sharing the sense of something being badly wrong here.

Elsie watched her fiancé leave, and her throat bobbed. “He’s gone.”

“You’re in trouble,” Dori said.

She took a breath. “It’s complicated.”

“Or, it’s simple. You’ve been lied to and kept away from me. Did anyone tell you I’d asked to speak to you?”

“No one. You even spoke to Misty, my manager?”

“Even her. She told me you were too busy to talk and that she’d pass on my name but I shouldn’t expect shit back.”

“She lied. Oh God. Why did she lie to me? She knew how hurt I was. Dori, please, the breakup message wasn’t from you?”

Dori crumpled. “No. I never would’ve. I got one, too.”

The two of them watched one another, and the emotion fucking choked me. It felt intrusive to witness, but I also knew Dori needed us. Like Alex, even in the middle of a wealthy family and castles for days, he had next to no true support. He needed a team around him.

Like he’d read my mind, Dori centred himself. He panned the camera to show me and Jax. “I have bodyguard friends here who can get you out. I don’t know what’s going on there, but I’m certain you have to leave now.”

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