Page 35 of Shield

“Fair response to your boyfriend carrying some drunk chick he used to fuck out of a club, but go on.”

“Not her boyfriend.” Olivia shakes her head. “Vin and Matti only keep her around because she knows too much, and she’s a great hacker. They never just hang out with her. Voluntarily.”

“Didn’t look like that last night.”

“Do you want the story or not?” she snaps, crossing her arms over her chest.

I gesture for her to continue and grab my sweater from the back of the couch, the one stained by Amelia’s coffee, and pull it on. When she says nothing, choosing instead to watch me suspiciously, I pinch my thumb and forefinger together and drag them across my lips like I’m zipping them shut and throwing away the key.

Olivia sighs. “Vin was holding Valentina back, but she was screaming, hitting him, trying to get to you. Matti shielded you from her because you were too drunk to—”

“To function? To exist?”

She purses her lips at me in warning. “To handle her yourself.” She stops and bites her bottom lip. “That’s when it got weird.”

“It’s not weird to keep someone around who gets shitfaced and physically attacks people?”

Olivia shrugs. “No one’s perfect.”

I throw my hands in the air. Now she’s defending Valentina? What the fuck?

She shakes her head at me. “You’re focusing on the wrong thing.”

I grunt, curling up in the corner of the couch, and she continues.

“Vin and Matti had something going on with some of Aurelio’s men showing up unexpectedly. Matti wanted to take you up to his place, and Vin said it could put you in danger.”

I think we’re getting to the part she didn’t want to tell me, because she slows down and takes a breath.

“Matti decided Vin was right,” Olivia says, holding up her hand in a stop motion before I mouth off. “But then he had me get security together to take you home and told me to go with you to make sure you were okay.”

“You didn’t have to,” I snip and immediately feel bad. It’s not her fault that Matti is a prick.

“I was going to do that anyway, bitch. I fucking love you,” she snaps back. “But when we got in the car, I wouldn’t let Grit leave right away. I made him pull the car around to the front first, so I could run in and round up Blake and Amelia. We dropped them off on the way home.”

Softening, I give her a little smile. “Thank you. You’re a good friend, Olivia.”

“I fucking know that!” she yells, but she’s smiling too.

I love this girl and not even like a little sister. She seems much more mature, much wiser than her twenty-two years. She takes care of people, and she knows how to deal with assholes like Matti and Vin. Apparently, I can’t even do that.

When she doesn’t go on with the story, I frown. “So what is it that I don’t want to hear?”

She sighs. “They didn’t send Valentina home.”

My stomach twists as her face settles into a grimace. “And?”

“And…” she sighs. “When I went back for Blake and Amelia, Isaw Matti carrying her. He and Vin took her to his private elevator, the one that goes nowhere but his penthouse.”

Bile rising, I try to keep my face neutral. “Are you saying they took her to his penthouse and fucked her together?”

Olivia presses her hands to her face and screams into them. “I have no fucking clue what the answer to that question is. I know nothing about their sex lives, either of them, and I very much prefer to keep it that way.” She shudders.

When she uncovers her face and sees my expression, her face pales. “Do you need a trash can or something?”

Something about the way she places her hand on my knee, the pity in her eyes, ignites a fire inside me.

“If you mean for all his bullshit, then yeah, I need a trash can.” I give a dry laugh and pull away from her, standing up to throw out my water bottle. I’m done being the fucking victim.

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