Page 111 of The Arrogant One
“She didn’t come? Why?”
I shook my head. “Not her scene.”
“I get that. I get that. It’s definitely not everyone’s thing.” She gently tapped my chest. But out of nowhere, her eyes began to widen. “Wait a second. Does that mean Beck is here?”
“He’ll be here later. He has some press shit to do.”
She wiggled as she let out a bizarre-sounding hum. “Bryn is going to lose it when she finds out. You have no idea. This is her dream come true.”
I chuckled. “Then tonight is her night.”
“I’m not going to tell her. I’m going to keep it a surprise and let that nugget reveal itself when it happens.”
I kissed her because that was cute.
And because I’d been missing her lips all evening.
And because something felt off, and I couldn’t put my finger on it, and I wanted things to feel right.
“Do you want to meet everyone?” I nodded toward the bar where everyone was standing.
“I would love to.”
When she gave me the same grin she’d just used when she spoke about Bryn meeting Beck, my stomach should have settled.
But it didn’t.
I thought that when I got home, after having a shit ton of fun at Musik with my friends and family and Sadie, the restless feeling in my stomach would fade. I certainly thought a shower and some sleep would ease whatever was happening in my gut.
But when I opened my eyes the next morning and went to my home gym to work out, the feeling was still there. I made it a leg day—the hardest of all my workouts—and maxed out on every set. That did nothing. I ran four miles on the treadmill, and that did nothing either.
Whatever this was, it was fucking nagging at me relentlessly, like a woodpecker’s beak pecking at a trunk of wood.
I couldn’t get my head straight during my commute into the office, and when I got to my computer, I forced myself to go through my emails and attended an unnecessary and unrequired meeting, hoping something—anything—would take this feeling away.
But nothing would shake it.
So, when I returned to my office, I logged in to the system that tracked the reservationsfor Musik.
I hadn’t wanted to go this route. It felt wrong to dig into this information—the little amount of insight I had access to. Because if I had to investigate, then I was solidifying that something was wrong.
And I didn’t want it to be wrong. I wanted everything with Sadie to be right.
I typed in the required information, which was the date and the location of the club—since we had several—and the reservations began to load on my monitor.
A small percentage of people could walk into Musik and get immediate access to the VIP lounge. But that was reserved for celebrities and business executives and names that were preapproved.
Which raised the question,How did Sadie get in?
I toggled to the name category, putting them in ascending order by first name, and found Sadie near the bottom. I then clicked the details tab, and everything that was known about her reservation appeared.
A reservation she had made four days ago, where she had entered her full name and Bryn’s, and done it online at around six in the evening. It showed her email address and the type of credit card she’d used to pay for her entrance fee.
Beneath that was a time stamp—the exact time she had checked into Musik.
9:06 p.m.
A time that set off several alarms in my head.
