Page 32 of Worth

“Zander,” Aiden’s voice says, cautious. “She didn’t know.”

I clench my teeth. I know that. I know she couldn’t possibly know what she had triggered by saying those words. I want to make her pay anyway. Because that will give me back control, and I need control to breathe again.

My hand tightens on the scissors again. In one fluid move, I twist my fingers in her hair tighter and pull it tighter. Rolling the shears between my fingers, I managed to get them into place and start hacking away. Aiden is yelling. Blake is shrieking like a wild animal.

I just keep cutting.

When her braid detaches, the last strands cut, it’s left dangling from my fingers and Blake nearly falls on her ass. Her hands clutch at the refrigerator handles before she can, keeping her upright. When she whirls, her eyes full of mirth and her lips spitting curses at me, I lob her cut off braid at her, hitting her in the face.

“There,” I snarl. “Now you won’t be as recognizable if you go out.”

I watch her face turn red, and it’s not with embarrassment, but anger. Just as the flush spreads down her neck and across her chest, her expression suddenly changes.

She starts laughing, full-blown belly laughs that have her doubling over, her arms crossed over her stomach.

I glance at Aiden, my brows furrowed, but he’s zero help. He’s pissed the fuck off and the only movement he gives is one where he narrows his eyes with a promise of retribution for the way I just assaulted Blake.

“Thanks!” she chortles, swiping at her eyes. “That shit was heavy.” She shakes her head, bouncing around her new hairstyle, the uneven and hacked up edges not even touching her shoulders. With a skip in her step, Blake passes by me, stopping to pat the top of my head like I’m a dog. “I’ll be ready in five.”

I gape as she rushes up the stairs and disappears onto the second level with a ringing laugh.

I don’t know what the fuck just happened, but I do know one thing:

Blake is as crazy as me and Aidencombined.

Chapter 11

Okay, so I wasn’t that thrilled about the hair thing. But with all the shit I had been through in my life, a bad haircut that could be classified as assault was the least of my worries. Plus, I hadn’t been lying when I said that my hair had been heavy.

My newly shortened hair wisps around my face in the SUV’s air conditioning, Zander at the wheel. Aiden sits in the front passenger seat—scowling because Zander refused to let him ride in the back seat with me. Something about how I would only distract him.

“How come we didn’t take Aiden’s car?” I ask, head whipping back and forth as I take in the view out the side windows. The house might be in the woods, but it’s not far outside a remarkably busy city.

“Because everyone’s looking for it because ofyou,” Zander answers, voice snide.

“Fucking hell,” I sigh, rolling my eyes. “Were you born with that stick up your ass, or did you have it surgically implanted?”

The car jolts as Zander’s foot slips off the gas pedal, his gaze swinging around to me. The vitriol in it should scare the shit out of me. Instead, I just smile sweetly and blink a few times like the innocent angel I am.

Aiden, choking back a laugh as Zander whirls back around and smashes the gas pedal, braces a hand on Zander’s seat, turning enough so that he can grin at me. “Zander can be a lot of fun, actually,” he tells me, ignoring the glare he gets from the driver’s seat.

“Could have fooled me,” I mutter, leaning back against the seat. “Where are we going again?”

“To the warehouse,” Aiden answers.

I feel my forehead wrinkle. “Warehouse for what?”

“You’ll see soon enough,” Zander snaps. “Stop talking, or I’ll be sure you never leave that goddamn house again.”

A scathing remark burns the tip of my tongue as I swallow it back down. I may be a lot of things, but I’m not quite stupid enough to risk him following through on that threat. Aiden glances over his shoulder at me, his lips twitching with humor when I flip him off just because I can.

I do as I am told—for once—and stay quiet, scooting closer to the driver side window to watch the buildings and other cars fly by. It’s only when the car takes the ramp off the highway that I look forward again, over Zander’s shoulder. We drive for another minute or two, my eyes scanning the road ahead of us, looking for anything to indicate where we’re going.

My mouth drops open when we finally pull up to a chain-link security gate. The building beyond is nothing like the so-called warehouse I had in mind. I had been thinking of an industrial, corrugated metal building — a place that Zander and Aiden used to store...I don’t even know what I thought they stored. It hadn’t really occurred to me to askwhatthey kept in their warehouse.

But it wouldn’t have mattered, anyway. Because it wasn’tawarehouse—it wasThe Warehouse. Or at least that’s what the sign directly to the left of the gate claims. The building doesn’t look like it’s one used for storing products or anything like it. No, the building in front of me looks like it belongs in a lucrative part of a large city instead of sandwiched between two grimy, rundown buildings.

The gate shudders as it begins to roll open after Zander taps a series of numbers into the little box at his window. As he drives through the opening, I count the floors—fifteen of them, to be exact—marveling at the shining glass building jutting up in front of us.

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