Page 14 of Treasured By 3

“This is dangerous! It’s wrong. I never should have let the guys introduce you to them,” she argues. “If Holden would have told me.”

Holden doesn’t flinch, he just shrugs. “Didn’t tell anyone.”

“Then you did better than I did,” Valerie grumbles.

I walk behind her and wrap my arms around her. “Should we have Sophia help us pick centerpieces?”

“I’d like that,” Valerie agrees, kissing my cheek.

“I need that apron,” Gunner says.

“You don’t cook,” Roman argues. “I like my apron well enough.”

“Well, maybe I would cook if I could use it to flirt with-”

“Enough!” Sophia grabs at her hair, then takes both of Valerie’s hands. “Why are you with these three? If you just found out, you should be running. You can always come to us and we can set you up in Italy or in ... somewhere safe!”

I stay quiet even as I listen in. I pull up one of the cameras and notice Valerie touching her belly. She looks queasy, upset. She hides anxiety and panic well.

Sophia stares at her hand, and then her eyes bulge. “Oh god, are you pregnant?”

“No!” Valerie yells, before lowering her voice and sucking her bottom lip. “I’m not pregnant. I’m stressed as hell.”

“Then why are you doing this ... unless..” Sophia goes quiet, but Valerie doesn’t fill in any blanks. She just watches her best friend process, as if Valerie already knows what pieces she’s adding together until Sophia stumbles back a step. “You’ve known about this, haven’t you? And that thing at the clinic, that wasn’t ... it wasn’t some disturbed patient, was it? It was one oftheirenemies trying to kill you.”

“Sophia, I need you to take a breath and sit down,” Valerie says. “I can see you’re about to burst.”

“Because my best friend has been throwing herself in danger! My best friend has been lying to me for ... a year! At least! And I’m the reason you had to do it!” She sinks to the couch and her husbands take up the space next to her. Holden places Sophia on his lap and whispers to her.

Valerie looks around and I make my return, still trying to steer the focus away from this problem. If I can get us focused on something else, maybe that will buy me time to minimize the details of our ... adventures. “So, we have ten options.”

“Forget the flowers!” Sophia yells. “How long have you known Valerie? And what the hell have you gotten into?”

Valerie and I share a long look before I nod. I pull her onto my lap, sitting with her in the recliner. The pictures remain in a manilla folder on her knees, an option for her to bring up.

I take a slow breath. “About a month after we all met up at the gala where Valerie came with Gunner, she discovered what we do in the worst way possible. She witnessed me ... following an order.”

“That long?! What the hell?” Sophia glowers at Valerie as if I’m not the one talking right now.

“Alright, now we’re going to talk about this,” Chase booms. “You let itslip? That’s not something that ‘slips’, Valerie.”

“How did it even come up?” Hunter yells in Russian. “It couldn’t have been naturally and-”

“Don’t you yell at my best friend!” Sophia orders. “Not when I’m doing the yelling!”

What a headache.

SIX

Valerie

This is toomuch to handle. Hunter and Chase glower at Sophia. Hunter’s the one who gets words out. “How did you get her to spill?”

“She was telling me how she couldn’t choose who to marry on paper and it just happened to come up that Chase here is a fucking mafia boss!” Sophia yells. “And that’s not the point. The point, Valerie, is that you lied to me.”

“They are a business!” I argue. “Anytime they got hurt, I said it was on business and that was true. I did get hurt at work. The man was technically a patient.”

“So now you’re going technical on me?” she asks.

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