Logan’s reputation in the meantime by using him as a scapegoat? Now I know this is classic Adam. This is how he works. Who he is.
I feel Logan tense in front of me and my arm shoots out to restrain him. “He’s baiting you,” I hiss. “If you beat his face in like you want, you’ll just be giving him everything he wants. Please, babe.”
I intertwine my fingers with his. “Not today. We won’t give him what he wants today.”
Logan swallows hard, really hard, but he gives me an almost imperceptible nod.
And he manages it, too.
The policeman and medical staff get to us and begin reaching for Logan.
“I’ll come quietly,” Logan says, keeping his voice measured and calm. “There’s no need for a scene.”
But it’s as if he didn’t even say a word. I’m just about to let go of his hand when I’m suddenly grabbed by my left arm and yanked sharply away. My arm is wrenched in such a way that I can’t help crying out in pain.
And that, apparently, is Logan’s breaking point.
His head snaps my direction. “Leave her be.”
But the asshole cop, who I now realize must be working in cahoots with Adam, just chuckles in Logan’s face and then spits at his feet, at the perfect angle so the cameras can’t catch it.
“Boy, where you’re going, you ain’t gonna have no say about what happens to Little Miss here back home. Cuff ‘im, men.”
Two other men approach with cuffs and that’s when all hell breaks loose.
Logan lets out a roar and, standing almost a foot taller than all the other men around him, he starts to fight. At least that’s what it looks like from outside the circle that starts to grow around him.
“Logan!” I scream, but I don’t know if he can hear anything above the uproar.
Men in uniform start to fly backwards but almost immediately another takes their place.
I start forward but I’m grabbed on both sides. “Let me go,” I shout but Armand at my left and Cora at my right refuse to let me go. And then it’s the Ubeli’s men in black dragging me backwards away from the fray.
“Logan wouldn’t want you anywhere near that,” Armand shouts in my ear and that’s the only thing that makes me back away. Which unfortunately only gives me a better view of what’s happening to Logan because we head a little ways up the hill and now I can see down on the unfolding tableau.
There must be twenty men surrounding Logan and he’s swinging and brawling like an enraged animal. He’s past reason. That man threatened me and I know, I know that all Logan could see in that moment was that he wouldn’t be able to protect me if they succeeded in taking him away from my side.
“Stop it, please you have to stop them!” I cry, slumping to my knees, my beautiful wedding dress all but ruined by the wet grass outside the tarped area.
But I can only look on in horror as the cops finally get Logan face down on the ground. Only barely, by the looks of it, and it’s taking several men to restrain him there. And then one of the men in scrubs approaches, something in his hand I can’t make out.
Until he raises it to Logan’s neck and with a sickening realization, I realize exactly what it is.
A syringe.
He presses it to Logan’s neck and within thirty seconds, my big, beautiful, virile brand new husband is passed out, sedated like a large, dangerous animal on the floor. Of his own wedding.
And the news cameras were rolling the whole time, capturing the entire thing.
Seventeen
Daphne
Logan had no chance. Not with the video from the wedding. Not just on all the news stations playing 24/7, but also all over the internet.
It would have gone better for Logan if he wasn’t so damn strong. But he just kept knocking them down. Even I haven’t been able to avoid the videos. I was there and they make it look so much more dramatic, maybe because of the filters and the cinematic music always layered on top—
And the fact that an ambulance had to be called for four of the policeman didn’t help his case—even though I know for a fact that none of those supposed ‘terrible injuries’ actually lead to anyone needing to be taken to the hospital and that it was likely all just more fanfare and showcasing by Adam to win points in the press.
“It’s a mess,” I confess