ball into fists at my side. I’ve never felt the need to throat punch Cruz before. That’s usually something I save for Carver and maybe sometimes Grayson, but right now, Cruz is moments from experiencing what it’s like to be on the receiving end of my rage.
Carver’s voice cuts through my fury and instantly has me turning back to meet his eye. “It’s fine,” he says. “It’s just Preston Scardoni.”
My eyes somehow go wider as the guys seem to relax. I walk over to Carver and peer down at his phone to see the security footage of Preston desperately trying to tear the front gates down with his bare hands.
Carver presses the volume button on the side of his phone, and not a second later, Preston’s voice comes tearing through the room. “You have three fucking seconds to open this goddamn gate and tell me what the fuck you did with my son. I know something is going on.”
“Fuck,” I breathe, my eyes snapping back up to Carver’s. “He knows.”
He shakes his head. “He doesn’t know.”
“But—”
“No,” Grayson says. “All he knows is that Jacob didn’t come home last night and seeing as though you did, something must have fucked with their plans. He’s thinking the worst, but he doesn’t actually know. He’s just assuming.”
“But—”
“No,” Carver cuts in. “There’s no proof. For all he knows, Jacob wrote himself off last night and was too fucked up to get home. Preston is just taking a guess, but he’s got nothing. For him to push this with the heads of Dynasty means he will have to explain why he’s accusing us and come clean about their role in all this. They can’t implicate us without implicating themselves.”
My brows raise and I search his eyes, looking for some kind of hope. “Are you sure?”
King’s hands fall to my waist as his chest presses into my back. “Positive,” he murmurs, his lips right beside my ear before he drops a kiss to my shoulder. He raises his head and meets Carver’s stare. “You might as well let him in. We’re going to have to have a little chat with Preston.”
“Agreed,” Cruz says.
Just like that, Carver presses a button on his phone and the gate slowly peels open. Preston stands dumbfounded for a short moment before racing back to his car and screeching down the driveway.
“Are you ready for this?” Cruz asks. “Facing him after what we did is going to fuck with your mind, and your guilty conscience is going to come out to play, but you need to hold your ground. Don’t let him see you break, and if in doubt, don’t say anything at all. We’ll handle it.”
I nod, loving how he knows me well enough to know that I would have taken over the show and demanded Preston’s attention, but for the first time, I don’t think I know what the hell to say. I made the call to end his son’s life last night, and despite knowing that Jacob was the one to put in the order for an attack last night and the one in the woods, I’m not sure that I’m strong enough to face his father.
Sitting around a massive table and telling Preston that he’s an asshole is as simple as breathing, but facing him after taking his son away from him, that’s an entirely different situation.
“So, what do we do?”
A grin cuts across Grayson’s lips as he looks back at me. The devilish sparkle that hits his eye is enough to have something roaring alive inside me. I absolutely love when he looks at me like that; I’m a sucker for it. “Now, we let the bastard in and watch as he unknowingly admits to it all.”
I laugh, rolling my eyes. “That’s insane. A guy like Preston Scardoni isn’t going to come in here and admit to everything that he’s done. He’s been playing this game for far too long. He’s not stupid.”
“You never know,” King murmurs as both he and Cruz go and stand with Grayson and Carver. “Men who let their emotions control and rule over them have a way of fucking it all up.”
I laugh to myself, eyeing Carver and Grayson and watching their stares harden when they figure out exactly what’s going through my mind. “Yeah,” I agree, a grin splitting across my face. “I have a little experience with that.”
Grayson just rolls his eyes, almost as though he’s completely over the little chat we had, while Carver looks even more pissed. I