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Court uncrossed his legs and stood up, moved to me, and knelt between my legs. His big, warm hands gently cupped my face as he leaned in, eyes locked on mine. All his anger had waned in seconds, and fuck if I wasn’t envious of that. “Hey,” he said softly, brushing his thumbs over my cheekbones. “It didn’t happen. Okay? You’re safe. You are safe now. You’re with us. Nobody is ever going to hurt you, I promise, Whitney. I won’t let anything happen to you.”

My stomach flipped at his words and the intensity in his eyes. He said things like that so easily, things that probably didn’t mean much to him but completely wrecked me.

An ugly, awful sound slipped past my lips, and when my nose started prickling, I gritted my teeth and shoved away the sharp, overwhelming anguish that was trying to escape.

I cleared my throat and pulled my eyes from Court’s, lowering my gaze to a loose thread on the couch. “If you guys know about Thorne, shouldn’t you be warning every woman who works for him?”

Court sighed, moving his hands from my face to my thighs. That wasn’t any better. “It’s not that simple. And you’re the first woman who’s worked with him in years. He hasn’t hired another woman since Sherry, probably so he wasn’t mixing business with pleasure,” he spat.

My gaze darted to his. “It is that simple! Instead of stopping him, you’re—you’re just letting him get away with⁠—”

“We have done everything we can to try and stop him!” Silence rang in the room when Court’s shouted words hit me like shrapnel. I froze, stunned at the outburst.

His frustration boiled over as he got to his feet and paced across the room, leaning his forearm on the mantle and lowering his head to his arm. “He has connections everywhere. Why do you think we’re targeting his stores and going after his money? When we’ve taken all we can from him, we’re putting him down like the fucking dog he is. That’s the only way he can be stopped.” He practically snarled those final sentences at me, a vengeful wrath etched in every line on his face.

In this moment, he looked like some kind of demi god hell-bent on exacting his revenge. He looked beautiful and terrible.

Yet beneath that rage was a heavy, painful sorrow. A grief so deeply embedded in his bones that it would forever be a part of him. I recognized that pain. I knew that grief so intimately, it was like staring into a mirror. But unlike what I saw in Court, the reflection showed my ugliest, weakest parts. The most revolting pieces of my soul that had proven to be indestructible.

He hated Thorne, and not just because of what he’d done to Sherry Bateman. There was far more thread to unravel here, but I had a feeling if I pulled right now, the thread would just snap.

Anger bubbled. Envy coiled around that anger and squeezed. I despised seeing so much of myself in someone else. To see it was to acknowledge it existed, and I hated knowing it was there. That it would always be there. I hated knowing no matter how fast or far I ran, it would forever cling to me.

Why should he get to absolve himself of the same thing that I’d never get a chance to expel from my being? So what if he’d been done wrong? Hadn’t we all? To live was to suffer. Nobody—not a single soul on this earth—got to live a life fully free of suffering. His pain wasn’t special. We all had pain and we all sought out ways to make that pain go away. I had a feeling that eliminating Thorne was Court’s way of trying to make the pain go away, and I wanted to tell him it would never go away. He’d forever be stuck with that pain, no matter what he did to try and balance out the past.

I knew that all too well.

My next question was a carefully-aimed barb, and I was fully aware of that, but the anger was in control now.

“What happened to your mom?” I asked. As soon as the words left my lips, I regretted asking him, but it was too late.

Court reared back like I’d slapped him, paling. “What? Who talked about my mom with you?” His voice was eerily quiet. Too soft to match the fury in his eyes.

He looked like he was ready to go snap someone’s head off. I didn’t want Brooks to get in trouble, but that’s exactly what was going to happen. All because I couldn’t keep my mouth shut and sit with my feelings for a few seconds longer.

“Nobody,” I lied, rubbing my hands down my face. “Sorry, that was⁠—”

Court turned fully toward me, something wild in his eyes. “What did I just tell you? I said don’t lie to me, Whitney.”

I winced, not able to meet his gaze for the first time. Too ashamed that I’d just taken a knife to an open wound.

Court wasn’t letting me off the hook, and a part of me was glad because I really deserved whatever was coming next. “Was it Brooks? What did he say to you? It was either Brooks or Vincent, and neither of them had any business talking about that with you. They fucking know better.” He started walking toward the hall, about to kill them both.

I jumped off the couch and positioned myself in front of him, palming his chest. “They didn’t tell me anything, okay? Just leave them alone.”

His chest moved rapidly under my hands, his heart beating erratically. I’d never seen him so worked up. As he stared down at me, nostrils flaring and eyes blazing with undelivered retribution and an anguish so raw it hurt to look at, I began rubbing my hands up and down, trying to soothe this beast of a man.

Guilt ate at me. No, his pain wasn’t special, but it was special to him and he had every right to seek revenge on someone who had wronged a person he cared about. Who the fuck was I to pass judgment and decide whether he got to assuage his grief through revenge? Just because I was jealous that he actually had someone alive he could remove from existence. Just because I didn’t get that same chance.

I pressed my face into his chest. “I’m sorry,” I said softly. “I’m sorry, Court.” I wasn’t sure if I actually could calm him down. Every muscle beneath my fingers was rigid with tension. I tilted my head back so I could meet his eyes. “They didn’t tell me anything. I’m not lying to you. I swear. Brooks just mentioned your mom and then he stopped talking. That’s it.”

For a moment, I thought he would fling my hands off him and storm from the room. But then he relaxed, shoulders sagging on an exhale. And that envious feeling that he could so easily drop his anger arose once again, making a knot form in the pit of my stomach.

He closed his eyes, then wrapped his arms around me, crushing me to the hard length of him and holding me so tight that all the air wheezed out of my lungs.

He rested his chin on the top of my head and murmured, “What am I going to do with you?”

I didn’t answer. First and foremost because I couldn’t suck enough air in to get a response out and it seemed like a rhetorical question anyway, but also because I was partially frozen in shock.