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Kai moved out of my line of sight, and my eyes grew heavy again. A minute later, a straw pressed to my lips, and Lincoln urged me to drink. The liquid spilled down my throat, and I lifted my lips away.
“What happened?” I finally managed to say, my throat whetted now.
Speaking still hurt, but it was much easier now that I was hydrated.
“Never mind that,” Kai started to say, but Paxton interrupted.
“You were poisoned.”
I gasped as Kai scowled, and Lincoln sat back, shaking his head.
“You could have used a bit more segue,” Lincoln grumbled as I struggled to sit up, choking.
“P-poisoned. What?!”
“It’s all right—” Kai mumbled, but I wasn’t having any of that.
“This is not all right!” I sputtered. “Who would do something like that? And in the middle of a political fundraiser? I mean… was I the only one?”
The men looked at one another, and I had my answer. The memory of the gold and black gift box flooded back to me in a torrent.
“Was it from the senator?” I mewled, aghast by the idea.
“NO!” All three were adamant about that.
“No, of course not,” Lincoln added, reaching for my hand. “He is appalled that something like this happened on his watch. His teams are combing through the surveillance right now. We’ll get to the bottom of it.”
“They asked for me by name. That bellhop—”
“He wasn’t part of the hotel staff,” Lincoln sighed, squeezing my hand. “He’s disappeared. But we’ll find him. Don’t worry.”
Tears burned in my eyes. “Why would anyone do that?”
My mind turned to the horrible posts on social media, and I whimpered. Would someone hurt me because of that? People were sick, but were they that sick?
“You need a security team, Mylee,” Paxton sighed, again glancing at his partners. “You’re as public a figure as we are now.”
“Yeah,” I scoffed, my earlier anger resurfacing. “I saw the social media posts.”
Understanding colored their faces in unison, and they drew back, inhaling.
“Oh…” Lincoln mumbled.
“Yeah, oh.”
“Is that why you’ve been so upset with us?” Kai asked.
“Isn’t that a good enough reason to be upset with you?” I demanded, waiting for them to tell me that I was overreacting.
“It is,” Paxton agreed, surprising me. “But we don’t pay attention to that nonsense. Especially over trash like that.”
He sat forward and took my other hand, the one that Lincoln wasn’t holding. “You’re new to this, but we’ve been dealing with rumors and innuendo for years, Mylee. If we got upset over every stupid gossip threat pertaining to Silverpiece, we’d go crazy.”
“We have people who monitor our socials,” Lincoln added. “And if there’s a real problem, we hear about it, but when it comes to our personal lives…”
He shrugged. “It doesn’t affect our shareholders—no offense.”
I wasn’t sure how to take what he was saying.
