The Revenge by Tijan

The crowd tripled in size. It was chaos. Flashes were going off. People were shouting questions. People were shoving. And for once, the attention was no longer on us.

I loved that.

Maybe this wasn’t such a dumb plan after all.

But then Matt was shoving through the crowd.

I was still standing back, but he turned, grabbed my arm, and dragged me behind him.

I glanced for Tony, but he was already doing his part. He was skimming the back end of the crowd, and he was hunching down so I was close to losing him in the crowd.

Wow. He was good at this. They really had done this before.

Fitz was on the outskirts. He and Scott were both watching us. Both wearing slight frowns. Both looking resigned to letting us do whatever we were going to do. They’d been like that since Kash left, so I assumed either they hadn’t been given orders to directly stop us from doing certain things or they were given the opposite order—protect from afar, but still let us do idiotic things.

Quinn’s lawyers were leaving the room, Quinn right behind them.

I had another burst of fear and grabbed for Matt’s shirt. He stepped out from the last edges of the crowd, and his shirt slipped right through my fingers.

Was that fate?

At first, they didn’t see us.

They kept going.

Matt stepped even more out of the crowd, right in their way now.

The first lawyer guy had no option. He was blocked, but his glance was distracted as he began to move around Matt. Then recognition flared and he ground to a halt. He was raising his briefcase, but I was certain that was a reflex, because he didn’t do anything with it, just held it up to his chest and looked at his partner.

They’d all seen Matt.

Eyes slid to his right, and there I was.

Now cameras were swinging back to us, because apparently they’d forgotten we were present, and I had a thought in the back of my mind that the whole reason we came ahead of time hadn’t worked. Word had not gotten to Quinn, because both of her lawyers looked shocked to see us.

They were dressed in their sleek business suits. One lawyer had a head of white hair. The second lawyer was younger, his black hair combed back, and I wondered if he was sleeping with Quinn. Seemed like her type; he was very Drew Bonham-ish.

Then there was Quinn. She had paused behind the two lawyers. They closed ranks, as we knew they would, and the younger guy tugged at his collar.

“What are you doing here?” he asked. “There’s to be no interaction between your family and our client.”

Matt was talking.

I wasn’t paying attention to his words, but I heard his tone. It was the same voice he used when he wanted to get a reaction, when he wanted to piss someone off. He was doing it amazingly, because the white-haired lawyer went all rigid. Quinn, too. Her gaze had been latched on me, but whatever Matt said, Quinn’s head snapped to his and she began to step forward.

That’s when it happened.

The guy in the black hoodie, his head slouched down, moved behind Quinn. There was a surge in the crowd, and I knew it had been created by him, but also by the press suddenly jostling forward to get whatever Matt was saying on camera, and Tony was there.

And he was gone.

It happened that fast.

Quinn had been jostled from the crowd, too, but it happened so smoothly that she never reacted.

Shit. Holy crap.

It was done. Already.

I gulped, looking around to see if anyone else caught it.

No.

No.

No!

We were in the clear.

All cameras were on us. Well, they were on Matt, then to me, and back to Matt.

I gulped again. It couldn’t be that easy. Could it?

I kept looking, even to the people lining up on the sides of the hallway. All eyes were on us. I looked up, seeing security cameras up there, but no way. No way could they have gotten Tony on there. I looked, checking the group of people surrounding us, and we were encased. Quinn, too.

Crappity crap crap. Looks like the plan worked.

“—ley!”

“What?” I yelled, out of reflex, jerking at Matt’s sudden shout in my ear.

But he wasn’t in my ear. He was standing a normal distance away and he had been trying to get my attention.

I flushed. I was always flushing. “What? Sorry.”

He was fighting a grin, but one of his eyebrows was arched up. He nodded to Quinn. “Now’s your time. Say your piece to her, to the woman who tried to have you killed.”

At his words, a new buzz went through the hallway. The press got excited. That sound bite was going to be played on repeat over the next few weeks.

I stifled my groan but looked at Quinn. I made eye contact with her, and the hatred that I expected to feel …

It wasn’t there.

It wasn’t there!

Why wasn’t it there?

A burning was in my chest instead, and it was spreading. Growing. It was filling up my throat, tunneling down into my stomach.

No. I didn’t feel hate for her anymore.

I smiled at her instead, and a few people in the crowd gasped, as if a smile was worse.

Quinn frowned, but she was waiting.

Everyone was waiting.

“I know the government cares what you tried to do to me, but right now, I don’t care about me. I care about Seraphina and Curtis. They’re the real victims here.”

Quinn blanched. A sheen came over her eyes, making them glisten. I wanted to believe those were unshed tears, but knowing her, dust might’ve been thrown in her eyes.