Right then, I was pretty sure that had been the wrong decision.
Hindsight’s a bitch.
“Excuse me,” Jennings’s attorney cut in, “but I’m not sure what your client is insinuating here. Let’s keep this to the matter at hand.”
Matter at hand?
Well this fucking mattered.
“Tell me, what did you say to my brother that night? What did you give him?”
Scum like Jennings had their fingers in every pot, and he had his dipped deep, covered in the residue of all that dirty money feeding the addicts in this cursed town, even though he kept the front of a straight-edged businessman.
I knew better.
“You’d be wise to drop this issue, Mr. Stone.” Jennings spit my name with a lift of his scarred chin. “You’ll notice people who stand in my way don’t fair well.”
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
“It means don’t fuck with me.”
I lifted my chin in a mock gesture of his. “Looks to me like I already have.”
“Sebastian,” Anthony warned, quick and sharp.
A derisive snort puffed from Jennings’s nose, anger dying his ears a purpled red. “You’re just like Mark and your brother. Pathetic. Desperate.”
His statement spun around me on a frantic loop—confusion and dread and alarm.
“What did you just say?” I demanded low, my chest pressing firm, a crush at my ribs.
“All of you. Pathetic.”
In a blur of fury and rage, I flew out of my chair. It toppled back as I sprang over the table, because this gleaming wood wasn’t about to stand as an obstacle in my way.
Those corrupted brown eyes rounded in shock. Flashed in fear. Then I was on him, dragging him from his chair and slamming him against the wall, my forearm the pin that fastened him to the wall by his throat. I pressed at his lifeline as he struggled at my arm.
“What the fuck do you have to say about Mark?”
I released him for the briefest second, and he wheezed in a sharp breath before I nailed him back to the wall. “Tell me…tell me!” And I realized in that second I was that desperate, pathetic person, because I couldn’t see, couldn’t hear anything but the mania pounding fire into my veins, that same rage that had originally brought me to his door holding me hostage. Demanding I get answers. Only now it was doubled. My teeth ground. “What did you say about Mark? About my brother?”
Hands were all over me, yanking me back, tearing me away.
Voices.
Voices.
Voices.
“Stop…Sebastian. Stop.”
Anthony and Kenny hauled me back, and Martin Jennings bent in half, gasping for the air I’d robbed him of.
Hostility vibrated through me, my legs shaking, my heart thrashing in defiance.
Jennings lifted his head, animosity smeared across his face. “You will regret this.”
His attorneys and the mediator stood there stunned.
“Come on, Baz…” Words subdued, Anthony pulled at my arm. “This meeting is over.”
Silently, Anthony and Kenny led me back downstairs. Cameras set ablaze the second I stepped outside. I didn’t even acknowledge them. I went straight for the car sitting at the curb. Two seconds later, Anthony plopped down beside me.
My breaths were ragged. Pained as they dragged in and out of my lungs. “Take me home,” I demanded to the driver who glanced at me from the rearview mirror.
Anthony acquiesced with a subtle nod, and the car jerked into traffic, making a couple quick, successive turns to point us in the direction of The Hills.
Rigid, I tried to cool the heat in my brain, to reconcile what Jennings had said with what I knew, to make sense of what had just gone down.
We were heading up the hill before I finally muttered a quiet, “I’m sorry.”
Because I was.
Sorry that for once, I couldn’t just do what Anthony asked.
But I wasn’t sorry enough to wish I could take it back.
Lips spread in a thin line, and Anthony jerked his head once. “Don’t be. Wanted to be doing that myself, honestly.” He sighed. “I’m going to fix this, Baz. There’s no chance you’re going to prison and he’s not going to see a dime of your money. After that stunt back there? I will do everything and anything I have to do to get you out of this. I promise you. You and I both know what that scum is into, and I’m not about to stand back and allow him to get away with it.”
I couldn’t answer, because at this point, I didn’t care about any of that.
All I cared about was my brother.
The car made a left into our drive, which was basically a short, narrow trail flanked by high shrubs and trees that nearly eclipsed the massive house. Impatiently, I hopped out.
“I’ll see you in a couple hours before the show,” Anthony called after me as I flung the door shut and ran down the front walk and through the double doors.