Page 20 of Greed: The Savage (Seven Deadly Sins #7)

A long, low whistle cut through the air of Addien’s modest but comfortable bedchamber.

“Gore, would you look at you, gel.”

Delilah’s voice carried the same mix of anger, horror, and bitter protectiveness she’d shown the night Darcy had been roughed up for the first—and last—time.

Back then, it had been just Addien, Darcy, Delilah, and Alice—her closest friend—gathered in a tight vigil around the battered beauty.

They hadn’t come together to sob and wring hands.

No, they’d railed, plotted, and imagined every violent retribution possible for the gentleman who’d dared lay a hand on her.

In the end, they’d been denied the pleasure. Dynevor had taken that revenge for them—and he’d exacted a pound of flesh and then some, delivering far worse with his power, connections, and sheer force than the four of them ever could.

Darcy’s injuries had been worse. Her assault more brutal. But Addien knew as she sat here now—this hadn’t been the first assault on Addien, and it wouldn’t be her last.

“Did he do you all the way wrong?” Delilah asked, casual as a countess asking after a lady’s modiste.

“No.” Seated at the vanity, Addien angled her head, inspecting the place where Lord Dunworthy had imprinted his hand upon her flesh. The stark outline of his fingers—clear when she’d first stepped into her room—had already begun to fade since she’d changed, with Delilah’s help.

No wonder Malric had known exactly what had been done to her. Not that it would’ve taken an Oxford scholar to guess. The only baffling part was his incandescent rage—rage that might very well have ended with the viscount’s death had someone not intervened.

Delilah tilted Addien’s face again, probing the bruise along her cheekbone with careful fingertips. Addien flinched.

A scowl creased her friend’s fine, beautiful features. “The only thing noble about him is that he’s a bloody nobleman. Otherwise, the Devil himself wouldn’t—”

“He bloody went back for me!” Addien burst out, heat sparking through her veins.

“He could’ve walked out. Could’ve just had us leave and kept his mouth shut—but he didn’t.

” Her pulse hammered as the truth tumbled free.

“He stormed in and tore Dunworthy apart with his bare hands and, aside from the day Dynevor saved me, Malric’s the only man—”

“Malric?” Delilah’s brows shot up. “Oi, I wasn’t talkin’ about Thornwick.”

Addien went still. Bloody hell.

“Oh,” she muttered, looking anywhere but at her friend.

“Hmph.”

Addien’s earlier defense, however, didn’t stop Delilah from putting her displeasure back on Malric.

“So he went back for you. Thornwick works for Dynevor. The marquess was there to make sure you were not harmed. It’s no different than any of the other guards here who make sure the lot of us are safe,” she said bluntly.

And he was with the baroness instead.

He’d had his hands all over the woman. He’d been holding her hips, his fingers dug in so deep Addien could now feel the bite of them as if it had been her. He lusted for women built like goddesses, with hearts of Medusas, and not wraith-like women who could pass for girls.

Women like Addien.

That discovery left her bereft.

Delilah must have heard something in the silence. Her brows dipped suspiciously. “What were you doing alone anyway?”

Addien shook her head.

“I thought your role was to sit in on interviews and see if the ladies are willing. Why weren’t you there?”

Words would have been the wiser choice, with her friend’s rapid-fire questioning.

“Why send you at all, if the gents are still going to interview the ladies alone? And where do they send you? Down with the servants?”

Dunworthy’s assault, and Thornwick’s subsequent rage, had Addien all off balance.

“You want to know who should be sacked?” Delilah asked Addien, whose mind was spinning too fast and her jealousy spiraling all the more.

“No, he—”

“Thornwick,” Delilah confirmed.

Addien had gathered correctly.

“Well, oi didn’t need him savin’ me,” she said tightly. “I don’t need some foine gentleman riding in to my rescue! I rescued myself.” She slapped a hand against her chest. “I always have. I always will. And Malric? What does it matter what he was doing?” she burst out. “I could care less.”

The words were as thin as milquetoast. Any friend worth her salt could hear the jealousy stitched through every crude syllable.

Addien closed her eyes.

Please, don’t say it. Don’t ask me about Malric. Don’t make me explain what I can’t even name.

And because Delilah was a true friend, she didn’t.

When Addien opened her eyes, her breathing was steady again. “I’m not like you and the other girls here. I don’t have protectors. I don’t need them.”

But God help her, when she was an old woman drawing her last breath, she’d still remember the feel of Malric avenging her.

“You think you’re not worth saving, girl?” The quiet weight in Delilah’s question pierced straight through her thoughts.

Addien lifted one shoulder in a shrug.

“Why? Because you don’t sell your body the way the rest of us do?

” Delilah didn’t wait for an answer—which was just as well because Addien didn’t have one.

“You actually believe the only ones of us in danger here are the ones with tits? Don’t give me that.

You know the truth same as I do—out on the streets, everyone needs protection.

Bloke, babe, or woman, makes no difference. ”

Delilah caught her narrower, wiry shoulders and leaned over her so they faced each other in the vanity’s glass.

“Everyone,” she said, “needs protection.”

Addien gave her a wry smile.

“You’ll deny it to your dying day, Addien Killoran—that you need anyone or anything,” Delilah said, with the surety of someone who understood exactly the code Addien lived by.

A firm rap sounded at the door.

When they didn’t answer quickly enough, another came—louder, more insistent.

Knock, knock, knock.

“Keep your trousers on,” Delilah said, crossing over to the front door. “I’m coming.” Delilah reached for the handle and looked back. “Stubborn is what you is girl. Not that I don’t understand that pride myself.”

Opening the door, two young servants bustled in with a tub between them. Right behind came a small army of newly rescued and hired lads and lasses, each carrying steaming buckets that sent curls of vapor into the air.

The gesture—and the lengths her friend had gone to for her comfort—hit Addien harder than she’d have liked. As Delilah had reminded her only moments ago, she didn’t take help, and she certainly never asked for it.

“Thank—”

“I didn’t see to it,” Delilah cut in gruffly. The pretty pink flush blooming on her cheeks, however, betrayed that she wished she had.

Their attention shifted to the doorway as the overseer of this small battalion of carers stepped inside.

Roy. His broad shoulders filled the frame, making the doorjambs seem narrow.

“Addien,” he said, his low baritone a hollow echo.

It was the first time he’d ever spoken her given name. She’d dreamed of it in secret, fallen asleep countless nights imagining him shaping those syllables. And yet, hearing it now felt strangely hollow, stripped of the masterful possession Malric gave it, as though he’d claimed it for his own.

“You got roughed up,” Roy said—not a question. The stunned certainty in his voice spoke volumes.

When she’d first arrived, he hadn’t even noticed her state. He’d been too absorbed in lording it over Malric, who’d ordered him about that morning.

His stunned response wasn’t unlike Malric’s—save for one critical difference. Malric’s shock had burned away in the space of a breath, fury rising in its stead…fury that would kill for her if she but let it.

Then as if she’d conjured him, he was there. Malric’s larger, more commanding shadow fell over Roy’s impressive figure. Malric, however, with his greater height and markedly broader shoulders, loomed like a darker, more dangerous version of Roy.

Roy stiffened, turning from Addien to face his superior officer.

The unspoken words— Here you are, lording over me once more —hung between them. The sentiment was plain enough in the sneer curling Malric’s lips.

Color rose beneath Roy’s slightly ragged beard, betraying the flush of a man who hated being called out, who bristled at the power Malric held over him.

Delilah let out a sharp whistle. “The gall of ya, Thornwick,” she snarled. “Findin’ fault with our very own Roy while you were off busy doin’ who knows what—while Addien here got herself all roughed—”

Malric winced.

“Delilah!” Addien snapped, giving true meaning to her nickname.

Instead of taking offense—and calling the woman out for her insolence and for challenging his authority in front of one of his men—Malric remained stoic.

His hard lips pressed into an even harder grimace.

Where shame had flushed the other guard’s cheeks red, Malric wore his own remorse in the pallor of bone-white skin.

When he spoke, his gaze belonged to Addien. “I would like a moment alone with Miss Killoran.”

Miss Killoran. It’d been the same way he’d referred to her at the baroness’s. That’d been for the nobility’s benefit, but here, with the other staff about, he could just drop that pretense…and didn’t. Funny how that left her all warm inside.

Delilah proved braver than Roy, who dipped his head reluctantly and slinked off, the young servants filing out behind him. All that remained was Malric, Addien, and Delilah.

“You got something to say for yourself?” The courtesan launched a full attack of his character. “What kind of guard are you? What right do you have being in charge of security here, if you couldn’t even protect Addien?”

Malric didn’t even try to defend himself. He took the rebuke in silence, as if it were deserved—because, for a man like him, it would be. A gentleman lived by a code: gentlemen protected ladies. In the new world he inhabited here with them at the Devil’s Den, he’d view women just the same—ladies.