Page 124 of Wicked Empire (Knight's Ridge Empire 3)

“You shouldn’t be drinking.”

“Gonna tell your daddy on me?” I quip.

“His security team have probably watched you do it. You don’t need me snitching on you.”

“Surely they’ve got better things to do than watch us.” Although as I say the words, I remember the boss’s warning before we walked out of his office earlier, our role for the night having been laid out quite clearly.No fucking about with the girls, no drinking, no showing him up. “I will be watching.”

“He wasn’t being serious,” I mutter, although I know it’s a lie.

“Your funeral, man.”

Silence falls between us. Theo might be okay with pushing his father at every opportunity, but that doesn’t mean he thinks it’s a good idea for us to do the same thing.

“Stella okay?” he asks after a few minutes of silence.

“Her phone is still showing as at home, if that’s what you mean.”

He snorts. “You should have tagged her. She’d happily leave that at home to give you the slip.”

“I trust her.”

He turns to me and quirks a brow.

“As long as Emmie is gone before we get back,” he says quietly. So quietly I wonder if he wasn’t meant to say it out loud at all.

“You ready to talk about that?”

“About what?” he asks, pushing from the wall he was leaning against and taking off across the room.

“I’ll take that as a no then,” I mutter to myself.

I’m still watching him move to where Alex is staring up at the woman on stage when someone screams and he quickly changes direction, running toward where I’d left Nico instead.

“Fuck’s sake,” I mutter when I join them and find Nico with some old dude in a headlock, the woman Nico was lusting after sitting on the edge of the stage with some guy’s jacket around her shoulders as her body trembles.

“What happened?” Theo barks.

“This stupid fuck tried pulling her off stage and onto his lap.”

“Dumb fuck,” Theo scoffs as Toby finally joins us. “Take him out back and show him what happens when stupid cunts even try to touch our girls.”

“You got it, boss,” Alex quips, grabbing the guy’s other side and helping Nico drag him out through one of the security doors at the back of the room.

Toby is already sitting next to the woman, talking to her softly, so I leave him to it. After a couple of seconds, he takes her over to the bar and Missy slides a couple of shots in her direction to steady her nerves.

“Go help if you want,” Theo says to me, knowing that no one else will try shit immediately after watching someone get dragged out to have their arse handed to them.

“Nah, I’m good. They’ve got it covered.”

“Yeah, they do. This is fucking—” His phone blaring in his pocket stops whatever he was going to say and he pulls it out.

The second he swipes the screen his face drops, the blood draining from it in a split second.

“What’s wrong?” I demand, my own heart slamming against my chest from his reaction alone.

His eyes meet mine a beat before he turns the screen around.

“Is that… Fuck. Is that the coach house?”