Knox smiled. “I know.”
“So to answer your original question, I’ve been working on a suspension demonstration. More performance-art type of shibari, rather than straight kinbaku, which you know I f**king hate, but that’s what best fits this situation.”
Shiori walked in without knocking. Her face was pale, her eyes glazed.
Ronin’s stomach dropped. “What?”
“Amery. She’s . . .”
Immediately he was in Shiori’s face. “What about her?”
“She was attacked a little while ago.”
He gaped at her, mouth open and body frozen.
“Tell us what happened,” Knox said.
“She was meeting a new client. Before she got to the elevator in the parking garage, she was attacked.”
Rage and fear roared in his head.
“There were two guys, so she couldn’t fight them off. They roughed her up and left her.” Shiori put her hand on Ronin’s chest. “She called me because evidently Molly was attacked a few months ago and she didn’t want to bring back those bad memories for her.”
Even beat-to-shit Amery was thinking of others.
Why didn’t she think of you?
“Ronin, take a breath, so I can tell you the rest.”
He forced his lungs to work, and some of the dizzying rage dissipated.
“Amery didn’t call you because she recognized her attackers.”
“Who?”
“The guy who was with Naomi the other night. And another guy who’d been lingering around our table.”
“Where is Amery now? Did you take her to the hospital?”
“No. She’s banged up but swore she didn’t need medical treatment. I took her to the penthouse.”
Ronin ran out the door and down the hallway.
Behind him he heard Shiori yell, “Wait—” and then Knox saying, “Let him go.”
He forced himself to breathe steadily instead of beating the f**k out of the too-slow elevator.
When he finally reached the penthouse level, he took a moment to try to find his calm center. If only for a little while, if only for her.
Amery wasn’t in the living room or kitchen or by the bar. He saw the door to his room was ajar and completely dark. The scent of her shampoo lingered in a humid cloud throughout the space as he moved to the dresser and flipped on the lamp. Then he crawled right up beside her. “Amery?”
She’d pulled the covers over her head, but her response was clear. “Go away. I’m fine. I just need to sleep.”
“I’m not going anywhere. Let me see.”
“No.”
“Not doing this with you.” Heart pounding, he gently peeled the comforter back. She was curled into a ball, her cheek pressed into the pillow and her hair obscuring her face. “Look at me.”
She shook her head and tried to curl deeper into herself.
Ronin slid off the mattress and headed for the door. He flipped the overhead lights on and climbed up next to her again. “Let me see what they did to you.”
“I’m afraid to show you.”
He jerked back as if she’d taken a swing at him. “Show me anyway.”
When Amery didn’t move, he leaned over her and started brushing the hair away from her face. First thing he noticed was the bruise on her left cheekbone. His stomach churned at seeing that dark spot as well as the damp track of her tears. “Please, baby. This is killing me. Look at me.”
She slowly faced him. Her hair still concealed her face.
Please let it be stuck there by tears and not blood. Her tears weren’t easy to handle, but he could do it. But Amery’s blood? Might as well shoot him with a tranq gun. He wouldn’t handle that. At all.
Ronin lifted her hair, small sections at a time until she made an annoyed sound and sat up.
He knew she was staring at him, but he couldn’t look away from the marks marring her beautiful face. The bruises already turning her pale skin a mottled black from the bridge of her nose to the outer edge of her eye. Her upper lip was puffy. Same with her lower lip. The right side of her jaw held a shadowed shape of a thumb. On the opposite side, in a line down her neck, were three big dots. Indicating she’d been grabbed by the jaw and the guy had squeezed until he’d left marks.
Breathe.
Fuck. He couldn’t breathe. Rage supplanted air.
“I’m really hideous looking, aren’t I?”
Her soft, almost apologetic tone snapped him out of it.
Breathe.
In. Out.
Better.
“No, baby, you are beautiful. What was done to you is ugly.”
Tears filled her eyes. “I’m sorry. The training didn’t kick in this time. I was so cocky after knocking Naomi down a peg. But these guys . . . caught me by surprise, and I just froze—”
“Ssh. Two against one is never a fair fight.” It absolutely f**king shredded him she felt any type of guilt about the attack. “Did they hurt you anywhere else?”
“First the guy punched me in the stomach, probably so I didn’t see the fist coming toward my face.”
Ronin forced himself to focus on her eyes. The pain in them would be his calm center. “Tell me how this started.”
“I got a call from a potential client yesterday. We set up the meeting time for today. He told me where to park and what elevator to take for the quickest access to their floor. Which didn’t seem weird at the time, because it is a big building, but now . . .”