The Mafia's Arrangement

Chapter 8

Aspen POV

“And what exactly would that be?” J asks as he mocks his best friend. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do, Den.” Holden shakes his head at J, seems like he doesn’t quite like his nickname. Holden, it is then.

Without a word, Holden grabs hold of my hand and leads me outside of the room. The others don’t follow us out as we make our way to the bottom floor. What is he doing?

Twirling me around in one go, he leans me against a pillar as he reclines forward to meet my eye level. His face slowly moves the side of my face, probably looking like we are intimate when we’re not.

“They’re watching you.” He felt it too. I look up and meet his serious blue eyes. Fine. I lean into his neck and smell that dark guava cologne of his. He’s got good taste; I’ll give him that.

“Then, let’s give them something to watch.” Holden catches my eyes and grunts lightly in agreement. We both lean in as I feel his hands on my waist tighten as we get closer and closer until our lips barely touch.

And that’s when I get shoved out of place despite his hold on me as neither of us expected to be shoved so abruptly. A drink gets thrown into my face as I feel a slap come down on me. Wow, okay. I step back a bit, but Holden grabs the hand before whoever it is does anything else.

Looking back up, I see her. Queen Bee. Son of a b***h. Why does it have to be her? Why does it have to be Caroline?

Holden POV

Our lips barely touched before some b***h knocked us out of place. And that’s saying something. Perhaps I let my guard down a little too much given that we are in a club and who would have the audacity to actually shove the girl in my hold?

That’s when I grab the hand of the girl who slapped Aspen before she does it again. What is her problem? I don’t even know this girl. Aspen rolls her eyes as a waitress hands her something to clean herself up.

“Go.” I tell Aspen to just leave as I handle it. She looks up at me curiously before nodding and obliging. She heads towards the bathroom to undoubtedly get cleaned up.

The moment she is gone, I crank my hold on the girl's hand until I hear cracking. She shrieks out in pain as she begs for me to stop. I don’t. Instead, I use her broken hand to drag her across the club floor and shove her out the door. Her friends are hurriedly alongside her as they try to help her up and get back in, but security has taken it from here.

I get back inside to see J and Bast. s**t. I gesture towards the bathroom. When we make it into the hallway with the bathrooms, we hear a turmoil in the bathroom. Rushing in, Aspen slams some girl’s head into the sink. Four of the other girls are on the floor as she boredly looks at them.

“Oh, Geez, Asp!” Bast cheers her on. “Way to go! Imagine if you did that to Caroline in high school.” The moment he says those words out loud, his mouth closes with a sound from the harshness of his lips meeting each other like he was a child that said a curse word.

“Come on.” J gestures for her to get out of the bathroom as the bloodied up women lay on the floor. We shuffle our way out of here as we head back into our cars, but this time we are in the underground lot.

“What the hell happened to you?” Riley and Tom get off leaning on the cars as they see Aspen’s bloodied up knuckles.

“I don’t want to talk about it.” She grumbles out as she grabs her phone out of my blazer before trying to hand it back to me. I put a hand out to tell her to forget about it. I don’t need it back. Shrugging lightly, she puts it back on.

“She kicked ass.” Bast beams in pride as he leans in and puts his arm around her. What the hell is he doing?

“Holden’s little fan club wasn’t exactly a fan of me.” J looks over at her hand and whispers something to her that I can’t catch. She shakes it off, giving him less stress in the process.

“Think they got the message?” Bast asks around, but none of us can really know for sure.

“If not now, they will by tomorrow.” She gestures at their driver to start it up. “And I need to go to the facility tomorrow morning.”

“Oh, come on, Asp! Let’s grab a late night snack or brunch tomorrow?” Bast gives her an honest smile, one I haven’t seen before. He wouldn’t tell me what happened in high school, but I have a feeling it wasn’t anything good.

I went to the same boarding school. And to say it was brutal would be an understatement. If you didn’t have money, you were a nobody. If you were a nobody, you were picked on and shoved. But it was worse for the girls there, when money meant everything to them.

Aspen glances over at Bast, but she turns to her brothers instead. She gives them a nod to let them know she’s leaving with two bodyguards in the car. Aspen lightly steps in but before she is completely in, I catch her eye contact and she gives me a respectful head nod.

Aspen and her bodyguards take off while the rest of us are here. Everyone turns to Bast to tell us what the hell is going on, but he’s feigning dumb or something.

“Are you going to spill or what?” J nudges at him. “What the hell happened?”

“If she doesn’t want to say anything, I don’t think I should either.” That riddles me with shock. Is this my brother? I wouldn’t believe it if you told me because the Bast I know wouldn’t care who knew what. This guy is the openest of books.

“Well, it can’t be worse than Riley not telling us that she never told you who she was.” Tom jabs jokingly at Riley who grumbles with annoyance.

“She made me swear to not say anything when I dropped her off.” Riley shrugs. “Asp had her reasons. Just drop it.”

“She wanted to see how people would treat her if she was poor.” I say to them. I saw that look when she saw that girl hit her earlier. That’s not a small amount of rage, it’s full-fledged.

“And it didn’t yield good results.” Bast comments to which we all look at him curiously.