Kevin is waiting at the lecture hall door. He looks from me to where both Emilio and Hudson are towering beside me. “You bring your own entourage?” he asks.
“Something like that. Just pretend they’re not here,” I say. “And tell me everything I’ve missed.”
I follow him into the lecture hall. We fall into our usual seats towards the back of the room. Emilio sits next to me and Hudson sits behind us.
“You do know they’re not easy to ignore, right?” Kevin whispers.
“I know.” I glance around the hall. A lot of female heads have turned in our direction. “You need to look uglier,” I tell Emilio.
He chuckles. “How would I do that?”
“I don’t know. All the women are staring at you.”
Emilio wraps his arm around my shoulder. “There is only one woman’s eyes I care about being on me.” He moves in and kisses my forehead.
Hudson leans over us from behind. “Leave room for Jesus, you two,” he says.
“Shut up,” I groan.
It wasn’t as easy to focus on the lecture with Emilio right there next to me. But I did manage to get some notes down and the new TA isn’t bad. The lecture ends and I’m packing up my things when the guy calls out my name.
“Miss Giuliani, can I see you for a minute?”
“Sure.” I set my bag on the chair, and Emilio and Hudson stand as if they’re going to follow me down. “Wait here,” I tell them. “Be right back.”
“I’m coming down there,” Emilio insists.
“I’m not leaving the room.” I frown and walk past him. When I get to the podium where the TA is waiting behind the desk, I offer the guy a polite smile. “You wanted to see me?”
“Yes, you’ve missed a fair few classes. I’ve got some notes for you somewhere here,” he says, shuffling a few papers around on the desk.
“Oh, okay, thank you.” I watch his hands randomly picking up folders and books, but he’s not really looking at them.
He is, however, looking up towards the seats that are now empty. Everyone gone, except Emilio and Hudson. Kevin waves at me from the door. I wave back but my hand finds the blade I have tucked into the belt of my jeans. I’ve never been one to carry weapons. Emilio insisted on it. He tried to give me a gun, and I told him I had no need for one because he and Hudson had plenty.
“Hold on. I think it’s in my bag,” the TA says.
He steps to the side, walking past me to reach over to where he has a bag on the coat hook. Except he doesn’t keep walking once he’s behind me. That’s when I know my mistake. His arm wraps around my shoulders, locking my back against his chest.
I look up and see Emilio and Hudson already making their way down the stairs. My palm grips the knife in my right hand, something this asshole doesn’t know I’m holding.
“Emilio Lopez, I’ve been looking for you.”
“Yeah? Guess you found me. Let her go.” Emilio has a gun trained on the fucker’s forehead.
“Not going to happen. You killed my brother.” The TA grips me harder.
“You want to have a go at one of mine? I’ve got three. Let her go, now,” Emilio says.
“Nope. I think I’ll have a go at this pretty little thing first.”
Hudson looks to my hand. He nods slightly, and that’s when I jam the knife into this asshole’s leg. His grip on me loosens and I spin around out of his hold, pulling the knife out as I go. I bring my arm up and then I jam the tip into the side of his neck, just like I was trained to do in all those self-defense classes Emilio made me take when we were sixteen.
I complained about them, insisted I wouldn’t be stupid enough to get caught in a trap like the one he’d found me in that one time in the alley. But heinsistedI needed to know how to fight back. Now, I’m really glad he did.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Irun down the stairs to Frankie. Hudson is right beside me. He reaches for his sister while I have my gun trained on the body now bleeding out on the floor. She got him in the right fucking spot. Good.