My Dark Romeo: An Enemies-to-Lovers Romance(65)

I bumped into a shoulder on my quest toward the stairway. The person turned.

Oliver.

The first thing I did was punch him square in the face.

Not hard enough to break a nose, but certainly with enough rage to show what I thought of his recent behavior.

For reasons pertaining to my shitty upbringing, I possessed an overdeveloped fight instinct. My first instinct in any situation, really.

For decades, I’d reigned it in. Already, Shortbread had unleashed it on many unsuspecting victims.

“Aw.” Oliver rubbed his cheek. “What was that for?”

“Saying sexist things about my wife, offering her sexual favors to my face, and frankly, because your face is annoying.”

He sighed. “Fair enough. For the record—I am no longer interested in joking about bedding your wife. I figured it would hinder any future attempts to get with her sister.”

Is anyone in my life over the mental age of thirteen?

“What do you have to say for yourself?”

He took a swig of Belgian beer they didn’t even sell in the States. Jesus. How much money had this curse of mine spent during our brief marriage?

Oliver’s brows pulled together. “Regarding what?”

I lost patience. “What on earth inspired you to RSVP to her party?”

“Oh. There was no RVSP.” He twirled his finger. “This little shindig was all spur-of-the-moment. She pulled it together last minute. Incredible, right? She could do this for a living.”

The idea of Shortbread possessing a job—or reporting to anyone other than her irresponsible self—was both laughable and inconceivable.

This conversation chipped away the remainder of my patience.

Oliver lifted the mouth of his beer bottle to his lips. I held the base in place, forcing him to finish every last drop or risk getting waterboarded by the pilsner.

“Oliver. Why are you here?”

When I released the glass, he recovered with a grin, wiping his lips with the back of his hand. “Well, the fact that she throws bomb-ass parties. She said there would be special catering, international alcohol, and fire theater. And so far, Derbyshire hasn’t let me down.”

Fire theater? In my house?

I fisted his shirt, losing all traces of the control I was so fond of. “Where is she?”

Oliver shrugged—or tried to beneath my fists. “Last I saw her, she was trying on some chick’s cocktail dress, and that chick was trying on her dress.”

“She was naked in front of other people?”

I was going to have a coronary.

At thirty-one.

“I can see why you’re weathering the storm, bro. She’s sex on legs. How’s she maintaining that ass? Five hundred squats a day?”

Try two sleeves of Oreos and a McFlurry.

I wrestled my way through dozens of people until I reached Dallas’s room. Locked. Of course.

I busted the door down with a kick. I wasn’t usually fond of damaging my five-thousand-a-pop rustica doors, but desperate times called for desperate measures.

Speaking of desperate, my wife was perched on the edge of her bed, wearing a gaudy, vibrant-green cocktail dress that didn’t belong to her.

Madison kneeled before her, actively weeping into her lap. The man boasted two black eyes from the DIY nose job I’d given him in Paris.

And still, he was idiotic enough to tread into my territory without an entire army by his side.

Dallas looked bored and in character.

It was obvious she’d spent a considerable amount of time waiting for me to make my grand entrance. She wanted my attention—and she would now be at the unfortunate receiving end of it.

Madison scrambled to his feet while Dallas took her time rising, a hint of satisfaction on her luscious, plump lips. She’d won this round, and she knew it. I’d cut my day short to be here.

I circled him now, predatorial. My eyes never wavered from his frame. “Tell me, Licht. Were you absent on the day God handed out brain cells?”

“You can’t lay a hand on me in public.” Madison revealed his cards in our poker game. “And we are, for all intents and purposes, in a public place. There are almost one hundred people here.”

He was right.

Some of them milled outside the room as we spoke, wondering why the door was currently pancaked to the floor and the three of us looked so tense. It seemed apparent at least one of us would leave in a body bag.

“You’re giving me undeserved credit.” I cracked my knuckles, feeling dangerously close to dropping my calm and collected fa?ade. “I may very well kill you right here and right now if you don’t explain to me what I just walked into.”

Shortbread pouted. “We were having a closure conversation.”

I read between the lines. She’d chosen to become a player in this mess. And it worked. This marked the moment she ceased to be collateral.

“Or a make-up conversation,” Madison countered. “Depends on how you look at it, really.”

His attempt at goading me into a mistake was so obvious, he’d be better off taking out a Times Square billboard.

And still, for the first time in my life, I traipsed right into his trap. Stopped circling him. Aimed my fist to his throat.

I almost cut off his oxygen supply, but someone grabbed my elbow.

“Jesus, Rom. What are you doing?” Zach hissed in my ear from behind, pulling me away from Madison.