Page 2 of Dichotomy

CHAPTER 2

EVELYN

“Ican walk, you know.”

Sebastian’s arms tightened around me as he carried me up the manor pathway. “I know you can. But why would you want to when you have all of us?” he teased, but his eyes were dark. I had scared him more than he wanted to admit.

I relaxed against his chest, feeling guilty I had caused him to worry. That was the only reason. Not that I enjoyed his arms around me. “That’s a good point.”

He grinned, looking more like his normal cheery self. “You’ll find I’m full of good points.”

“And modest too,” Alexander said dryly as he held the door open for us. “I’m going to call the doctor now.”

“No need,” I said, catching sight of Grace, Danny, and Izzy in the dining room. I patted Sebastian’s chest, indicating he should set me down. “Grace is a trained medic.”

Sebastian put me down but kept an arm around my waist as he guided me to a chair. Grace already had our medical bag out on the table. Her brow furrowed as she observed my tentative movements.

“You definitely have a concussion,” she said bluntly.

I cracked a grin, wincing when my split lip ached. “I could have told you that.”

She pressed gentle fingers along my cheek, feeling for any cracks in the bone. I already knew it wasn’t broken. Ryan’s hit had been hard but not the hardest I’d ever received. If I had seen it coming, I could have braced for it and made it look like he’d hit harder than he actually had, but since I hadn’t seen it coming, I was stuck with the concussion.

“Nothing’s broken,” Grace said, shining a light in my eyes as she checked my pupils. “Definitely a mild concussion, though. Danny, open an ice pack.”

Danny handed her an ice pack, and she pressed it gently to my cheek and lip. I hissed but took over holding it as she wiped away the blood from my face and neck.

“One of your boyfriends is going to have to wake you every couple of hours and ask you who the president is or something, but you’ll be fine,” Grace said, her eyes scanning my face.

I winced. “Can they ask me something else? I would rather forget who the president is, to be honest.”

She laughed but nodded. “Dealer’s choice on the question then.”

“That’s it?” Alexander asked, his arms folded across his chest. “She needs to go to the hospital and get checked out.”

“I don’t need to go to the hospital. It’s just a concussion,” I protested before Grace could get prickly that he was questioning her judgment. “All they’re going to do is monitor me anyway. This isn’t my first concussion.”

“And just how many concussions have you had?” Alexander asked, staring down at me with his stern “boardroom” face that made people cower. Not me, but I had seen it happen before.

“Enough that I know what they feel like. This is just a minor one.”

“Multiple concussions can have long-term effects,” Adrian said quietly, his gray eyes boring into the side of my head.

“It’s fine. I get a full workup of scans every year. We have more important things to deal with right now.” Like what the ever-loving-fuck we were going to do now that the FIA was in town trying to take us down.

Alexander frowned but relented. I had a feeling I was going to be spending time in a hospital getting scanned in the near future, but for now, we had other problems.

“What do we know?” I directed to Izzy.

She stood at the head of the table, her ever-present tablet in her hands as she connected to the TV screen behind her. Liam appeared in the box in the corner of the screen. From the background, I could tell he was back at HQ.

“Maya is still at the convention center with Detective Patel. The feds showed up and are trying to take over the case, but Detective Patel has negotiated working together. That means whatever files we submitted to the police, the FIA has access too.”

“There’s nothing incriminating on them,” Liam jumped in. “We made sure of it before we sent them.”

“Just how we got them,” Adrian murmured.

“It’s an anonymous source that reached out to us from Citadel with the proof,” Izzy informed him primly.