Page 5 of Shattered Sinner
With a slight nod, Aria walked away, and once again, I was alone. For some reason, I didn’t trust her one bit, but if she was telling the truth, the last time Iris was seen might have been the evening of the Chevalier party.
And the only people I knew who were for sure at the party were Nash and Raven.
* * *
Throughout my driveback to my apartment, the only thing I could think about was the dreaded call I needed to make. My brother was one of the last people I wanted to speak to right now. After what I’d found out he’d done, forgiving him wasn’t in the cards at the moment.
But talking to Raven wasn’t out of the realm of possibilities.
Once I was in the privacy of my place and had thrown most of my things down on the counter, I grabbed my phone and quickly found Raven’s number. I swallowed hard as I listened to the phone ring, but thankfully it only rang twice before she picked up.
“Hey, Bianca.”
“Hi,” I said nervously and hated myself for it. “Do you have a second to talk?”
“Sure. What’s up?”
“You know that Chevalier party on Westwick’s campus that happened about a week ago?” I was being awkward as hell, but at least it felt as if I was getting somewhere.
“Yeah. What about it?”
Silence hung between us for a moment while I tried to piece together my words. “Did you happen to see Iris there?”
Raven didn’t speak for a moment, and I swore that I stopped breathing. Why did it feel as if it was taking her so long to respond to me?
“I did. Nash and I spoke with her for a bit.”
Bingo.“Do you happen to remember if you saw her leave that night?”
“What’s going on, Bianca?”
I sighed. “Please just answer my question.”
“Um, the three of us were chatting, and then Soren Grant interrupted us. They danced together for a bit before they left the room, and that was the last I saw of her. Iris seemed fine.”
I didn’t know what to feel about the news. I’d gotten one step closer to finding out what happened to Iris, and I wasn’t shocked to find that he’d been the one who had last been seen with her as of now. If he went through the trouble of sending her expensive electronics and became her substitute professor in order to stalk her more, what else was he capable of?
Fuck. I ran a hand through my hair as I tried to think of what to do next. My first instinct was to storm up to his house and demand to see Iris. But that was an even more ridiculous idea than the one I’d just had about going up to Westwick University with no plan.
“Hey, listen,” Raven started before I could utter another word. “Nash would like to speak to you.”
My throat became dry as a mix of anger and dread flowed through me. The last thing I needed, especially with this new information, was to deal with my brother and his attempts to "protect" me.
But I also couldn’t hang up the phone right now with Raven in the room with him.
“Okay. I’ll talk to him.”
There was some shuffling in the background followed by a heavy silence, before I finally heard his voice. “Hey.”
I barely contained the anger that was pulsing through me. The urge to snap at him was strong. “What do you want, Nash?”
“Is that how you greet me now?” His voice told me that he was taken aback about my attitude, and I didn’t care.
“I’m not in the mood for being nice,” I said. “What do you want to talk about?”
“You’re acting like a child right now. What crawled up your ass and died?”
“The fact that my brother couldn’t mind his own damn business and had to get involved with my fucking love life, that’s what.”
