At what price,love?

Chapter 26

~oOo~

Haruhi awoke to an unaccustomed warmth surrounding her. A slight shift told her Kyoya lay next to her, his arm possessively draped across her. Tamaki lay on the other side, his hand almost apologetically touching her hair. She cracked one eye open just enough to discover Honey was the warm weight curled up at her feet. She craned her neck a bit to find the twins on the floor, snuggled up in a mound of blankets and pillows looted from Kyoya's bed in the adjoining room and Mori sprawled on a chair. Her boys. Her friends. Her family. They had come to rescue her from the dark place she had been going. And they wouldn't leave her alone until she was safely back with them. She wondered if they had any idea how much she loved them. From Kyoya's getting her out of there before more trouble could happen to Tamaki's admittedly overblown but deeply sincere concern for the well-being of everyone in his little family. Especially her. Though it annoyed the snot out of her to admit it, he had correctly identified her as the most exposed and weakest of them all, without physical size or strength or wealth to protect her. From the twins making it clear that anybody who went after her would face their wrath, to Honey and Mori's quiet reassurance that anyone who successfully made it through the other four would deeply wish he had not, these were the people that cared about her. The ones she cared about. And the fact that the universe was about to make another attempt to tear them apart only made what they had more precious. She smiled and settled back down only to be immediately jolted by Hikaru's voice.

"Oh my god what time is it?"

Tamaki rolled over to look at the gilded clock. "A little after eight."

"Shit! We're late."

"Late for what?" Kyoya asked. "The show is not until this afternoon."

"Do you have any idea how much stuff has to be done before then?"

"Fine," Kyoya said, "But before everyone scatters I need you all to be back here first thing in the morning. We are going to stage a dawn raid on the biotech."

"Dawn raid?" Mori said, sitting up, looking interested.

"Can we wear trench coats and dark glasses?" Tamaki asked.

"And those cool long scarves that old time pilots used to wear?" Honey added.

"Silk scarves," Hikaru clarified.

Kyoya rolled his eyes. "It's a financial term. We're going to be sitting in a hotel room around a bunch of networked computers. I assume you can take care of that?" He looked in Kaoru's direction.

"Oh yeah, no sweat," Kaoru said. "Red or white silk?"

"I meant the computer networking." Kyoya sounded exasperated.

"That too," Kaoru said.

"And none of this leaves this room. You can't talk about it to anybody," Kyoya said emphatically.

"If it doesn't involve silk scarves and cool looking coats, who'd want to?" Honey said.

"I'm sorry, what is a dawn raid?" Haruhi asked.

"I'll explain it in more detail later, but the short version is that as soon as the market opens, we buy as much of the target stock as we can as fast as we can. The idea is to take over the company before anyone knows we are making our move."

"And where do the silk scarves fit in?"

Five guys beamed at her. Kyoya looked like he was about to blow a gasket. "Aren't you morons late for something?"

"We can make up the time. We'll call downstairs so they can get breakfast ready while we're getting dressed and we can eat on our way out the door," Tamaki suggested.