The Empire Read online

  “This is where you belong,” he whispers, his cheek pressed to mine, lips near my ear, one hand on my breasts. The other molding me close, my naked breasts to his naked chest. “You know that, right?”

  He’s echoed what I was thinking and my answer is pure and simple. “Yes, I do now.”

  He drags his face along mine, whiskers rasping on my delicate skin with delicious friction.

  “Show me,” he demands, pinching my nipple and then tangling his fingers in my hair, a rough pull that echoes just how rough he was before we turned tender. Before I ended up on his lap, straddling him.

  And then he’s kissing me again and we’re wild with need. I can’t drink him in fast enough. I can’t feel him deep enough. I’m grinding against him and he’s pumping into me and I don’t know where he begins and I end, but I know it has to be here and now.

  We move like we’re one. We kiss like we’ll never kiss again, wicked, hot, and passionate, and then we slow, a savoring of every moment, every taste. And we touch like we need to feel each other everywhere. And when we finally give in to the pleasure in a frenzied rush of thrusts and sways, we collapse on the couch, side by side, facing each other.

  For a long time, we say nothing. “I’m sorry,” I say when nothing else feels right.

  “For what?” he says, stroking my hair from my eyes.

  “For ever being a part of that family. For making you feel that I was.” I swallow hard. “We’ve had this conversation. I know you understand, but in too many ways I feel complicit. I knew what my mother told me had to be true. I knew. I just—I didn’t want to leave her behind. That’s when I got the most frightened for her safety. I felt as if she was being brainwashed. As if I didn’t even know who she was and it scared me. She was all I had.”

  “And now?”

  “I told you. She made her choices and now I’m making mine. You know now. You know what he did. Now what?”

  “I told you once that death was too good for my father. I meant it. He needs to live so that I can make him wish he’d died.” He sits up and grabs his pants before standing and pulling them on.

  He hands me his shirt, which I happily accept, his eyes lingering on mine a moment, the message in his actions clear. We’re together. We’re one.

  “How?” I ask, staring up at him. “How will you make him pay?”

  “You know how,” he says, and with that, he grabs a Rubik’s cube and walks to the window.

  I quickly pull on the shirt and join him. I do as I did earlier. I slide in front of the window, between it and him. “By taking everything he owns.”

  “Yes, but not in the way you might think. He’s buried in trouble.” He presses his hands to the glass on either side of me. “I’m going to help make sure he stays buried.”

  “You want to partner with the mob?”

  “You don’t partner with the mob. That’s dangerous. That doesn’t mean you don’t give them a gift they don’t know you gave them.” His hands come down my waist. “Your mother.”

  “Chose him. Chose him and chose to look the other way.”

  “Is she brainwashed or is she like them, Harper?”

  “I don’t know. Can you be brainwashed into being a bad person?”

  “I don’t know the answer to that question.”

  “Or you do and you don’t want to say. You just wanted to see what I believed.”

  He studies me a moment, his eyes seeming to pierce my soul, before he asks, “What do you believe? What do you really believe, Harper?”

  What I believe, hurts. It really hurts. I duck under his arm and walk to the kitchen, opening the refrigerator and grabbing one of those beers I’d passed on once before. Eric is there by the time the door shuts, opening it for me. I tip it back and gulp several swallows and offer it to him. “I believe it’s part of who she is. I believe she’s one of them.”

  He considers me a moment and then sets the beer down. “Why?”

  “She doesn’t even remember my father. I’m here fighting for him and she doesn’t even remember him. And you know why? Because my father was like Grayson. He had a moral compass. He would never look your father in the eyes and not see the devil. And yet that’s who my mother wakes up to every morning. That’s why she fits with your father. They’re evil.”

  “I think you’re responding emotionally right now. I think you want to protect me and you think turning your back on her is the way to do that and it’s not. That’s not what I need from you.”

  “What do you need from me, Eric?”

  “Everything. I want everything and that means honesty. I want every emotion. Every feeling. Every thought, good or bad, baby.” He cups my face. “We do this together. She’s your mother. We protect her if we can, which means we need to cut through all the shadows. We need to figure out what those damn messages mean.” He releases me. “If that message was telling us that I connect the dots, what is it on my body that connects the dots?”

  “You have to tell me what they all mean. Let’s sit down and write them down. Maybe if we see them on paper, if you see them especially, we can figure out the puzzle.”

  “All right. Let’s do it. And let’s warm up that Chinese food while we’re at it.”

  “Yes, please.” I smile, and give his naked chest a once over. “Somehow I’ve become quite hungry.”

  I reach for the fridge, and he catches my arm and pulls me to him. “We didn’t use a condom again.”

  “No.” My chest tightens. “But don’t fret. We didn’t, but you know what? If by some miracle I get pregnant, it must be meant to be. You’ll have to accept that and we won’t have a child that’s born a Kingston anyway. Our child will be a Mitchell. A gifted, gorgeous child and—” I cut my gaze. “It doesn’t matter. I told you. The odds of me getting pregnant—” My eyes land on the jaguar tattoo on his arm and I stop talking. “Eric.” I grab his arm and look up at him. “The most obvious marking on your body that relates to Kingston is the jaguar.”

  His eyes narrow. “The jaguar’s symbolic of a competitor.”

  “No. It’s symbolic of you. The black sheep of the family. You were right to say those messages are about you. This is more about you than we realized. Maybe this is all about you.”

  “I was minding my own business. I was nowhere near this family when they got into trouble.”

  “No, but for reasons we don’t know, for reasons we have yet to understand, they needed you back here. They wanted to end you and me. Why?”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Eric

  The Kingstons wanted to end me and her.

  Harper’s right but this is nothing new. “We already know they tried to kill you.” I grab the beer she set on the kitchen counter and chug it. “We know they tried to set me up.”

  “Are we sure this is about the mob at all?” she asks, taking the beer from me. “That’s my point. Did they find out that you tried to end them?” She takes a swig from the bottle. “Is that what set this off? You said you talked to bankers.”

  “My father was poisoned. Without that piece of the puzzle, I’d buy into that theory. Whoever wanted me, and you, out of the picture wants him gone, too. Blake believes the mob’s involved. So do I.”

  “Then we’re back to how Isaac got them in trouble with the mob. He set you up not once, but twice. He had to have convinced your father to come here. That made the hit on him look like it came from you.”

  “My father isn’t convinced to do anything. He didn’t come here at Isaac’s direction. I told you. He was distracting me.”

  “From what? What would your father need you to look away from if this isn’t about you, but rather Isaac?”

  “I promise you that my father didn’t choose to involve me in whatever is going on, but now that he knows you’re with me, and Isaac tried to take us both down, he knows I’m a problem. He was giving Isaac time to seal our fate and pin his mess on us.”

  “Or maybe he was going to ask you for help.”

  “Never. He wo
uld never ask me for help.”

  “Maybe he was. Maybe that’s why Isaac had him attacked. Of course, maybe Isaac just wanted the money he’d inherit to pay off the mob.”

  I thrum my fingers on the island. “If it was that simple, he’d never have involved me, and Gigi didn’t plot to kill her own son. She’s a bitch, but that man is her world.”

  “Okay, but what if Gigi really did know what Isaac was into? Maybe she even believed your father knew but he was too prideful to ask for your help, so she did it herself through me. You’re a savant. We should call Gigi.”

  “She’s on a plane to Europe.”

  “Running. She’s running when her son, the man you said is her life, could be dying. We need to know what she knows. Why would she run?”

  “The mob is every reason you will ever need to run, baby. I promise you. That’s why. She doesn’t believe Isaac put a hit on my father. She believes it’s the mob and that means she thinks they’ll come after everyone in the family.”

  “We need her to just tell us, Eric. She’s scared. I think she’ll tell us.”

  “When she’s on the ground, if we can reach her, we can try.”

  “Can we just go to her?”

  I reject that idea. “We should have stopped her from leaving, but we didn’t. And we need to be right here, in front of the police, and the problem.”

  “Can Walker just get someone to confront her? Do they have resources to do that from Europe?”

  My cellphone buzzes with a text and I snake it from my pocket, glancing at the message and then at her. “We may not need Gigi. Isaac can tell us when he gets here. He’s about to get on a private jet now.”

  “He’s not going to talk to you.”

  She’s wrong. He will. I’ll make him. “I’ll handle my brother.”

  “Why is he coming here now?”

  “We have your mother handled. We’re protecting her. She’s sedated. Isaac is another story. He looks bad if he doesn’t show up and if he makes the police go to him.”

  “It’s about you. He’s coming here because of you. Everything is about you. The messages read like one of your tattoos. I was told to look right in front of me and that’s you. Who knows what your ink says to point me that way?”

  No one, I think, and yet they managed to give Harper a message on the back of that card that’s on my arm. Who the fuck is giving us these messages? My family isn’t warning me about my family. The mob isn’t warning me about the mob. I go back to my family. “Didn’t you say Gigi made a reference to me getting my brains from her?”

  “Yes. Yes, I did. She did.” Her eyes go wide. “You think she could be the one talking to us in coded messages? They didn’t start happening until you got to Denver. Until she had me get you involved. We need to talk to Gigi, Eric. She wants to help you but feels that puts her in danger.”

  Help me.

  Those two words and Gigi don’t compute. “Help herself by using me and you.” I scrub what’s become a two-day stubble on my jaw, my hands coming down on my hips, mind processing numbers, looking for answers. “I need to sit and I need to think, not talk. That’s not how I come up with answers.” I cup her face and kiss her. “I need you, baby, but I also think independently. It’s a savant thing. It’s a singular process.”

  “Yes, okay. I’ll try every way possible to reach Gigi.”

  She won’t reach her but I don’t say that. I brush my knuckles over her cheek and I walk toward the couch, where I sit down and somehow end up with a cube in my hand without consciously picking it up. My mind is already working, tossing around numbers, but at the same time, going back to the same place I went to when I was talking to Grayson. What does the message mean? Grayson had asked.

  My answer had been “It translates to a saying we had in the SEALs. If you ain’t cheating, you ain’t trying. It means to win, you have to break the rules.”

  “And you think that means someone knows what rules you were going to break with Kingston?” he’d asked.

  “Don’t you?” I’d challenged. “It’s a fucking threat. They want me to do something for them, pay them off in some way, or they’ll tell Harper.”

  It was a threat.

  Or was it a warning?

  The more I think about the messages, the less likely they feel like they’re from the mob. The mob isn’t warning us. They’d just get in our fucking faces. I stare down at the message on the back of the business card and look down at my hand where the saying is inked in letters and numbers. Someone like me, another savant, perhaps Gigi if I believe her theory that I got my brains from her, could see it. That saying and anything to do with the Navy is about honor, courage, sacrifice, and brotherhood to me. The SEALs are my brothers. Isaac is my brother.

  Could Gigi be warning me about Isaac?

  Did she pull me into this because she knew he was going to try to kill her son, his father, my father to inherit and pay off the mob? Of course, Gigi would know that I’d never save my father, so she’d need Harper to get me involved. That theory would assume that she knew about me and Harper, but again, there could have been cameras from the cottage. And Harper could have given off signs about me that she didn’t realize she gave off.

  Gigi tried to save the family by using me to do it. Isaac thought it was Harper. He came at her and me. Maybe my father did come here for help. Isaac tried to end him. He’ll try to finish him when he’s here. He’ll try to finish me and Harper.

  I’ll finish him instead.

  I pull out the first message that I have yet to understand, but I need to and now, before Isaac gets here.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Eric

  I sit there on the couch with numbers shooting through my mind, and I start writing them down on a pad of paper I don’t even remember grabbing. They all translate to questions and equations that need to be solved. Who did what to who and why? Who benefits? Who loses?

  I look down. I have rows and pages of numbers and letters. With one scan down the log, I’m texting Blake for a copy of my father’s will and other random documents he might not think are important, but I do. I set my phone aside and just as I reach for my pen again, Harper slides a steaming hot cup of coffee in front of me, right along with a bag of peanut M & M’s. “In case they help. I remember you said they’re part of your process.”

  I stare at her, this beautiful, intelligent woman that I walked away from partially because of this damn hell we’re living right now, because of where I knew this family would lead us. “How long have I been sitting here?”

  “Two hours.” If the fact that I’ve ignored her for that time bothers her, she doesn’t show it. “I left Gigi three urgent messages,” she continues, “but Blake tells me she’s still in the air.”

  “If Gigi was going to tell us what was going on, she would have told us before she left.”

  “Or she left and put distance between whatever this is and herself before she tells us. If we believe she’s the source of the messages, then she clearly wants to tell you.”

  We don’t know it’s Gigi, though the numerical odds sway heavily in her direction.

  Harper motions to the pad I’ve been writing on. “Anything worth sharing? If it doesn’t disrupt your thoughts.” She glances at all the numbers and letters on the page.

  “Assuming Gigi sent me the messages, and that she was warning me about Isaac, message number one should be easy to figure out. It should somehow tie to that warning. It should represent something that we both touched that has somehow come full circle.”

  “But it doesn’t?”

  My lips thin. “I don’t know yet.”

  “Why didn’t she just tell us?” Harper asks. “These messages—”

  “Must expose something she doesn’t want anyone else to know.”

  “But you? She hates you.”

  “And yet she convinced me to come back to Denver through you.”

  “Are you suggesting she really wanted help? That she’s not a part of my attack?”
/>   “I need to figure out what the first message says. Then I’ll answer that question.” I pick up my pencil and start writing, the numbers in my head driving me back in time, processing everything I know about Isaac and the company. Every deal he touched that I touched as well. I’m looking for something Gigi, assuming she sent the messages, wants me and only me to know. Something she thinks will make me protect her interests, and my father’s, which translates to hers. I lose myself in the numbers and when I finally come back to the present, I blink the room into view and find it showered in shadows, the sun long gone, and Harper lying on the couch next to me with a blanket pulled over her. Damn it, I didn’t even know she’d joined me again.

  I scrub a hand through my hair and grimace. And I ignored her for what? I don’t know what that fucking message is telling me. Maybe I do need to get on a damn plane and go see Gigi, and depending on how the new day goes, including my confrontation with Isaac, I just might. I squat down next to Harper and she doesn’t move. She’s that secure. She’s that safe with me, and unbidden, I’m back in the past, I’m in the trailer a few nights before my mother died—no—killed herself because of this damn family. We’d been watching a movie with the lights out when a shadow had passed the window.

  I jolt with the large shadow. My mother grabs my leg. “Shh,” she murmurs and when I nod, she stands up and walks to the television, lowering the sound.

  She then points at me and mouths “stay” before she walks to the cabinet in the corner and shocks me by pulling out a gun I didn’t know we had, ready to fight. I stand up. “What the hell is that?” I hiss in a low whisper.

  “Survival and we’re survivors.”

  “This is about that family you say I belong to, isn’t it?” I demand. “I don’t want—”

  Someone bangs on the door. “It’s Richard. Open up.”

  My mother’s lips thin. “Go away, Richard. We’re done.”

  “He wants to make you an offer. I can shout it through the door or you can come out here.”