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“What the hell are you talking about, Blake? Stop speaking in code because I’m focused on Harper right now. Not a game and a puzzle.”
“Read this.” He slides a folder in front of me and I stare down at the contents, reading a summary that has me sucking in air.
It’s then that Harper pokes her head into the bar. “They’re taking me upstairs. I’m going up now.” She dashes away toward the elevator and I want to run after her. I have to stop her because I know what her mother is going to tell her. I know what Harper might think. I know what I would think if I was her. This might be the end of us. I stand up and start walking, but Blake catches my arm.
“Let her go.”
My scowl is instant. “You think I did this? You think I killed him?”
“No, man.” He stands and faces me. “But I think Harper’s about to find out who did. Let her. End this.”
“She’s going to tell Harper everything in that file I just read.”
“Yes. She will. And Harper will either believe in you or she won’t. Don’t you want to know which it is?”
I inhale and sit back down. Blake sits down across from me this time. We both turn on our headsets and we listen as Harper chats with the hotel employee leading her to her mother’s door. “She flew in late,” Harper says. “She’s tired, I’m sure, but—well, as I said, her husband died and I’m terrified she found out and had a medical crisis.”
“Of course,” the other woman says. “I have our team on standby to get medical help for her quickly. Here we are,” she adds.
I can tell they’ve stopped walking. There’s knocking on the door. “Mrs. Kingston?” calls out the other woman.
“Mom?!” Harper shouts out.
This continues for a good five minutes. “When do we open the door?” Harper asks.
It’s right then that I hear the door open. “Harper. Jesus. How did you even find my hotel?”
“Oh my,” the hotel employee says. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—she was worried and—I can escort her back downstairs.”
“No,” Harper’s mother states. “She can come in.”
“Thank you,” Harper says, I assume to the attendant. “Thank you for your help. She did nothing wrong, mother. There’s something I need to tell you.”
There’s movement and the sound of the door opening and shutting before Harper’s mother says, “You won’t talk me out ofgoing to the police. He tried to kill my husband. He tried to kill yourstep-father. Eric did this.”
“Eric didn’t do this.”
“You think he came back for you? He came back because he wants the empire. He came back to claim the empire. I know. You should know, too.”
“He doesn’t want the empire. I don’t know where this is coming from, but that isn’t important right now. Mom. Mom—your husband has died. He had a massive heart attack and he died.”
“What?”
“He died. He’s gone. I’m sorry—”
She sobs, and then screams, a blood-curdling scream. “Eric did this!” she shouts. “He caused all of this. He’s the end of us all.”
Chapter one hundred twenty-three
Harper
My adrenaline is pumping so hard that my hands are shaking. My mother hugs herself, tears streaming down her face, and only now do I realize that she’s fully dressed in jeans and a T-shirt. Her computer is open on the coffee table of the living room hotel suite, a pot of coffee next to it. She wasn’t asleep when I was calling her. What was she trying to prove?
Anger surges through me. She’s playing games. She’s not who I think she is and I don’t know what that means. And yet she sobs, “He did this,” blaming Eric. “Eric’s the reason this happened. The minute he came into this world, into this family, he changed the future. He changed everything.”
“He was here before we were here,” I remind her. “What are you even talking about, mother?”
She turns away from me and runs right into the coffee table, yelping, and starting to tumble. I catch her arm and turn her to face me. “I need to know what you’re talking about.”
