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Jax
Iwas right.
Now is not our time. It was never supposed to be our time. That meeting with Eric Mitchell comes first. I watch her drive away, the woman I came here for and I let her go. I let her go and with good reason: I want her too much. That wasn’t a part of the plan. I stood there with her by that bathroom and I willed her to be anyone but a Knight. I convinced myself that she wasn’t one of them, and that she needed to be saved from the Knight family curse. A curse I plan to create. Then it happened. Randall brought up my dead family in front of her and I knew I had to be wrong.
She is one of them.
And yet, I stand here, the cool air off the ocean washing over the heat radiating off of me; one part anger, one part desire for a woman who denies knowing my brother when I know she knew him, but at least I now understand how the Knights took him down. They, or rather Emma Knight, is a bit like a drug that you want to taste even before she touches your tongue. She couldlure a man to hell and he’d never want to come back, but I won’t be following Emma or pursuing her at all. I won’t have to.
Tonight I set the trap.
Tonight I ensured that she will come to me.
And my castle awaits.
Chapter five
Emma
The Uber ride is silent but for the hum of the engine, streetlights splintering the darkness in bursts that fade quickly only to return, refusing to allow me to disappear. The way my father’s secrets refuse to allow him to rest in peace, or perhaps it’s me that can’t find peace. Tonight I stood in a crowd and pretended I was the same person I was a month ago, when I can never be that person again. The question though becomes, who am I now?
The car halts in front of the Folsom Street tower, a high-end property partially owned by the Knight corporation, and used for rental income and personal use. In various locations, this thirty-floor building is home to me, my brother, and my parents, or rather, my mother. Exiting the car, the cool night air, made cold by the wind off the nearby ocean, lifts my hair off my neck and drives me into a hurried pace, though the truth is, I feel like there’s more than wind at my back. The relief I feel when I enter the lobby—a compact but modern design with low hanging lights that screams of a luxury hotel the kind that suits the Knight brand—is momentary. I fear I would seem spoiled to anyonewho didn’t really know better, but luxury is suffocating me. It’s a façade, like my bank account and status in this family.
I enter the elevator and punch in my code, but I don’t head to my one-bedroom apartment I’ve leased the past six years. Nor do I travel to the twenty-ninth floor where Chance lives. He’s hiding out in nearby Sonoma anyway, under the guise of business, but I know better. He simply didn’t want to accept that award tonight for our father, almost to the point of odd, and I wonder how much he knows about dad that I never knew. I shove that thought aside because I can’t lose my brother now too, and Chance—Chance isn’t my father.
The elevator dings my arrival at the penthouse level, to my parents’ floor, my mother’s home now that I’m to look after while she’s gone. Right now, I’m not sure she’s coming back, but then, the blow of learning about Marion after my father died crushed her. That’s why I’m here now. I don’t know what else she might know, but if she knows what I know, I’m not sure she’d survive the blow. I’m not sure what I should do with what I know, but I have to make sure that she doesn’t get the chance to feel that pain.
The doors open directly into my parents’ home—I can’t seem to think of it any other way—and I step inside, lights automatically flickering on in the foyer and illuminating the half-moon shaped hallway before me. An odd prickling on my neck has me hugging myself and turning to ensure that the elevator seals shut. Without the code, no one can get inside, but in today’s technology-driven world, that elevator has always made me nervous. It is what it is though, and I accept it, but not lamely. I turn on the security system and then hurry down around the corner, dark hardwood absorbing my heavy steps.
Entering the living room, I pass the grand piano and cross through a sitting area framed by magnificent towering windows, to halt at the double doors to my father’s office. My hands gripthe knobs but I hesitate to open the doors and I know why. This room was his private space and it’s now the tomb of his real self, even if his body has left this earth. A self I don’t fully understand, but I think—no, I know—that if tonight proved anything to me, it’s that I’m reacting to situations, not controlling them. That has to end. And so, I open the doors, and I dive deeper into the hell of shark-infested waters.
Entering the room, a hint of an earthy cigar scent tinges the air, a cigar my father enjoyed in this very room, and try as I might, I can’t squash the emotions clawing at my chest. Those feelings, all the mishmash of feelings, are here, they’re present, they aren’t going away. And so I carry them with me as I walk to the desk surrounded by bookshelves, shelves filled with every type of book imaginable, books that I used to spend hours exploring, reading, loving. Hours with my father, who educated me, challenged me, loved me. I know he loved me. I just—I don’t know if he deserved my love.
I sit down and open a drawer, pulling out a folder that is buried deep in the midst of many files, and I remove the large envelope I plan to take with me. In turn, just to be safe, I grab an accordion file thick with documents. Shutting the drawer, I then do what I shouldn’t do here and now, but rather later. I open the file and remove the leather journal inside where my father kept all the words he didn’t dare speak or register electronically. My heart starts to race as I flip in hunt of the page I need to read again. I need to review it again because I need to be wrong about what I think I’d read. That’s why I’m here, I realize. Not to take charge, but to disprove my own memory.
I flip so fast that I nick my finger, a sharp sensation followed by blood pooling, but I don’t stop looking for what I seek. I snag a tissue and wrap my wound, my hand shaking as I stop on the page I seek. My eyes land on the middle of neatly written words, words that were crafted with thought and precision, not rushedin an emotional frenzy. I swallow hard as I read:We were all better off when he was dead.The shaking overtakes my entire body and I look down to find blood seeping through the tissue on my finger.
Chapter six
Emma
The women in my life are many, too many, but only one really matters…
I wake Saturday morning to the doorbell, sitting up in the center of my bed, my father’s journal falling from my lap, those words, his written words, and so many more burned into my mind. Papers are scattered around me, the accordion file I’d found in my father’s office emptied into random piles. I grab the journal and fling it across the room. He didn’t name names or give specifics about anything or anyone, but he still said plenty. I was worried about my secrets destroying this family. My secrets are nothing. I am nothing to him. The doorbell sounds again and I groan with the certainty that it’s a delivery of some sort that I don’t want, but I can’t stand not knowing.
Climbing over the top of the papers, I perch on the edge of the mattress and glance down at my leggings and thick tank top and decide I’m suitably dressed. The doorbell rings yet again with a determined visitor, a delivery a building staff person isn’t allowed to leave at the door, no doubt. With a huffed breath, I cave to the fact that whoever this is isn’t going away. Pushingto my feet, I cross the bedroom and bound down the stairs to the living room that frames my front door. “Who is it?” I ask, wondering what time it is, because I truly have no idea.
“Open up, Bird Dog.”
Even if I didn’t recognize Chance’s voice, no one else calls me Bird Dog, and thank God for it. I unlock the door and open it to find my brother standing there, his dark hair a rumpled mess, his sweats and T-shirt telling me that he just came from his habitual weekend run. The one he hasn’t taken since dad died. The two Starbucks coffee cups in his hands telling me why he believes he can get a say with that old nickname. “I hate when you call me that.”
He pushes off the doorframe his muscular shoulder is holding up and offers me a coffee. “If it fits, you must acquit.” I roll my eyes and accept the coffee.
“Bird Dog does not fit me.”
“Back in the day, you were always chasing my secrets to tell mom and dad. Now you chase property for the Knight hotels. It fits. Drink your damn coffee.”
I sip the white mocha with approval. “This is the only reason you get to come in.” I back up and head toward the living room, claiming my big olive-colored chair that accents my cream-colored couch. “Especially since you made me go alone last night.”
