Tarnished Empire: A Standalone Enemies-to-Lovers Billionaire Romance

by Ava Harrison

  “Seeing as there’s really nothing to bring …” she gestures to the ditch bag and the raft “… no.”

  “Make sure you bring the knives.” After I say this, she turns her gaze to meet mine, and then her blue eyes look at me, wide with confusion. “Are you expecting to fight something? Or kill for that matter?”

  “Never can tell what we’ll find on our walk.”

  I wait for her to object, or say something, but today she’s on her best behavior. She must really want to get off this island.

  Not that I blame her, but I don’t have the heart to remind her it’s a long shot. This can’t be easy for her. She basically has to rely on someone she hates for everything. The problem is, we could leave here and die on the raft. The plan is we’ll find another island, one that’s inhabitable, and make our way there. But just in case it takes a while, it’s better safe than sorry.

  “Be honest. How many days of fishing until we have enough?”

  “You want me to be honest?” I ask.

  “Obviously.” She rolls her eyes before she deadpans, “Honesty is the best policy.”

  “Ten days.”

  Her mouth drops open at my words. “Are you serious? We have to do this for another ten days?”

  “Well, we don’t have to do anything, but if we want the best shot, that’s my guess.” I shrug.

  “Okay, well, either way, I guess we have to look for something to eat, so let’s go.” She turns and sets off again.

  We spend the rest of the day gathering food, and before long, the sky is turning dark. With a fire set, we sit together beside it, letting it warm us.

  “How will we know which way to steer?” she asks, picking the conversation back up from hours ago.

  I point at my head, tapping on it to show it’s all up there. That my brain will be our map.

  “Do you know your way around the Caribbean?”

  “For the past four years, I have conducted my business on my yacht. I know how to sail a boat. I know how to captain a yacht. I know how to read the stars. I know how to figure out the location on a map, and after all these years of doing this course, I know where the islands are on the map.” Leaning forward, I throw another log onto the pile and watch as the fire roars to life. Red embers flicker as the smoke consumes the fresh piece.

  Phoenix watches me, a small line forming between her brows. “Then how are we here?”

  “The thing is …” What happened that night still pisses me the fuck off, but there is no place for lies on this island. “I fell asleep. I hate myself for it because had I not, even in the black ocean, I would’ve been able to figure out our direction. But I did, and because of that, I might have killed us.” My words come out low, and I can’t believe I said them out loud.

  Phoenix does something I don’t expect. She moves to sit closer.

  “Tell me about the stars,” she says.

  “That can take all night,” I respond, head tilted toward her. She turns toward me with fascination and curiosity written all over her face.

  “Where else do I have to be?” She chuckles, and she’s right. There is no place to be and no one else to talk to. Her options for entertainment are limited.

  “I might bore you.”

  With amusement flashing in her eyes, she shakes her head. “I doubt you could ever bore anyone.”

  “You’d be surprised.” I lean back so my head tilts up to the sky, and she follows my lead.

  “Do you see that star right over there?”

  “The bright one?”

  “Yeah, that’s Polaris. The North Star. Sailors use it to guide them home. All I need is that, and I’ll be able to guide us.”

  “So why don’t you?”

  “I need to know where we started. I have a general understanding of our location, enough I feel confident that eventually we will find help, but we just need—”

  “Enough food, just in case it takes longer?” She leans forward to get closer to the fire.

  “Exactly. Now you’re learning.” My arm reaches out and grabs another log. I cut enough to last us until we fall asleep. Though we’re on a tropical island, the temperature does drop at night. From where she’s sitting, I hear her giggle, and I turn to see what’s so funny.

  “Why are you giggling over there?” I ask.

  “Learning from you … now that’s an interesting concept,” she clarifies.

  “How so?”

  She cocks her head to the side and gives me a pointed look. “I don’t see you as much of a teacher.”

  “You don’t know me very well. Don’t doubt what you can’t see.”

  A part of me expects my clipped answer to be ignored, but then I remember this is Phoenix, and my little dove loves conflict.

  “Very well. Starting now, I won’t. Tell me more.”

  It’s not exactly what I had in mind when I thought of her response, but I can still work with it. “Oh, I will, but not now.”

  “Then when?”

  “We have at least ten more days together … might as well make it last before you hate me again.”

  She lifts her shoulders. “Maybe I won’t.”

  That makes me chuckle. “You most definitely will.”

  “If there’s no more lesson … good night, Alaric.”

  “Good night, dove.”

  “With this new truce, you can call me Phoenix,” she states.

  “But what fun would that be?”

  29

  Phoenix

  I’m shocked by how relaxed Alaric seems. Playful, even. This is a different side to him.

  Without his men around, he’s lighter. Funnier. He was always sarcastic, but before, he had a huge chip on his shoulders.

  And now, with each day that passes on this tropical paradise, he seems to change.

  I wonder if this is the real him. If this is who Alaric Prince truly is and the rest is a front.

  Or maybe the actual world is so bad that he had no choice to be any different.

  I guess as the saying goes, Only time will tell.

  For now, we’re stuck here. I can’t even try to unravel or understand how much I like this unlikely alliance between Alaric and me. But what will happen if we live long enough to be free of this life?

  What happens if we make it back home? Will he go after my father again?

  I shouldn’t think about it. Right now, the chances of us even … my mind starts to go dark, and then I’m biting down hard on my lower lip.

  Maybe I’ll think about it later.

  Just not now, when we have finally found a level of peace between us.

  I lift a berry I found. “What about this one?” I ask.

  “Unless we are planning on a joint suicide, that’s a no.” His words and grim joke have me staring down at the berries in my hand, the ones that look yummy and delicious right now.

  The perfect killer. Like Alaric—beautiful to look at but lethal if you take a bite.

  But like the glutton for punishment that I am, why do I still want to know this?

  “Yeah, I’ll pass on that. How do you know so much?” There is a sick need inside me to find out everything about this man.

  “Now, that is a long story.”

  I lift my hand and gesture around us. “Does it look like I have anything better to do?”

  “Pick berries.” He dismisses my comment with a shrug.

  “Since I’m doing such an awful job, you might as well tell me.”

  He looks up and to the left as if thumbing through files in his memory before his gaze drops back down and into my eyes.

  “I guess.”

  He’s quiet for a bit, and when he kneels before another bush, I think he’s not going to tell me, but then I hear his voice.

  His low timbre.

  I should probably continue to look for food, but when he speaks, I’m too enthralled to do anything but listen.

  “My knowledge for the great outdoors is all my father’s doing. To be a man, he believed you needed to be able
to survive on nothing.” He looks up, and his eyes scan the surrounding area. “This isn’t my first time stranded on an island,” he says, and I can feel my eyes widening at his admission.

  “What do you mean?” My voice cracks with confusion.

  “My father was a strict man. He thought a man needed to be able to survive anything.” He stops talking, and I watch as his Adam’s apple bobs. “Alone.”

  My stomach muscles tighten, and I can’t even figure out what to say. “How old were you?” I finally squeak.

  “The first time he tested me or the first time he dropped me on an island?”

  “Both?”

  “When I was ten, he left me in the woods alone to find my way. By twelve, I was expected to last a few days. Four, to be exact. By fifteen, I was left for seven days on an island.”

  “But why? I don’t understand.”

  He stands from where he’s crouched and paces.

  “This business was his. To survive in this world—his world—I had to be indestructible.”

  “No one is indestructible,” I whisper.

  “I know,” he responds, his voice lower and filled with pain. I want to ask him about that pain. Is this about his brother? The brother he thinks my father killed? But at the same time, he’s finally opening up to me, talking to me, and I don’t want to go back to him hating me. If I’m going to probably die in ten days, I don’t want to spend the rest of my life in a war.

  “What was it like?” I ask, still staring at him. I’m still trying to understand this man and what made him who he is today.

  “When I had to find my way home, it was horrifying. Again, I was ten. I vaguely knew where I was. I walked for what seemed like hours, and I didn’t eat because I didn’t know what would kill me.” He looks up from the fruit he’s picking and begins to list toxic fruit to me. “Like this. At ten, this would have been the first thing I would have eaten. Lucky for me, I hesitated. I fought past the pains in my stomach and didn’t. Later, when I sat down to prepare, I learned that the fruit I had seen in the woods in the European forest he left me in that day would have killed me. I later referred to them as beautiful small red pods of death. If I had eaten them, I would have vomited, become dizzy and disoriented, then died.”

  “Holy fuck,” I say, interrupting him.

  “Right.” He nods, now looking at the ground. Maybe lost in the memory. “I was starving and severely dehydrated when I finally reached the manor my father had rented when he did business in Europe.”

  “What happened?”

  “He was impressed, very much so, but it wasn’t enough. I knew it wouldn’t be enough. He would mold me into the man he thought I should be. I watched as my older brother worked with him, but I knew my path wouldn’t be that easy. I spent my time from that moment on preparing for whatever would come next.”

  I wait with bated breath for him to continue, and just when I think he won’t, he surprises me again. He sits down, no longer looking at plants.

  His face is sullen, and his posture is stiff. “Finding my way home was nothing compared to leaving me on an island. But at least then I was prepared. I knew which fruits not to eat. I knew how to fish. I had taught myself how to start a fire with twigs.”

  “And you know how to pack a kick-ass survival bag,” I say, trying to lighten the mood.

  “I do. And I keep that bag with me at all times.”

  “Why no radio in it?” I ask.

  “Good question. There was one.”

  “But?”

  “But I had a crazy stowaway on my boat, so I removed it.” He looks up at me again, and now the previous gloom is gone, and it’s replaced with a smirk. He likes the fighting. He likes the banter. To Alaric Prince, it’s foreplay.

  For me, well, I don’t know what it is. But what I know is I don’t enjoy seeing him like he was before. Lost in a sad memory he can’t pull himself from.

  We aren’t so different. When I was nine, I was alone and thought I had no one in the world. But it wasn’t by choice that my parents left me. It wasn’t their choice. The big difference between Alaric and me is Michael stepped in and saved me.

  I will never understand what it’s like for your father to abandon you on an island to see if you’ll live or die.

  The thought is sobering, and it makes me wonder what else has happened to this beautifully broken man to make him the devil I know.

  I know I shouldn’t try to find out. Everything inside me screams at me not to pursue this.

  I just can’t help myself.

  My need has become so much more, desire, intrigue, fascination? Maybe it’s all of it, but I have to know more about Alaric Prince.

  After his confession, we settle into a comfortable silence. Maybe it’s because there is nothing more to talk about, or maybe it’s because we both realize what his confession means to us.

  He opened up to me.

  He showed me there was more to him.

  Now the real question is, what do I do with the information?

  Before long, we are walking back to the camp. He leads the way, making sure nothing is in our path. I don’t need him to coddle me, but I appreciate the thought, nonetheless.

  I’m not a porcelain doll, but regardless of that fact, it means something to me that he treats me as such.

  By the time we make it back to the campsite alongside the sand, I’m tired and hungry. We’ve been eating less and less, and my leggings are no longer tight.

  Although Alaric is still ripped, he’s leaner now. Even with the fish and coconuts, we are both starting to lose weight. We now have enough coconut stored for our rescue attempt, so gathering fruit and fish is next. The fish we bring will have to be freshly cooked. And hopefully, it will stay good because there’s no way to preserve it long term. Fruit has been harder to come by; most of what we have found is still inedible.

  Collecting water is one more hurdle we must conquer.

  Alaric thinks we will be ready to go in ten days.

  I think he just isn’t ready to set off to our death. There’s no question staying here forever is a death sentence, but leaving is one too.

  I think the ten days is a way for him to hold on to hope a bit longer.

  Maybe someone will find us. Maybe not all his men are dead? They’re the only ones who could track us correctly. If they were wounded in the attack, how many days would it take for them to find another ship and look for us?

  Maybe that’s why we’re waiting ten more days because technically, we could scrounge up enough food to leave now. Or we could try to stay here. The thing is, once the two-week mark hits, no one will look for us, and that’s why Alaric gave us ten days. It feels as though a weight is pressing down on my chest every time I think of this, so I walk over to where Alaric is gathering sticks and twigs, and I stand beside him.

  “For today’s lesson,” I say.

  “Today’s lesson?”

  “Well, yeah. Yesterday you told me about Polaris, and today, you’ll teach me something else to survive. If we’re stuck here for another ten days, I might as well learn the tricks of the trade.”

  “Is that what you want, dove?”

  “It is. What else is there to do to pass the time?” I ask, but the moment I do, I realize I have walked right into a trap.

  “I can think of better ways to spend our time.”

  I can feel the warmth spreading across my face, and if I didn’t know better, I’d say he lit the fire, but seeing as he hasn’t, I know I’m blushing.

  I don’t respond to his blatant sexual innuendo. Instead, I let my imagination run wild. I have to stop, but I can’t. I would swat my hand and shoo them away if that didn’t make me look insane. But it would, so I don’t. Instead, I take a deep breath and will my heart that is flip-flopping in my chest to stop so I can look straight at him.

  Show no fear, Phoenix Michaels. Show no fear.

  “I think my time on this island would be better spent learning how to survive.”

  “Whatever y
ou want.”

  I continue to stand in place before he motions for me to come closer. I hesitate for a minute before he opens his mouth. “Do you think you can learn all the way from there?”

  He’s right. As much as it pains me to admit he is right, from where I am perched, I won’t be learning anything.

  I do what he says and move closer. And just out of spite, to show I don’t care, to convince him I’m not affected by him—or maybe to convince myself—I stand so close that I can feel the heat of his body. I want to shiver, but I don’t. I stand perfectly still. Stoic. He turns to face me, his eyes playful and his lip tipped up.

  “Let’s get started. I’ll tell you and then demonstrate for you, and then you will try, okay?” he says, and I nod my head.

  “Sounds good.” Sort of, anyway.

  “You need to build friction where you rub, and it will turn the wood into a hot ember. Once that happens, you will quickly transfer the hot ember to your bundle and blow. This will ignite your tinder. Grab the kindling and use the burning tinder bundle to ignite it. Keep adding more dry sticks until you have the fire you want.”

  I watch as he does just what he said he would. Staring at his fingers, his wrists, and up to his forearms, I’m mesmerized by the flexing of one of his tattoos. I want to ask him what they all mean. I will tonight at the fire, but right now, I need to concentrate.

  His fire is blazing when he moves behind me.

  My breath lodges in my throat as his arms wrap around me and his front presses against my back. Warm hands wrap around my hands, and once he’s secure in his position of my extremities, he starts to turn our hands so the friction builds.

  The movement is sensual as he guides me around the wood. It feels like an erotic dance. His breath tickles my skin.

  His lips are close enough that I wonder if he’ll kiss me.

  I wonder if he wants to.

  I turn my head toward him to see what he’s thinking, but just as I do, he jolts.

  “You did it. Look!”

  He pulls back, letting me go so I’m the only one holding the sticks.

  “Blow,” he commands, and although I think the moment is gone, I can see the look of lust heavy in his eyes now.