Pushing out of the kitchen, I raced back down the hall toward the room where she’d left me. When she’d turned her back and walked away because she couldn’t remain standing in the same room.
I started to search the rooms running the length of that hall, but the second I saw the desolated set of stairs that led to the second floor, I knew that was where she would have been drawn.
I bounded up them, taking them two at a time, my pulse a hammer that slammed at my chest and thundered through my veins.
At the landing, I started to take a right down the hall, but I stumbled.
Awareness crawled up my spine.
I angled my attention back over my shoulder.
Drawn.
Caught.
Hooked.
Could feel the terror ricocheting through the air. Trembling and shivering and cloying in my mind.
It was struck with the grave, dire need to protect.
The purpose I’d originally striven for was no longer certain.
Reason no longer real.
Mind-wrecker.
Spinning around, I rushed in the direction of her call, a fetter leashing me, pulling me closer and closer. I didn’t even have to start searching the umpteen rooms.
I knew.
I grabbed the knob of the double doors to the right.
The knob rattled, the door locked.
Rage bristled beneath my skin, and I banged at the door, something between a shout and scream ripping from my throat. “Emily! Emily!”
Glass crashed behind the door, a scuffle, and then a bang on the floor.
I moved back a foot and rammed the door with my shoulder.
It shook but didn’t give.
I did it again and again.
Ramming the wood.
Frantic.
Frenzied.
Shouting her name. Screams seeped through the walls.
I promised her I wasn’t going to let this happen. That he would never touch her again. And I’d let it. Put her in the line of fire in order to fulfill my purpose.
Guilt and regret squeezed all the air from my lungs.
I couldn’t . . . I couldn’t let this happen.
Pain speared through my shoulder when I slammed the door again, but I felt the wood give. I moved all the way across the hall and threw myself at it.
Momentum splitting the wood at the lock.
The door banged against the inside of the wall.
Emily was on her stomach, fingernails scratching the wood floors as she tried to crawl away from the monster who was gripping one of her ankles. That shoe missing.
Blood was smeared across his face, his claws sinking into her flesh. Emily shifted around and kicked him in the face.
He roared and climbed over her, pinning her to the floor as he backhanded her.
It was the moment my hatred finally took over.
Stole my sanity and turned my sight black.
Twenty-Nine
Emily
A clatter of wood sounded from somewhere behind me, my heart racing in terror and hope.
Oh god. Someone was here.
But I was fearing they might already be too late when Cory climbed over me, his hand smacking across my face.
Pain fragmented across my cheek, sending my head rocking back.
I cried out beneath the fury that Cory succumbed to.
Perversion taking over.
He wrapped both hands around my throat and squeezed.
My fear was so thick it was blinding. Lungs failing in my chest.
I squirmed and flailed, the blood running off his chin dripping onto my face.
I’d gotten him good with a swing of a glass lamp that had nailed him. It’d stunned him, blood bursting from a gash on his cheek, sending him toppling to the floor. I’d tried to jump over him so I could get to the door, but he’d snagged me by the ankle.
Yanked me to the floor where he had me now.
“You fucking bitch. I’m going to end you. You think I’m going to let you get away with this?” Cory’s words were a slur, hinged on his ragged breaths.
A blur flew into the room.
A wraith.
A shadow.
My dark, vengeful stranger.
He knocked Cory from me faster than I could process I was free. I choked and gasped for air while the two of them tumbled. They crashed into an end table. Wood splintered beneath their weight.
They tumbled, fighting to gain the upper hand. Bodies banging.
Royce pinned Cory. “You piece of shit. You disgusting motherfucker.”
Cory spit blood in his face. “Fuck you . . . just like I fucked your sister and your wife.”
I saw it snap.
Royce’s sanity.
Violence spilled out in a barrage of fists that pummeled against Cory’s broken face.
Splitting.
Cracking.
Different than the night that he’d been protecting me from Nile.
This was vengeance.
Retaliation.
The man an avenger who was sent to destroy.
His hands flew. Unrelenting fury. Blood splattering across the floor.
I staggered to my feet, shuffling with one heel in their direction.
Shocked.
Lost to the stupor of what was happening.
Cory laughed a maniacal sound, his teeth white against the blood covering his face. And I saw it, his hand wrapping around a jagged piece of wood. He lifted it and smashed it against the side of Royce’s head.
Royce toppled over, dazed, and Cory was on him in a flash, lifting the jagged part of the wood, pointed like a spear, over his head.
Horror slammed me. The realization of what he was going to do.
There was no consideration. I rushed him.
Arms wrapping around Cory’s waist, catching him by surprise. He flung his arm out to stop me.
The piercing agony in my shoulder sent me falling face-first to the ground, the wood impaling my flesh.
I screamed, holding onto the wound. Then I whimpered, trying to shove myself away with my heels when Cory started to climb to his feet.
Sure this was the end.
“Freeze.” The voice banged through the room, and I cried out in relief.
A clamor of heavy footsteps pounded into the room, and Cory was pushed facedown onto the floor, arms wrenched behind his back while he laughed like the madman that he was.
From where I lay on the cold, hard floor, my eyes sought out the one who’d stolen my heart.
Royce was on the ground five feet from me, those onyx eyes wide with regret and affection, a gash on the side of his head matting his hair and running with blood.
I’d thought he was meant to be the one standing at my side.
My partner.
My soul ached.
Maybe sometimes the ones who were supposed to stand with us were only meant to stand with us for a moment in time.
There to serve a purpose.
Just like I’d been Royce’s.
A scream tore from the doorway, and high heels clicked across the floor as the woman who’d been with Cory dropped to her knees at his side.
She wailed. “Cory, oh god, what happened? What did you do?”
She sank to her bottom when the officers hauled him up with his arms shackled behind his back. Cory’s legs were slack beneath him, the man refusing to stand as the officers dragged him toward the door.
Tears streamed down the woman’s face as she watched them take him away. Then she looked to Royce and slowly crawled on her hands and knees in his direction. “Royce, what have I done? I’m so sorry. I’m sorry.”
She buried her face in his throat, and he threaded his fingers in her hair and slumped all the way back.
Love is the heart’s greatest deceit.
Maybe he was right, after all.
Grief crushed down.
So heavy.
Too much.
A paramedic was suddenly there, a hand on my back. “Stay
still. Don’t move. Tell me where you’re injured.”
“My shoulder.”
Gloved fingers moved over the wound that was excruciating, but it was the wound deep within my soul that was truly agonizing.
What left me battered and bruised.
Broken.
But the truth was, it was worth the sacrifice.
Cory gone. No longer a threat. Those women saved.
Royce’s sister safe.
Just like me.
My spirit churned with a deep-seated relief.
I dropped my head, cut wide open by this double-edged sword.
The paramedic shifted me around to sitting and wrapped a blanket around my shoulders. “We need to transfer you to the emergency room for sutures.”
“Okay,” I whispered, though I was looking at Royce, who was in a similar position across the room. Being examined while the woman remained a ball at his feet.
Remorse thrummed in the distance between us.
That energy fierce.
Tormented and wrong.
His expression was grim. Confirmation that this had been his intention all along.
I was being placed on a stretcher as a precaution when Richard broke through the crowd gathered in the room. He ran to me.
Hands fisted in his hair. “Shit . . . Em . . . are you hurt? Oh my god.”
Part of me wanted to go to him. To drop to my knees in front of him and wrap my arms around his fierce, warm, powerful body. Beg him to explain it to me. But the bigger part of me was terrified of what he would say.
What he would admit.
Richard gripped my hand. “I’m so sorry, Em. I’m so sorry. This is all my fault. I should have known from the start that Royce was up to something. He called me a week before he joined the tour and suggested that he come. He said he would make sure you signed if I agreed to bring him on, but he made me promise not to say anything. I thought he just wanted to sign the band. That we were working together to make that happen.”
“It’s okay,” I mumbled.
None of that mattered anymore. This whole thing was much bigger than us. My worry for Richard still great, unable to believe he would be involved in any of the accusations Royce had made against Karl Fitzgerald.
With the things Cory had done to me, I had no question they were true.
Richard brushed back the hair matted to my face. “You know who he is?”
Royce Reilly.
Liar.
Lover.
My heart.
My biggest mistake.
Now head of Mylton Records.
Previous lead of A Riot of Roses.
No, I hadn’t known.
But maybe I should have all along. The signs written in the stars that I’d dipped my fingers into, unable to stop from giving into the temptation.
He’d warned me I’d regret it. From the beginning, he’d told me not to forget that I would.
But the heart had a mind of its own. Wayward and unruly. Reaching for the dangerous, sure it would be worth the risk.
My spirit shook.
I guessed maybe it was. Maybe I would have given anything to experience those few stolen moments. But I hadn’t been prepared that it could hurt so much.
“A fallen star,” I whispered.
Richard tightened his hold. “I should have told you.”
My head shook. “It wouldn’t have mattered.”
Those confessions were on Royce.
The crimes on Cory.
“It’s Cory who’s to blame. Let’s not forget that,” I found myself saying.
Richard squeezed his eyes together, his expression morphing through a hundred different emotions as he came to a realization. “It was him? Cory was the one who hurt you? The one who had been causing you all that anxiety? Because of me?” The last was a guttural rasp.
My eyes squeezed shut, too, and instead of answering, I asked my own. “Who is she, Richard? Who is that woman in the picture? Please . . . tell me you aren’t involved in something so cruel.”
He pressed his lips to my temple, whispered, “Never. Never.” It was a plea. “And because of you, she is free. That’s the only thing that matters.”
I choked over the emotion that surged.
The detective who’d first entered the office approached me, his eyes moving over me like he was looking for injuries. Sympathy filled his expression when he met my gaze. “I’m sorry this happened to you on our watch. That wasn’t supposed to be how it went down.”
I could barely nod.
“I’m going to ask that you make a formal statement tomorrow. Testify if you’re willing.”
My soul throbbed.
More of the pieces sliding together. What Royce had wanted all along. I’d been a target. A calculated casualty.
“If it means Cory will go away for longer, then yes, I will agree to testify.”
He gave a somber dip of his head. “Go on, get checked out. I’ll be in contact with you tomorrow so we can get your statement.”
He stepped back, and Richard returned to my side as they started to wheel me away.
My spirit thrashed when I felt the presence consume.
That connection pulling at me in a way I couldn’t let it.
The paramedics paused, and Royce was suddenly there, towering over me to the side.
“Emily.” My name was grit.
Gravel.
Dirt.
Dust.
Floating away into nothing at the end.
My entire being winced at the familiarity.
This man I’d fallen so desperately for.
“I need you to answer something for me, and I want the truth,” I said, trying to steel myself, not sure I was ready for what I was asking.
He lifted his chin, flashing the tattoo imprinted on his throat.
“The first night at that bar in Savannah . . . is that why you sought me out? Because you knew Cory had gotten to me? Because you needed me to testify to put him away? Because you knew Carolina George was the way to steal your stepfather’s company?”
Regret blistered across his flesh, but his eyes . . . they no longer held any mystery.
No reason left to keep any secrets.
“Yes.”
The word speared me like an arrow.
Tears slipped free at the corners of my eyes and dripped into my hair.
Royce reached for me.
“Don’t touch me,” I whimpered, angling away.
I couldn’t handle it.
His remorse.
His hurt.
He’d hurt me enough.
My tongue darted out to wet my lips, and I forced out the one thing I needed to say. “I don’t know how you knew, and I don’t want to, but I want you to know, I would have done it for you. For your sister. For your wife. For those women. Freely. You just needed to ask.”
Grief slashed across his face. “Emily.”
I squeezed my eyes closed. “Please, don’t . . . the one thing I asked of you was not to lie to me, and I’m pretty sure that’s the only thing you’ve done.”
Blanching, he stepped back, out of the way of the paramedics.
As they wheeled me out, I felt as if I was leaving a piece of myself behind.
Shredded.
Slayed.
Nothing left but fragments and mist.
Following along at my side, Richard dipped down to press a kiss to my temple. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s not your fault.”
He tightened his hold on my hand. “Yes, it is.”
Thirty
Royce
“Are you sure this is what you want?” Sebastian Stone sat at the table opposite of me in his kitchen in Savannah, Georgia. He slowly shuffled through the piles of paperwork set out in front of him. It wasn’t that he didn’t know every detail. Both our attorneys had spent hours hashing them out.
Sunlight poured in through the window of the close to two-century-old house that was nothing but southern charm.
The kitchen as country as his wife, Shea.
As country as Emily.
Emily.
Slanting a hand through my hair, I paced, shoved down the errant thought.
I didn’t want to think about her.
Couldn’t.
Not without breaking apart.
“You know that it is,” I told him, grinding my teeth.
He sighed, and the guy rocked back in the white wooden dining chair and studied me where I was carving out a path in the floor.
Unable to sit still.
Unable to settle.
Children’s laughter seeped through the walls. His children, Kallie and Connor, were playing upstairs, their carefree voices echoing down into the house.
Shea’s voice was drifting down, the melody she sang mixing with the tenor of her daughter’s.
Torment pulsed.
God.
This was too much.
“Royce, man, you’ve got to know what Mylton Records is worth.” Baz gestured to the contract, dragging my attention away from his family.
I looked out the window over the side yard of the historic house, voice firm. “The artists represented under the label are worth more than any dollar amount.”
He sighed. “Yeah. You’re right. They are. Have to be a hundred companies who would gladly make you a very rich man in order to get their hands on this company.”
I shifted around to meet his eye. “And that would mean they wouldn’t have you to represent them.”
He nodded slow, hand rubbing his chin, contemplation in his eyes. “Then let’s do it together. Merge. You can work alongside me to make sure these bands are given the best chance. You and I know this business better than anyone else.”
Resting my hand on the wall, I dropped my head, appreciating his belief. His support. Friendship he’d given me since the day A Riot of Roses had opened for a Sunder show in a seedy dive bar in Hollywood more than ten years before.
I glanced over at him. “Not the life I want, man.”
Producing.
It’d never been in my blood.
It’d been nothing but an angle.
A way to infiltrate Mylton Records.
A frown pulled across Baz’s brow. “And what life is it that you want?”
Regret pulsed out on a slow breath.
Catch Me When I Fall Page 31
