The Fearless King

by Katee Robert

  “Why the hell would he decide it was a good idea to fuck with Frank Evans? He’s risking alienating a potential ally. Frank’s allegiance is to Beckett—always has been.”

  Oh right, I didn’t tell him. Guilt flared, and she did her best to ignore it. “I’m dating Frank. I didn’t exactly make it public knowledge for obvious reasons, but Elliott made a surprise visit to my apartment last Friday, and Frank happened to show up around the same time.”

  Silence reigned. She paced away from the car and back again. Every instinct demanded she start talking—babbling—and try to explain herself to avoid her brother’s anger. Or, worse, his disappointment. She didn’t. Anderson might get pissed sometimes, but it was only on her behalf. He would never hurt her, and even if fighting with him was the last thing she wanted to do, she would do it if it meant keeping him safe.

  He couldn’t go after their father directly. She’d originally concocted this plan for fear that Anderson would kill their father and pay the consequences. Now, Journey couldn’t shake the belief that if Anderson challenged Elliott, their father would kill him.

  She had to keep him out of it.

  “Andy, talk to me.”

  The use of her childhood nickname for him had him cursing all over again. “He was at your place.”

  At first she thought he meant Frank, but realization stopped her in her tracks. “Nothing happened. Frank arrived before…Well, I don’t know what he planned, but Frank ran him off.” Because I couldn’t. Because I wasn’t strong enough.

  “Stay in the Hamptons, Jo. I’ll cover for you.”

  Oh, she didn’t like this turn. She didn’t like it one bit. Journey clutched the phone to her ear. “Don’t do something you can’t take back. Promise me.”

  “No.” He paused. “I’m not going to take him out into the Gulf and toss him off that fucking boat of his. Yet. But I want you out of this. Stay there until I deal with him.”

  Fat chance of that. She hadn’t been thinking back in Houston—just reacting. Her first instinct was to get Frank somewhere safe and out of her father’s reach. That didn’t mean they were going to stay safely tucked away while someone else fought her battles—again. “I’m coming home in a couple days,” she said gently. “I’m not sitting this one out.”

  Anderson sighed. “I don’t suppose there’s anything I can say to get you to stay out there.”

  “There’s not. I’m sorry I left so unexpectedly, but…” She glanced at the car, not the least bit surprised to find Frank’s gaze on her. “They could have killed him. Because of his connection to me. That makes him my responsibility.” It didn’t matter that Frank wouldn’t agree. It was the damn truth.

  “Some other time, we’re going to talk about the fact that you’re dating Frank fucking Evans and didn’t bother to tell me.” The sound of a door opening and closing in the background. “I have to go put out some fires.”

  “I’m still taking my meetings for the week via conference call.”

  “I thought you were taking vacation days.” His voice warmed, and she could perfectly picture his smile. “Make sure you get out to the beach while you’re up there. Might as well take what enjoyment you can before you come back to this shit show.”

  She laughed softly. “It’s February.”

  “Still.”

  “I will. I promise.”

  “Call if you need anything.”

  “Same goes for you.” She waited for him to hang up and then turned back to look at the eyesore that was their Hamptons house. Oh, it was a study in perfect lines and expensive taste, from the grounds unfurling on either side of the looping driveway to the perfectly manicured landscaping on the back side of the house that led down to the perfect private beach. Inside was even more luxurious, every piece handpicked by her mother. It was just…too much. She had so many good memories here, but it was hard to forget that she was King first and everything else dead last when faced with the physical representation of her family’s absurd wealth and history.

  Journey checked her watch. She had an hour before her last meeting of the day, and she fully expected some kind of contact from her father once he discovered that she’d used the company jet without asking permission.

  Frank climbed out of the car and moved around to the trunk to grab their luggage. One look from him told her not to bother offering to help. Why would she? He wasn’t just a man. He was Frank Evans the Untouchable. A man who didn’t need help from someone like Journey.

  And, damn it, that stung.

  She pressed her lips together and focused on following Frank up the front steps of the house. Her adrenaline high had worn off sometime in the last hour or so, and she needed a few minutes to center herself and figure out what happened next. As soon as Frank had time to do the same, there would be yet another battle over the fact that she’d had the audacity to mislead him in order to protect him.

  At least she could look forward to that argument. The man might infuriate her more often than not, but going round after round with Frank gave her equal parts enjoyment and frustration—at least before the events that brought Elliott Bancroft to Houston. She wanted that back, wanted to meet him on equal ground instead of being this quivering, weak thing that she’d become.

  I don’t know how to do this.

  Stop overthinking. It never did a damn bit of good anyway.

  Frank opened the door and raised an eyebrow. “Secure.”

  “Give me a little credit. I called the service we use to keep this property maintained and asked them to freshen up the place before we landed.” She jerked a thumb over her shoulder. “Did you think I just keep a car at the airport indefinitely?”

  “I wouldn’t put anything past the Kings.” The comment held no heat, though. He stepped into the house, leaving Journey to follow him.

  She pointed to the bottom of the stairs. “Leave the suitcase there.” Journey didn’t wait to see if he’d follow her command. She just strode past him and down the wide hallway leading deeper into the house. She’d left detailed instructions with the staff—she didn’t want anyone here for the duration of their stay. The company that maintained the house and property were known for their utmost discretion, but it would be all too easy for Elliott to slide into the spot left by Lydia and take over their loyalty.

  The kitchen was her favorite part of the house. It was stupidly oversized—just like everything else—but the white-on-white color scheme, combined with massive windows that overlooked the ocean, created a calming effect. One of the windows could be opened garage door–style so food could be served directly from the kitchen to the outdoor lounge and let in the ocean breeze. Journey bypassed it and pulled open the fridge and freezer. “Good.”

  She felt more than heard Frank come to stand at her back. He didn’t touch her, but with the cold blast of air from the fridge, she fancied she could feel the heat rising from his body. “I’m going to get food started. Why don’t you go upstairs to the office and start working through the couple dozen phone calls we both know you’re dying to make?”

  Silence for a beat. Two. Finally he said, “You have a security system in this place?”

  “Yes.”

  “Set it.” His footsteps sounded, leading back the way they’d come in.

  Journey closed her eyes and allowed herself a single inhale and exhale before she moved to obey. There were far too many windows in the house to withstand anything resembling an attack, but with the system armed, at least they would get warning.

  You sound like you’re going to war.

  Isn’t that exactly what’s happening?

  Chapter Fourteen

  Journey lost herself in the methodical motions of measuring and cooking. She got chicken marinating in the fridge and chopped the veggies to roast. Since Frank still wasn’t downstairs by the time she finished prepping for dinner, she whipped up a batch of her brownies and slid them into the oven just in time to take the scheduled conference call. She got the laptop going and keyed in her informati
on to start the call and then threw the bowl and utensils in the sink while she waited for the other two participants to connect.

  Ronnie arrived first. She blinked into the camera, her close-cropped black hair making her dark eyes seem even larger on her face than they actually were. “Where are you? Anderson said you had to take an emergency trip, but he didn’t deign to drop any other details.”

  “That’s because it’s none of your business, snoop.” She laughed, sliding into her workplace persona with ease. It helped that she liked Ronnie. The woman ran the tech department for the company, and she had earned the position at a younger age than anyone else in Kingdom Corp history.

  Ronnie didn’t get a chance to reply before George appeared in a third video, his expression as dour as ever. “Ladies.”

  “George,” Journey answered for both of them, which was just as well. If Ronnie and George could manage to spend more than two seconds in the same space without sniping at each other, this call wouldn’t be necessary in the first place. “Why don’t we get right into the thick of it? What’s the problem this time?”

  “Ronnie’s department is over budget this quarter—again.” A pleased glint appeared in his blue eyes, which didn’t bode well. “Seeing as how that’s the third quarter in a row, Mr. Bancroft has given me permission to lay off ten people within the department.”

  “You can fuck right off with that noise, George!”

  “Ronnie, enough.” Journey inflected steel into her tone, and the other woman went silent, though she obviously wasn’t happy about it. Fine. She could be pissed. Journey was pretty fucking pissed right now, too. She stared hard at George. “You know as well as I do that all layoff orders come from me. Not from Elliott. He’s not the CEO, no matter what he’s acting like at the moment, so you might want to wipe that smug look off your face, George.”

  “If that bastard lays off one of my people, we all walk. See how he likes that,” Ronnie snarled.

  She could actually see the framework that held Kingdom Corp together shaking. This would be the first casualty when the wave broke, but it wouldn’t be the last. Elliott might have the power, but he obviously didn’t know shit about running this company or he wouldn’t have played things like this.

  Unless he wants it to explode so he can blame me for it.

  She had held her anger at a slow boil since getting the call about Frank, but it ratcheted up several degrees in response to her suspicion. She’d worked too damn hard to let him take Kingdom Corp from her. Oh, she was sure Beckett’s offer to hire her and her siblings still stood—he was the kind of guy who wouldn’t go back on his word—but that company wasn’t hers. It wasn’t the place she’d fought on behalf of for her entire life. It was as much her family as her actual family was.

  She had to do something, and she had to do it now.

  “George, we both know for a fact that engineering is under budget this quarter. Take the excess from them and spread it around as necessary to cover the tech department. Assure them that it’s a temporary situation and they’ll be compensated accordingly. I’ll set up a meeting with Jenna to discuss it next week.” She held up a hand when he went to speak. “I want you to think very carefully about the words you’re about to say. If they’re going to further inflame this situation without offering a useful solution, I highly suggest you keep them to yourself.”

  He clamped his mouth shut and glared at her. Thank God. She nodded. “Good. In that case, we’ll go over financials once I’m back in the office. Under no circumstances are you to enact any orders from my father without running them past either Anderson or myself first.” She swallowed hard. “Until he does or does not take an official role within the company, he has no authority and will be treated as such.” She’d pay for that order. She had no illusions about that. It didn’t matter. Journey could take whatever damage her father dealt.

  Kingdom Corp couldn’t.

  “Ronnie, I want a full financial workup explaining how this happened.” She ignored the betrayal on the other woman’s face. “You have a budget, and part of your job is working within it. If it’s not an appropriate budget, we can revisit it, but going over is out of the question. If you do it another quarter, then something has to give. Do you understand?”

  Ronnie reluctantly nodded. “I’ll put together the report for you.”

  “Thank you.” She looked at both of them. “Is there anything else requiring my immediate attention?” After they both gave a negative, she closed out the call and stood back with a slow exhale. That hadn’t gone as well as she would have liked, but it was far from the worst situation she’d had to muscle her way through. The next step was smoothing Ronnie’s ruffled feathers, and getting George’s head in the game instead of on the layoffs he’d been deprived off, but both of those things could wait. They needed to stew a little bit in the meantime, otherwise she risked undermining her authority.

  The oven dinged, drawing her back to the present. She frowned at the clock above the microwave. Frank had been upstairs a seriously long time at this point.

  She pulled the brownies out of the oven, set them aside to cool, and then rushed upstairs. The room she’d set Frank up in was empty, but faint light shone beneath the bathroom door. Journey hesitated for all of a second before she turned the door handle and strode into the bathroom.

  And stopped short.

  Frank was in the shower.

  She stared at the outline of his big body, only slightly distorted through the clear curtain. He had his hands braced on the tiled wall and his head bowed beneath the spray. She couldn’t actually see the lines of water lovingly tracing the muscles of his back, but Journey had no problem mentally tracing those same lines.

  The absolutely insane desire to strip off her clothes and join him in the water rose, and she had to clench her hands to keep from doing exactly that. She’d all but kidnapped the man and brought him to another state. Her father wanted him dead in the most literal way. There were a thousand things she should be doing right this second to ensure that the world didn’t fall out from beneath them, and jumping into the shower with Frank didn’t number among them.

  No matter how much she wanted to.

  I need to get dinner in the oven. Yes. That’s what I need to do. And maybe if she took a couple of minutes, she could regain the equilibrium she’d been missing since all this began.

  Too bad she didn’t like her odds all that much.

  * * *

  In the hours since they’d arrived at the house, Frank had managed to get through two rescheduled meetings about property he’d recently acquired, answer two dozen emails, and shower. Every once in a while, he’d hear Journey downstairs puttering around, a check-in that relaxed him in a way that he wasn’t prepared to deal with. Later, when the fate of their little corner of the world wasn’t hanging in the balance, he’d examine his complicated feelings for Journey King at length.

  Now wasn’t the time or the place for it. He’d just pulled his shirt over his head when his phone rang. He glanced at the screen. This conversation had been coming from the second he agreed to help Journey. “Hey, Beck.”

  “It’s time you’re straight with me, Frank. I’m willing to give you the benefit of the doubt because of our history and our friendship, but only if you stop dicking me around now.”

  He bit back a sigh. “I’m not intentionally keeping things from you.”

  “Bullshit. You drop me a cryptic phone call about Journey King, and then, next thing I know, Samara tells me that you’re dating her. The timelines don’t match up, because you sure as fuck would have told me if you were dating my cousin while my aunt was trying to have me killed.”

  No use arguing with that. He never really intended to. It had taken Beck a little longer than Frank expected to put it all together, but he was understandably distracted with his new woman and running Morningstar Enterprise. “I have things under control.”

  “Of that, I have no doubt.” Beck hesitated. “Shit, Frank. When I was in tr
ouble, you didn’t hesitate to drop everything and help me. Obviously something’s going on with Kingdom Corp and you’re neck deep in the mess. My cousins won’t ask me for help, but I damn well expect you to.”

  Despite everything, he smiled. He enjoyed the fuck out of his friendship with Beckett King. Even when the rest of his life had gone to shit in the worst way possible, Beck remained the one true thing that he could set his compass by. They didn’t talk about their teen years much, about when Beck was still reeling from his mother’s death and clashing weekly with his father, or when Frank had watched his old man taken away in cuffs and had to weather the media shit storm that rose in the aftermath. Or the fact that Frank’s mother had chosen to let death take her, rather than fight to stay in the world with her son.

  But they’d been there for each other through it, constants in each other’s lives in the way they couldn’t be in their own.

  He pinched the bridge of his nose. “You know Elliott Bancroft is back.”

  “Yeah.” The anger changed in Beck’s voice, becoming colder. “He paid me a visit today, all smiles and charm, wanting to put the sins of the past to rest and all that bullshit.”

  “What did he want with you and Morningstar?”

  Beck laughed, but not like anything was funny. “To partner up to usher in a new age where Kingdom Corp and Morningstar Enterprise are the behemoth that crushes anything in its path. He didn’t say merger, but it was there between the lines.”

  “He didn’t think you would agree to that.”

  It wasn’t a question, but Beck answered all the same. “I didn’t get the impression that he was particularly torn up when I told him to kick rocks, but I’m still keeping an eye on my key employees in case he decides to pull a page from Lydia’s playbook and poach someone.” The slightest of pauses. “We aren’t talking about me, though—we’re talking about you and my cousin.”

  Frank hadn’t really thought he’d get away with that subject change, but it didn’t hurt to try. “She’s in trouble, Beck. Big trouble. I agreed to help when I thought it was merely business, but best I can tell, Elliott is setting up to actually hurt her—not just remove her as COO.” He walked to the vanity that was set up opposite the bed. “Apparently the bastard took exception to me personally, because he’s decided to focus his threats on me and Journey for the time being, rather than on the rest of his children.”