Watching Ember

by J B Reding

  ~***~

  Ember being done with her finals couldn’t come at a better time. Everything back home seems to be going to shit. And now this. Someone's trying to fuck with us, and I don’t like it. I’m ready to get back on my own territory. The Boss here was generous enough to let me stay a little longer than planned as long as I kept my shit out of the media and on the down low. I’ve been able to keep that promise so far.

  Still, a part of me is a little wary about returning home because it means telling Ember that I’ve not only taken over, but also expanded her dad’s business. This is part of the reason I’ve been so absent even more since she left for college.

  I have a feeling I will end up baring it all to her in the near future. A time I’ve been dreading for a while now.

  Another thing she doesn’t know is that she has the key to solving both my dad and her mother’s murder. We’re confident we know who’s behind this, but we don’t have confirmation just yet. Something else I’m keeping from her.

  I’m fucking drowning in all the secrets.

  Anyway, my dad had left me a letter in his private will. A will only Charles had access to. He gave a dummy copy to his lawyer.

  In other words, my dad was fucking paranoid, and it seems with good reason. Whosever’s secrets he uncovered is willing to go to any lengths necessary to keep them hidden. Even attempted murder on a nine-year-old.

  The car accident Ember’s mom died in was no accident and was meant to take them both out. But it seems fate was on her side. She just barely managed to escape death.

  Weird thing is, there was a duffel bag filled with Ember’s stuff, but her mom had nothing, not even a purse. Leading us to believe that whoever wanted her silenced had taken her shit and left them for dead.

  The question of the fucking year is why? What did she have that was so damning?

  Once I finally got the balls to read his message a couple weeks ago, a lot of things clicked into place. It only took me five fucking years.

  Things had been going awry back in Atlanta. Someone was targeting my businesses. It had been going on for a year and at a particularly stressful moment I caved and read the letter, hoping for some guidance. What I found were more questions.

  In the letter were some cryptic ass words that lead me to believe that he left something with Ember. What? I have no clue. My father was a smart man who must have known someone would be looking for what I assume is information. He hid it well. So well, that I can’t fucking find it.

  To make matters worse, my guys started noticing some unusual activity surrounding Ember. Reoccurring faces and such. I’m just glad I had the forethought to switch out the guys I had watching her every semester. Otherwise they would’ve gotten too comfortable in their surveillance and slack on their duties. If I hadn’t, we probably would have never noticed. Now that I think about it, around the time I read the letter is also when these new faces began to show up.

  I will have to get Maddox on that. There is no such thing as happenstance in our world. Plus, there's no way anyone should know Ember has any involvement in this. I kept the contents of the letter very closed lipped. Anton, Maddox and Charles being the only ones to know about it. I trust all of them, with not just my life, but Embers too.

  Anyway, I killed two, or rather three, birds with one stone by coming out here. To make sure Ember is okay and to tell her she needs to come home, also, to discreetly look for this thing. It's just hard to look for something when you don’t know what the fuck it is you’re looking for. There wasn’t even a hint on what it could be, nor in what form. It could literally be anything. So, I’m trying to keep an open mind since my dad was always doing things in unusual ways.

  “You okay?” Ember asks, unbuckling her seat belt as I park outside her apartment, effectively pulling me out of my head.

  “Yeah, just got a lot on my mind.” I mumble, opening my door and following her up the stairs to her place. I’m honestly surprised her dad let her stay here. What with the open stairwell not providing the best security. The only thing standing between her and our enemies is her front door and a flimsy gate at the entrance. Thank fuck she's finally coming home.

  Today.

  “You’ll figure it out.” She reassures me with a small smile over her shoulder. I try very hard not to watch as her ass sways while she climbs the stairs. I fail miserably and have to bite back a groan at the images that procure of what I could do to that ass.

  When we reach her door, there’s yelling coming from inside. I shove her behind me and pull out my gun before swinging the door open, only to find Maddox and Liz going at it. And by that, I mean Liz is violently waving a frying pan a little too close to Maddox’s head, who is acting as chill as ever.

  Wrong move, buddy.

  I look away from the two of them and take stock of the damage done to the living room while Ember closes the front door. The bookshelf has been emptied of its contents; the books laying helplessly at its feet. Pictures have been removed from the walls and smashed on the ground. The couch has been shredded and the insides littered across the carpet, which has been pulled up in places.

  The room is completely decimated. Anywhere that could have been used as a hiding place has been ransacked and destroyed.

  However, Maddox still has the surveillance of what happened before the cameras got cut off. He will go over it once we get on the plane. Maybe I’ll have him look in to that other thing too. Right now though, my main priority is getting Ember safe.

  “Uh, sorry for interrupting, excuse us.” Ember finally speaks up after getting over the shock of seeing her home trashed. “We’ll leave you to it.” She grabs my arm and drags me into her room, slamming her door shut behind us.

  “What is with those two?” She asks, as I tuck my gun into the back of my pants.

  “You don’t know?” I ask just to make conversation. I honestly couldn’t give two shits about their weird dynamic. I’m sure it’ll make for some great hate sex though.

  “Uh, no? Do you?” She questions hopefully, tuffing some stuff into a bag. I throw myself onto her bed, resting my hands behind my head. This is a pretty comfortable bed. I press deeper into the mattress, trying to get comfortable, but something is digging into my upper back. Reaching behind me, I snatch a stuffed animal from under my back. Wonder where she got this from, I think idly.

  “Nope.” I say tossing the bear up in the air and catching it. Repeating it a few times.

  I feel like a weight has been lifted now that were so close to being home. Being in my own territory where I can stay on top of everything will be a lot easier than having to rely on Anton to pass information along. That man is smart but unorganized as fuck.

  “Stop that!” She exclaims when she turns around and sees what I’m doing. She walks over and seizes the bear from my hand.

  “It's not nice to snatch.” I scold, jokingly. “Where did you get that from anyway?”

  “Nowhere.” Sorrow overcomes her features before she turns back to packing a backpack, placing the teddy bear inside and zipping it up. “Alright, I’m ready.”

  “Ember.” I push, my curiosity peaked at that flash of sadness across her face. Who would cultivate such a reaction out of her? Over a damn stuffed animal, no less. She sure as fuck didn’t have any boyfriends. I made sure of that. Some may say I didn’t have the right, but I was just making sure no one fucked with what was mine. And make no mistake, Ember has always been mine.

  Always.

  She avoids my eyes as she whispers. “Your dad gave it to me on my sixteenth birthday.”

  “I didn’t know you saw him before he died.” I wonder if he gave her anything else. Perhaps she knows more than she's letting on. But why wouldn't she trust me with information like that?

  “Yeah, it was after I saw you. I was leaving when he pulled me into his office and gave me a card. He said some stuff and then I left.”

  “What’d he say?” This just proves she’s the key to this whole mess.

  “N
othing much. Just that he always saw me as a daughter. And that my mother would be proud of me. Just that kind of thing.” She shrugs, that sadness making a return, but something else is there too.

  She's hiding something.

  “What did he say, Ember?” I demand my words taking the same tone as if I was commanding one of my guys.

  She looks at me fiercely, refusing to be intimated by me. I hold back my smile. “He just told me to always keep it with me. It's not a big deal.”

  Well, fuck me. There's no way that bear…

  I pretend to let it go because now I have a lead, though. “I never knew you two were close.”

  “We weren’t, not really.” She says, coming to sit next to me, folding her hands in her lap. “But he… I don’t know. I guess he was just always there checking on us when we lived with… well, you know. Especially towards the end.”

  Well, that’s new information. But it adds up with what I found when I was going through his office after his death. “I didn’t know that.”

  “My mom and him seemed to be close. When I think back on it, they were a little too close. A little too familiar with each other, if you know what I mean.”

  I don’t say anything. I don’t think now is the right time to discuss this.

  “Anyway, enough about that. It just brings up bad memories. I’ll go see if Liz is ready.” She says, then meanders out of her room. I’m too far inside my head to even watch her ass.

  Play time is over.

  5. Questions

  I hate talking about that time. After Marcus’s death, everything went downhill and it hasn’t stopped. However, Nixon is a persistent fucker. I knew if I didn’t give him something, he would just keep pushing. I could tell he wasn’t expecting what I revealed. He thinks he can hide his emotions from me, but I see right through him. I saw his wheels turning and I knew he was hiding something because he let it go too easily. But if I know Nixon, and I do, then we’ll be revisiting the topic when we get home.

  God, home.

  I can’t express how ready I am to be home.

  I won't miss being here. While I’ve enjoyed my freedom to do what I want without having to report back to anyone, I never felt truly safe. I was constantly looking over my shoulder, just waiting for something to happen.

  I’ll be happier at home, knowing I have people watching my back.

  I walk into Liz’s room and find her sitting on the bed, her head between her hands. “You okay, Liz?”

  “Yeah.” She sighs. “I’m just tired.”

  “Sure.” I say, sarcastically.

  “I am. I just want to get this flight over with.” She says, dropping her hands from her face and looking up at me. Her eyes are clear with faint bags underneath, leading me to believe her a little more.

  “So you can get away from Maddox?” I ask, wishing she would tell me what’s going on between the two of them. Liz has always been closed off when talking about her problems as well as her feelings, well, unless it’s anger. She’s never been willing to give me everything, instead resulting to dropping hints. Though, I trust she knows that I am here when she is ready to talk.

  “Pretty much. I don’t know why he insists on being such a dickhead. I can’t fucking stand him.” She growls, her hands balled by her side as she paces the floor.

  “Hopefully, you won’t have to see him too much when we get back. Just try to ignore him until then.” I take a seat on her bed.

  “That’s what I’m trying to do!” She huffs, exasperated. “But then he was complaining that I was taking too long and started packing my shit for me. That motherfucker had the nerve to go through my drawers. Do you know what’s in my fucking drawers? My vibrators! Not just one! But multiple! And do you know what he did? He fucking laughed at them!!” She’s shouts with pure malice, her face turning redder by the second. I can feel my eyes begin to water as my own face grows red from trying to hold in my laughter.

  “So how did you get from that, to threatening him with a frying pan in the kitchen?” I try for nonchalance but a laugh escapes, thankfully she’s to absorbed in her anger to notice.

  “Ugh! I don’t want to talk about it.” She huffs, falling back onto her bed .

  I let out the laugh I was holding, a full-on belly laugh. Hunched over, eyes watering, can’t breathe, laughing.

  “This isn’t funny, Ember.” She practically growls.

  “Dude if this happened to me, you would be laughing too.” I chuckle, wiping the tears from my eyes.

  “But it didn’t, it happened to me! God, I hate him.” She huffs, throwing her hands back over her face with a muffled cry.

  “Okay, okay, chill.” I placate. “Are you finished packing yet?” I ask, looking around her messy room.

  “Yeah, I just need to throw all that shit into a bag.” She says, waving her hand in the general direction of her floor.

  “Liz. That’s not packing.” I scold. I swear, sometimes I feel more like her mother than her best friend.

  “I don’t care.” She pauses. “If you help me, it’ll go quicker.” She sings with a smirk. I roll my eyes and we get to work.

  It takes a little more than half an hour to get her shit packed. Most of it we ended up throwing into a bag to save time. We weren’t planning on packing everything just yet. But Liz swears she needs practically her whole closet, shoes included. I convinced her to leave all her bathroom products and hair stuff by reminding her that she has the same stuff at my house.

  By the time we’re done, the guys are about ready to drag us out by our hair.

  We lock up and throw the rest of Liz’s bags in the back of the SUV. I opt to ride in the back with Liz to keep the tension low. Though Maddox seems as calm as ever sitting in the passenger seat, keeping a lookout for anything suspicious. Liz, on the other hand, is still fuming. I can’t help but wonder what else was said.

  The ride is quiet and doesn’t last long. Before I know it, were pulling up beside my dad’s private jet.

  Nobody says a word as we get out and board the plane. I take a seat across from Liz in the back. Her back facing the front of the plane. An eye mask already covers her face, effectively cutting out everyone. I shake my head as I place my bag in the chair next to me.

  She's obviously trying to avoid a certain someone. I just wish they would get together already. Maybe if they fuck, they’ll get it out of their system. Lord knows Liz doesn’t let her anger go easily. Most likely Maddox will have to fuck it out of her. I laugh to myself. Liz would punch me if she knew what I was thinking.

  “Ember, come up here.” Nixon says from the first row.

  I look to Liz, but she doesn’t acknowledge that she heard him.

  I get up, grab my bag and join Nixon at the front. Maddox passes me and takes my vacant seat.

  I shake my head and chuckle quietly. It’s like he’s asking for it.

  I take a seat next to Nixon. “What did you need?”

  “Nothing. Just wanted you to sit next to me.” He says with a shrug.

  I roll my eyes and laugh. “You could have just asked to begin with.”

  “Where's the fun in that?” He smirks, a twinkle in his eye that I haven’t seen in a while.

  I lean back in my chair and admire his profile. Nixon is what you would call ruggedly handsome, with his roman nose and strong jaw. He's the epitome of hot. His somewhat messy brown hair, short on the sides longer on the top, just begs to have fingers running through it.

  God, I’ve missed his face. “You know, I've missed you.”

  “I missed you, too.” He sighs. The vulnerability in his gray eyes taking me aback for a second.

  “Didn’t really seem like it.” I mumble.

  “Shits complicated.” He states, those shields coming back down in an instant. Wish I would have just kept my mouth shut. I still catch a hint of remorse, though.

  “I get it.”

  “You don’t, but you will.” He says, cryptically, acting like he wants to say more, but decides to look out
the window instead.

  “I hope so.” I whisper, hoping that when we get home, I’ll get all the answers I’m looking for.

  6. Homecoming

  About five hours later, we’re landing at a private airport. I expect to see my dad waiting when I get to the stairs to exit. But he’s not here. Three black Escalades are there instead, along with six of his men, all dressed in black suits, their earpieces not visible from where I’m standing. Like their guns hiding beneath their jackets. Some may think this is excessive, but I was honestly expecting more.

  I hitch my backpack higher on my shoulder and make my way toward the middle SUV, knowing the drill. Liz is hot on my heels, looking a little worse for wear.

  “Why did you leave me with him?” She gripes.

  “I thought you were sleeping?” I arch my eyebrow at her, daring her to confront her lie.

  “Ugh. You suck.” She grumbles, knowing she’s caught.

  “I don’t think anyone actually believed you.” I joke.

  “Whatever.” She scoffs, with an eye roll.

  I smile and try to cheer her up. “Want to go for a swim when we get to the house?”

  “Sure.” She mumbles as she follows me into the Escalade. Nixon gets in the passenger seat, sending the other guards to the one behind us. Maddox climbs in the passenger seat of the SUV in front of us and then we're moving.

  “When will we see Anton?” I ask. I’ve missed his crazy ass. He’s what you would call comic relief. However, don’t let his party boy ways fool you. He has a dark side. I’ve personally never seen it, only heard stories whispered about his disturbing methods of torture. A few times I’ve seen a glint of darkness in his eyes, but he's never let it out around me.