by Angel Payne
Holy crap.
She knows about Mom and Dad too. She’s been carrying the exact same burden on her heart, all these years…
We’re going to talk. The message broadcasts from her face at the same time I send it out to her. For a moment, I’m tidal-waved by warm emotion. Though I hate the understanding that’s brought us here, I feel more connected to Lydia than we’ve been in years. She’s grown into a pretty cool person—making me hope our talk won’t consist entirely of bonding over our parents and their secret lovers.
The wave jostles me back to the moment, as well as the initial reason I pulled out my cell. While punching up my camera, I murmur to Trixie, “I’m hoping to lock down this memory forever.”
She scoots closer, looking at the shot of our men that I’ve lined up from behind. On the screen, Lawson and Reece stand together at the bar, leaning toward each other, their bold profiles illuminated from below by the luminescent bar top. I wait for one more second as Reece keeps explaining something to his father and Lawson nods in return, listening intently. I need to savor it for myself before capturing it with a click.
“Ah!” Trixie exclaims as soon as I get the snap. “What’s the expression they use for those? No filter needed?”
“You’re exactly right.” I grab her by the hand and hold on tight, letting the burn of tears brim at the corners of my eyes. “But filters really aren’t needed when dreams are coming true.”
Trixie swallows, clearly wrestling with some sap of her own. As she pulls in a long but happy breath, she shows off the dimples that Reece inherited, along with the uncanny ability to pull her emotional shit back together while continuing to look a hundred kinds of fabulous. “What do you say we go and be a part of that dream too?”
I scoop my elbow through hers, basking in the jubilance of my grin as Lydia completes the chain on Trixie’s other side. “I say that’s a damn fine idea.”
Chapter Six
Reece
“All right, all right, all right. Is everyone on the party train now?”
Dad’s newest pop culture reference has even Mom on the verge of a reactionary groan, but she holds back with a fast eye roll and a wink my way. I smile in return, admitting to a strange wash of bashfulness. The last time she looked at me with such gushing affection, I’d been a boy—before my teens and my rebellion had hit, before my college years and that rebellion, and then the grim acceptance, somewhere along the line, that I’d simply become the official family screw-up. And though it’s true the Brocade has been shattering sales records, my parents are too seasoned to be swayed by a few glowing accounting ledgers. Another force has entered their galaxy, hitting with enough brilliance to alter their very orbit.
Not just the sizzle of a Bolt.
The bright perfection of a star.
A star named Emmalina.
It’s easy enough for me to identify since she’s altered my own heart’s trajectory, my entire life’s course. And I realize it like an epiphany brought by high-end acid—only even better because I’m going to actually remember this—that this is where that route has led. That destiny, in its grand and crazy sagacity, laid out every single step of the path that brought me to this moment. With a long, deep breath, I acknowledge that higher wisdom, using the pause to send out a silent message of my own.
I hear you. I see this. All of it. And I’ll remember it.
I promise.
“Hey.” The star in the glowing dress hooks an arm around mine, becoming an ideal addition to my reverie. “Everything okay, hot stuff?”
I loop my hand around hers and then buss the top of her head. “Everything couldn’t be more perfect, sweetheart.”
Dad strolls forward, purposely taking center position in our little gathering—to which Foley has added himself within the last minute, stepping in next to Lydia with a drink that sprouts a yellow paper umbrella. Unsure those things are even legal in the Village, I keep my horror a secret and refocus on Dad.
“Everybody have a libation?” he asks, sweeping a confirming glance around the little circle. “Ah. Excellent. Because I have an interesting announcement…that will deserve several toasts.”
A glass of Scotch is passed from the bar to a cocktail server and then to me. A quick sniff confirms it’s the same high-end Macallan that Foley and I enjoyed in the limo. I look up in time to see Dad watching my small smile of approval and nodding my way with the same worldly endorsement.
In that split second, another revelation slams.
The old man didn’t send the limo to get us as an olive branch.
He’d sent it as a real show of respect.
Respect that grows in his demeanor now as he follows through on the nod by pivoting completely in my direction, raising his own tumbler of the amber liquid. “It gives me pleasure beyond compare to tell you all that of the twenty-three hotels in the Richards Resorts portfolio, the Hotel Brocade of Los Angeles led the pack in third-quarter statistics on every front. Occupancy, RevPAR, overall earnings, guest satisfaction, and even employee satisfaction… Son, your property led the entire pack.”
I sure as hell hope the universe doesn’t have another epiphany to drop now, because I’m too dazed to notice and too happy to care. But oddly, feeling too guilty to join everyone else as they take their congratulatory quaffs.
“Dad.” I move forward, meeting my father’s open admiration and fighting the sensation that I must be dreaming and that, any second, the dream will change, turning everyone into chimpanzees staring at me in my underwear. “I couldn’t think of a better place, or way, in which to be told this—but I’m going to hold off on taking this drink until I can enjoy it with the whole team back in LA.” I look back to Emma, who gives my decision a teary-eyed, if adorably awkward, thumbs-up. “I didn’t work half as hard as they did for this honor. They deserve to celebrate it too.”
I’m not surprised to end the statement by holding my breath. Despite whatever new “thing” he’s attempting to do with his hair, “Stiff-Nuts Richards” has more than deserved his nickname from me in the past. If he laughs and calls me a sappy wuss now, then he does. I’ve been through much worse in the last couple of years.
“I had a feeling you’d say that, son.”
Annnnd, here it comes.
“And actually, I’d hoped you’d say that.”
Annnnd, just as I thought—
“Huh?” I recover with a frenetic shake of my head, hoping the marbles on my brain’s puzzle board are knocked back into their correct slots. “I— I mean, excuse me, sir?”
Dad smiles with so much empathy, I wonder if he’s been bingeing Family Ties in his old age. “A good leader knows when to make all the right decisions,” he states evenly. “But a great leader empowers his team to make those decisions.”
With more emotion washing over her face, Emma says to him, “Well then, your son is the greatest of them all, Lawson.”
“A truth I couldn’t be happier to agree with, my girl.” The smile he gives her is an equal gift to me, and I hope I’ve dug my senses far enough out of their haze to show him so, even as he clears his throat once more, sliding all the way back into his shell of Richards Corp’s CEO. “Which leads me to a picture-perfect segue—in which I can confirm, to all of you and to the world, that the rumors are true about Richards Resorts opening a new flagship property in the heart of Paris, France.” With Emma’s happy gasp as accompaniment, the man closes the gap between us and reaches to clap a hand to my shoulder. “Naturally, I want my best man to lead the opening of that hotel.” He pauses for a second, as if making sure his meaning has sunk in—probably a good thing, since I’m not entirely sure it has. “Will you do it, Reece?” he asks quietly. “As my personal emissary?”
I’m still stunned into silence. Which also might be a good thing, since the women are happy taking over on event commentary now. As their oh my Gods are woven in and out of discussion about every perfect thing about la Paris, my mind fixates on every astonishing—and amazing—and terrifyi
ng—impact of Dad’s not-so-little bomb.
He wants to move me up to the family’s version of the Big Show.
As his emissary.
One of the most significant steps of my life.
In the city where Angelique La Salle first led me to my biggest downfall.
The daze doesn’t leave me, even as the crowd thickens and the gala shifts into higher gear. It still hovers as we take our seats for dinner, meaning the pumpkin soup and hand-baked bread may as well be toddlers’ snack puffs. The synchronicity of the comparison isn’t lost. I’m suspended in limbo like a kid, feeling like I’ve been invited to eat at the adults’ table but unsure what’s in half the dishes or which utensil to use with them. Which is fucking ridiculous because I know how to eat, damn it. If I use a steak knife on the butter, doesn’t it work just as well? All the circumstances of tonight happen to serve up that answer the best. Why am I sitting here, battling imposter syndrome about leading a staff of housekeepers, butlers, engineers, and marketing execs, when Foley and I are, at this very second, responsible for a small army of highly trained spies, soldiers, and—
A clatter breaks into my consciousness. The sound of silverware dropped onto china.
My bread plate.
Onto which I’ve just let my soup spoon fall.
Out of my stunned, motionless hand. Which matches the rest of my body, now covered in sheets of shocked ice, as my gaze races down one entire wall of the room. Then the other. Then back again, unwilling to believe what I see.
More bizarrely, what I don’t see.
“My men.”
I grit it out with vicious emphasis on both syllables. It makes the server for our table pause, almost overfilling Dad’s wine glass. It also stops Emma midsentence during a conversation with Lydia. She turns from her sister just as Mom pivots from Dad, wearing nearly the same mix of confusion and worry on her face. “Reece? What’re you—”
“The men.” I jerk my head Foley’s way—where his answering gape ensures that my nervous system is headed for another iceberg. “Where the hell did the men go?”
EMMA
It all takes just ten seconds.
From a paradise of a night to its freakish, hellish opposite.
Ten seconds.
I cling to the counting as if my life depends on it. My sanity sure as hell does. Whatever I’m calling sanity at the moment.
It takes two seconds to interpret what Reece’s query to Sawyer actually means. One more to realize that they’re both clueless about the answer. Then, as I peer more carefully into the shadows around the room—one more second—so am I.
In the next three, both men lurch to their feet.
In the three following that, with all the lights in the room flung back to full power, the full scope of hell is revealed.
Ten seconds.
Before screams erupt across the room—as the downed members of Reece’s team are revealed, bleeding and moaning right at the stations in which they were first posted. Okay, most of them. Five of the ninjas, still dressed in their black jumpsuits but now sporting Zorro-like masks that cover everything but their mouths and chins, team up to control the crowd’s panic. A sixth and seventh have been assigned only to Sawyer and Reece. The pair orders them to sit against the wall, making short work of zip-tying their hands and ankles.
After two seconds of seeing them like that—of seeing Reece like that—my protein bar lunch and tonight’s champagne threaten to rush up from my stomach. I force the sick back down as one of the Zorros strides to the center of the stage. In a corner behind him, the five members of the band have collected into a trembling huddle.
“Ladies and gentlemen.” He stretches his hands out like an evangelical preacher. “We apologize for interrupting your meal, but let’s face it—a lot of you were glad we stopped these guys from the blasphemy they were committing on that Journey song, yeah? No?” He sends a snarl across the throng. “Ah, come on.”
Under the table, ’Dia fishes for my hand. Her clench is painful, but I’m grateful for it. She gives me a life ring in the midst of my nerves, nausea, disbelief, and fear. I seize her just as hard in return while becoming severely aware of everyone’s eyes on me, which would be the case even without the glowing dress. That’s what comes along with being the name at the top of the program.
A program of an event that won’t be taking place now.
An event that’s become a disaster—because I refused to listen to Reece. Because I shut down on him the second he said he was delivering Angelique’s news. And because of that, pulled the same emotional trigger that had shot us in the knees to begin with.
I’d cut off all my trust.
My trust in him.
Now, because of that, nearly fifty men have been seriously wounded—oh my God, don’t let any of them die!—and Reece is one of their bound hostages, a situation providing me with another bizarre distraction from my own terror. With eerie ease, my mind finds its sole remaining tunnel of logic and quickly sets up a base camp of questions there.
Why are the Consortium’s minions settling on binding Reece with basic plastic ties?
Why is he putting up with that treatment?
How did the Consortium recruit so many traitors from Reece’s handpicked men?
If they really wanted to get to Reece, why haven’t they just hauled him out of the room and then shot the rest of us?
I’m saved from having to contemplate any of the answers when a sharp movement from across the room makes everyone gasp. Karcher Crawley, the magnate behind one of the country’s biggest hamburger chains, has punched to his feet so fast that his chair clatters behind him.
“Cut the crap, you filthy hooligans.” The man’s castigation is as in-your-face as his chain’s TV commercials.
The Zorro on stage cocks his rifle to one shoulder. “Ahhhh. A fool with some cajones, after all.” Tilts his head with blatant arrogance. “What can I do for you, Gramps?”
“Besides fucking off?”
“Karcher!” A woman dressed in a cream sheath encrusted with crystals and pearls yanks at his elbow. “Please, dear!”
Crawley snorts as if she hasn’t spoken. “You can spare the cocky theatrics and tell us what you want, assholes.”
“Hey.” One of the gunmen, stationed nearby on the floor, pumps his rifle while approaching them. “Language, man. There are ladies and sensibilities present.”
“Sensibilities?” Mrs. Crawley barks it with twice the venom her husband brandished. “Don’t you dare stand there and preach about sensibilities, you animal!”
The rifleman halts. Dips his head to an acutely curious angle. “Animal?”
“You weren’t concerned about my ‘sensibilities’ when you killed those men!”
“Killed?” The dispute comes from Zorro Number One, who leans over the lip of the stage with a glower that refreezes my blood. “Whoa. Hold up that garbage truck, Trashy Trudy. We’re thieves, not murderers—though my friend Mr. Happy Stick there does enjoy picking himself off a kneecap or two when it comes to mouthy sons of bitches.” As he backs off the edge, he grabs a microphone stand and swivels it out, Mick Jagger style. “Show ’em, Happy.”
At that, the next seconds go by like horrific hours.
I’m conscious of the single rifle shot, cracking the air like a steel fork on a cement egg, setting free a yolk of screams and panic and terror. My filter is fuzzier as Karcher Crawley goes down, blood spattering across his place setting as he does. His wife shrieks hysterically, slumping to the floor next to him.
After that, my mind is like a window in a windstorm, flapping open in harsh spurts, letting in only glimpses of clear comprehension…
“Stay calm, stay calm…”
“…will all stay alive if you obey us…”
“…put everything into the bags we pass…watches, necklaces, rings, phones…”
But when the collection bag is dumped in front of me, I only stare at it. I’m as frozen as a heathen in church, clueless about what to
do. Though terror has turned my limbs into ice floes, there’s another force at work inside me, breaking up the frozen sheets into useless chunks.
That force is rage.
Raw. Pure. Potent.
Spurring a voice from deep in my gut. A voice that screams with such a shrill pitch, the glass in the window of my consciousness is completely shattered.
This isn’t right. This isn’t fair.
My senses roar with it, fighting my common sense, turning me into an unwitting rebel for its relentless cause.
Its stupid cause.
If I get myself shot because of an obstinate devotion to justice, Reece will take out half of New York’s power grid, not to mention every one of these assholes. If I think having a superhero boyfriend is hairy, it likely pales next to having a convicted murderer boyfriend.
“Hey.” The prompt comes with a painful jab at my shoulder, but the barrel of a high-powered rifle isn’t supposed to feel like a love tap. Though my mind recognizes the full reality of that truth, I stare up the long tube with a strange sense of wonder, as if the broken glass on my mental window has started reflecting prisms. “Hey,” the gunman barks again. “Glow-and-Blow Barbie. Your jewelry and cell phone. In the bag. Now.”
I blink a couple of times but still don’t move.
“Em,” Lydia grits out. “Damn it. Listen to him!”
“No.” The objection is nearly as shocking as the gun still aimed at my face—considering its mind-blowing source. But sure enough, Lawson Richards pushes forward, arms propped on the chair arms behind him, as if he’s ready to bust into Billy Idol throat kicks at the bastards. “Stand your ground, Emmalina. You know who has your back now.”
I can’t help but peer hard at him. Stand my ground? Like this is a choice I’m making?
“Fuck it to hell, you wankstain.” Another member of the Zorro posse rushes over—though not without his frustration giving away his thick brogue, making me nearly swallow my tongue. “That fucker is right. You do know who has her back, don’t you?”
