by Cassie James
Copyright © 2020 by Cassie James
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
For Uncle Benevieve.
Thank you for all you sacrificed to help make this book happen.
Contents
Before you read
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Also by Cassie James
Author’s Note
This book is a dark romance containing material intended for readers aged 18 and over.
Some material may be troubling for some readers. This content includes violence, sexual assault, suicide, and drug use. Please practice good self care when deciding whether this book is for you.
1
The heels of my Manolo Blahniks clack across the concrete floor, sound bouncing off of cement block walls to echo back to me. It’s the only sound in the otherwise empty room. I paid good money for a small audience.
The guard in the corner lifts his chin at me as I slide into the metal chair, separated from the man I’ve come to see by only a thick wall of glass.
His dark blue eyes, the same shade as mine, are bright as he stares at me. His mouth twists into a smirk as I raise an eyebrow. I pick up the phone and painstakingly wipe it down with a wet wipe the guards mercifully didn’t confiscate from me. I had no choice but to come—it doesn’t mean I need to take someone else’s germs with me as a souvenir when I go.
On the other side of the glass, Murphy picks up the matching phone. I can hear him clearly even with the phone carefully held an inch away from my ear.
“Welcome back, kid.”
“Do you have any idea how hard it is to get a taxi to drive out here this time of night?” These aren’t exactly normal visiting hours. “I’ll be lucky if the guy’s still waiting for me.”
Murphy leans back in his chair, kicking up the front legs so he can lean past the partition offering us a modicum of privacy. “You better tell your dumb fucks up front not to scare off my niece’s ride,” he tells the guard overseeing the meeting from his side of the glass.
The guy is twice Murphy’s size, and he rolls his eyes but still picks up his radio as Murphy drops his chair flat again. I hear static across the radio attached to the hip of the guard on my side. “Parking lot?”
Someone responds with a, “Go ahead.”
“There’s a car waiting for our guest. Make sure it doesn’t go anywhere.”
Murphy smirks as security radios back with affirmation. Nothing about my uncle should surprise me anymore. He managed to reach me from inside these prison walls, after all.
“Now that that’s settled.” Murphy lowers his voice, “I didn’t expect you for weeks. Don’t tell me you come bearing bad news.”
There’s a flash of disappointment in his eyes. To anyone else, maybe that would sting, but it barely breaches the hard exterior I wear like a badge of honor. I’ve had plenty of practice with disappointment, so his misplaced feelings bounce right off of me. How little faith he has in me.
I turn the phone so the mouthpiece is as close to my mouth as possible without actually making contact.
“Do you really think I’d show up here in the middle of the night just to tell you to fuck off?” That actually does sound like something I would do. “It’s taken care of. So what do you have for me?”
Murphy’s eyes brighten again, his fingers reaching out to stroke the glass as if stroking my cheek with affection. “Ah, my sweet niece. It’s a good thing you take after our side of the family, eh?”
I’m not surprised to hear him take an easy swipe at my father. Ken Adams is the reason we’re here, after all.
Still…
“My mother’s a coward, and you’re a criminal. I’d say the family genetics are fucked either way you look at it.” This is an ongoing disagreement between us. Murphy would defend his sister to his dying breath, forget the fact that she abandoned me when I needed a mother the most. Leaving me behind with the monster she was running from.
Coward is the nicest way of putting it, really.
Murphy shakes his head, clucking his tongue at me the way a mother would if I actually had one. Not that I’m bitter or anything.
“I didn’t come all this way to talk about my mommy issues,” I remind him.
Murphy goes silent, his eyes lifting over my head to stare at the guard behind me. He’s sizing him up, trying to decide how much he can get away with saying. Money only buys so much silence. I let him do his thing, knowing he can pull the puppet strings just fine on his own without my help. There’s only one thing he needed from me, and I’ve delivered. Now it’s his turn.
Finally, he runs a tattooed hand over his shaved head. In a low voice he says, “Everything you need is at Banner-Hill.”
The line goes silent as I squint slightly at him, trying to decide if I’ve misheard him. I’ve gone to great lengths to forget the place, and here he is dropping the name like a bad joke. Taunting me with it.
“What the fuck does that mean?” I ask, my voice sharp.
He rasps his knuckles against the glass. A non-verbal warning for me to shut the fuck up. These private little conversations of ours only work so long as the guards don’t realize what they’re truly worth. The price of admission is already steep enough.
Murphy sticks the phone between his ear and shoulder to hold it up so he can cross his arms over his broad chest.
“Information is power, Natalie, and I’m telling you where to get yours.”
Frustrated, I glare over my shoulder at one guard and then behind Murphy at the other. If these assholes would just leave us alone in the room for two minutes maybe Murph would give me some real answers instead of this cryptic bullshit he’s trying to feed me.
“I went out on a limb for you,” I say carefully. Just because my uncle is in prison doesn’t mean he doesn’t have reach outside these walls. Now’s not the time to anger the closest thing to an ally I’ve actually got.
“And I’m returning the favor, little girl.”
His words are every bit as demeaning as he means them to be. I’m twenty-one, hardly a child anymore.
A strangled sound of frustration escapes my throat. “Fine. Who’s the inside guy there?”
“There isn’t one.” Murph has the nerve to crack a fucking smile. “Don’t you know the story of the Trojans? You can only win a war by infiltrating the enemy.”
I know what he’s suggesting, and the very thought of it makes me uncharacteristically nauseous. It’s been four years since I walked the halls of Banner-Hill, and it’s still not enough distance from the place. I would rather go anywhere else in the world. I’d parachute into a war zone before I’d cross back through those iron gates.
Four years and I can still close my eyes and recall every detail.
Which is exactly why Murphy would have come to me with this instead of one of his own men. This, I realize, is why my absentee uncle has decided he wants to play family with me. It’s not like I thought he looked me up b
ecause he was hoping to roast a Thanksgiving turkey together someday. Still, I’m not sure I would have come had I known what the stakes would be.
“If I go back there…” Emphasis on the if, “there’s going to be a lot of questions.”
“You’re a smart girl. I’m sure you can handle it.” Murph gives me his signature grin, the one that I’m sure has gotten him out of all kinds of trouble with women over the years. But I’m his niece, as immune to his charms as anyone. He might even be able to sweet talk prison guards, but he’s not fooling me.
As his grin drops away, it’s obvious he knows it, too.
He leans forward, arms falling away from his chest so he can grip the phone as he leans his forehead against the glass. His eyes stare at me through the barrier with a cold stare meant to analyze weaknesses. And he knows mine.
“Do you really trust someone else to do your dirty work?”
I slowly hang the receiver on the hook, cutting off communication with him. He already knows the answer is a resounding no. If I trusted anyone else, I would never have ended up here with him. Because I might not trust Murphy, but I know we have the same end goal.
Ruin my father. Whatever the cost.
Murphy’s eyes follow me as I stand. He doesn’t flinch even as the guard on his side of the glass walks parallel, meeting me at the door reserved for guards passing from one side to the other. I glance back at the guard who escorted me in here, watching him avert his eyes. He thinks he has the moral highground here because all he’s done is give me access. It’s his buddy here who will have to take the fall if this all goes south.
The lock clicks, the door opens, and the guard fills the doorway, his eyes perusing me hungrily. He’s practically drooling as I reach into my shirt to pull a thick white envelope from the side of my bra. Easily missed on camera, and purposely overlooked during pat-down.
I could probably offer to fuck the guy and walk out of here with my money. But a quick fuck doesn’t guarantee the kind of silence a fat payday brings.
“Don’t go easy on him,” I warn as I hand over the envelope.
“Trust me, it’ll be my pleasure.” The guard grins, a long, lizard-like tongue darting out to wet his lips. I don’t dare question if it’s my presence, the money, or the promise of violence that really does it for him. This man is no one. I won’t remember his face as I leave these prison walls—this time for the final time.
He steps back, closing the door firmly between us again. I walk toward the other guard, crossing my arms as I lean back against the wall next to him.
“Enjoy the show,” I murmur.
I don’t bother to see if he looks, my eyes are back on my uncle. He holds a steady gaze even as I’m sure he hears the guard’s footsteps behind him. He has to know what’s coming, that he asked for this.
Murphy doesn’t so much as flinch as the guard shoves him forward, smashing his face into the glass over and over again until his features disappear behind the smear of blood.
“You sure this is the place?” The taxi driver, a thin, nervous man with shifty eyes, asks me.
His confusion makes sense. I’m sure it’s not every day he picks up a fare that drags him from a prison to a penthouse. This building is one of the most expensive residential towers in the city, its sprawling marble entryway unmistakably high-end.
The younger of the two doormen recognizes me through the car door, tripping over himself to get to me before his partner does. As he slides the back door of the taxi open for me, I toss a couple hundred dollar bills through the partition for the driver.
“Keep the change,” I tell him as I slide out.
The least I can do is make it worth his while that he didn’t piss himself when the guards back at the prison refused to let him leave without me. I might have stayed a little longer than intended to enjoy my dirty work. It’s not every day you pay to watch a man get the shit beat out of him.
“Miss Adams, no cameras today?” The doorman swivels his head like Candid Camera could make a comeback any minute now.
“No.”
There are no cameras trailing me tonight, I made sure of it. Tonight, I control the narrative.
I bypass the fanboy, heading instead for the older doorman who already has an apology at the ready. I wave it off, not interested in being held up. I’m already nearly an hour later than I promised, and no one would ever accuse Rodney Walker of being a patient man.
If he were, he wouldn’t need me.
He’s waiting for me at the elevator doors when I reach his floor, pacing the gold-flecked carpeting like a caged tiger. The limp in his left leg is worse than the last time we crossed paths.
“Careful,” I tell him. “I can only imagine what it would cost to replace this atrocious flooring after you’ve worn a hole through it.”
Rodney stops, his dark lips pulling back to show off his two rows of fake teeth. I’m sure his real teeth were a casualty of his lucrative hockey career. His eyes wander over me much like the guard’s did tonight. The difference is he knows what’s beneath my plain black tank and tight jeans.
“Awfully casual outfit for a Friday night,” he muses.
“Oh, sorry. Was I supposed to try to impress you?” I flutter my eyelashes at him, only joking. We know the score tonight. I’m not here to take the defensemen for a ride, I’m here to rock his world in a different way.
I slip my hand into my back pocket and come away with a plastic baggy that makes Rodney’s eyes widen almost comically. “Ready to play?”
He practically shoves me into his apartment, slamming the door behind us. “Fuck, you can’t just flaunt that shit around. And were you seriously walking around with that just in your pocket?” He runs a hand over his face, worried for nothing since obviously I didn’t get caught with it. I walked into a prison with this coke without getting caught, for fuck’s sake. I think the hallway of his highrise is probably safe enough by comparison.
I kick my heels off, abandoning them by the door as I pad farther into his apartment, checking out the skyline of the city laid out in front of me. The lights twinkle below us, the nightlife blurring together into flickering beams that make the whole city glow.
“Where’s your camera crew?” Rodney asks as I watch his reflection in the window. He shoves his hands into his pockets. “I thought the whole point of this was to get us both caught in the act.”
Poor, sweet, stupid Rodney.
“My producers don’t want another drug scandal, Walker. We’re going rogue on this one.”
The uneasiness radiates off of him in waves. I don’t need my uncle’s gift of perception to see he’s going to bail on this plan any minute. If he does, I’m fucked. It would take too damn long to vet another scapegoat.
“You asked for this,” I remind him.
He doesn’t say anything. Fuck.
I turn, hand outstretched to point to a framed jersey on the wall of his living room. It’s from some championship he’s won or something—I don’t know the details, and they’re really not important. He looks at the jersey, a grim expression on his face to match the one he wears every time he’s told me he wanted an out.
“If that is was you want, we’re done here. I can’t help someone who doesn’t want to be helped.”
I didn’t come here to take advantage of him, I came here to give him something he asked for. A fair trade between friends. I’m practically a fucking saint. I put my back to him, gliding across the room toward my shoes as I cross my fingers out of view, desperately hoping he’s going to think twice before letting me walk out the door.
My shoes are on, my hand on the door handle, my brain already running through a slate of other possibilities…
“Wait.”
I turn slowly to face him again, relieved by the fresh determination on Rodney’s face. He holds up my plastic baggy of white powder and beckons me closer with his other hand.
“There’s no going back after this,” I remind him. Once we take these pictures, they’ll be out the
re within minutes. He can’t do any more second-guessing. Tommy Newport, the gossip blogger considered the authority on all things Adams Ever After, is chomping at the bit to get ahold of what I’ve promised him.
My family is a reality show dynasty, and this one staged photo with Rodney could be the biggest scandal our family has seen since my father remarried only weeks after finalizing his divorce with my runaway mother.
“My body won’t survive another season, Nat.” Rodney nods to his bad leg. After the hits he’s taken, he’s lucky to still be walking. “Let’s ruin my career.”
My lips—painted the same badass red I feature on TV—tilt into a smirk. “Don’t mind if I do.”
One of my father’s men is stationed by the door to my apartment by the time I get there. I knew news of my leaked photos would travel fast, but I hadn’t expected my father to beat me home. The brick walls of my apartment usually do a hell of a job blocking out noise, but as I step off the elevator I can already hear the sounds of things being smashed inside my apartment.
“He better have someone coming to clean up after him,” I snap at the suit.
The man, nicknamed Casper for his ability to stay silent and out of sight, surprises me by grimacing. So it’s bad. Really bad.
Good.
I shoulder past Casper into the apartment, my eyes surveying the damage as a calm rage builds inside of me. My father has never been given keys to this place, but I guess I should have known that would never be enough to keep him out.
Ken Adams goes where he wants, when he wants. For now.
I’m relieved to see that my father’s destruction is relatively contained to my living room. As I walk into the room, the picture of calmness, another one of my father’s men flinches. He’s clearly in a mood thanks to my little stunt. I jerk my head for this other guard, one I don’t recognize, to leave us.
