She was obsessively squirting sanitizer onto her hands and rubbing it off, even though her hands were mostly clean by that point. Eventually, she tossed the now half-empty bottle into the little cubby beneath the infotainment center.
Her eyes went to mine, blue streaked with green and brown, her expression unreadable. “Do you…do you enjoy it? Killing people?”
I narrowed my eyes at her sidelong. “That’s a shitty question to ask, Temple.”
“It’s an honest question. I want to know what kind of person I’m with.” She stared unblinking at me, until I looked away first.
I spent a good long time thinking as I drove us out of Denver, keeping an eye on the road behind us. “Do I enjoy it? No. I’m not a serial killer or a sociopath. I don’t do this job because I get some sick pleasure watching motherfuckers bleed out, okay? I do it because I’m damn good at it. I’d never shoot an innocent person on purpose, and I do my fucking damnedest to keep collateral damage as minimal as I can.” I fiddled with the A/C settings just to have something to do with my hand. “I’m good at what I do. I was a good soldier, a better special forces operative, and I’m one of the best goddamn security contractors in the game. I’ve got zero problem dropping some asshole who’s shooting at me, and even less problem taking out someone who’s done violence to someone innocent. But I don’t do it because I enjoy killing. Does that answer your question?”
“I suppose.” She picked at her fingers, scraping underneath one fingernail with her thumbnail. “Have you ever killed an innocent person?”
I eyed her. “Well, good goddamn, woman. Any other deep dark secrets you plan on ripping out of me?” I gripped the steering wheel with my right hand and used my left thumb to flip the safety button on the top of the shotgun from safe to fire and back again. “Yes. That’s the short answer.”
She waited a moment before following up with the next question, which I was expecting, but was hoping she might not ask. “And the long version?”
“Why do you want to hear this shit?”
“I told you, I’m trying to figure you out.”
“You do realize this is the kind of thing you’re not really supposed to just come right out and ask a guy?”
Temple just shrugged. “I’ve never played by anyone’s rules but my own.”
“Fair enough. But if I answer your questions, you have to answer mine.” She nodded, and I took a minute to put together my thoughts. “You have to understand the scenario. We were in Africa, the Congo. Part of that nasty business that’s been going on there for so fucking long. Can’t really say much, except that my unit was part of a larger offensive. It was urban warfare, in an occupied city. Innocent people everywhere, and damn near impossible to tell who was the enemy until they shot at you. Absolute fucking hell is what it was. Our orders were to push the bad guys out of that city entirely, which was like playing whack-a-mole at best, suicide at worst. Well, I was around the corner of a building with the other guys from my unit. We’d been chasing this group for several blocks in this back and forth sort of battle. They had us pinned down, and the L-T had tapped me to roll out and try to draw their fire while laying down some suppression.” I focused on just retelling the story without thinking about it too much. “So, I rolled out. Put down suppressing fire, drew theirs. It was all well and good until I saw this body peek out from behind the side of a building. I shot half a dozen rounds at him and it turned out to be this…it was a woman. Hiding, just trying to figure out how to get to safety. Hers is blood on my hands that’ll never wash off.”
She reached out and slipped her hand under mine, palm to palm, and gave my hand a squeeze. “I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, well, now you know.” I glanced at her. “My turn.”
She sighed. “Let me guess…you want to know about my rules.”
“You’ve mentioned them a few times. So, yeah, I’m curious.”
6: RAPUNZEL
I wasn’t even sure where to start, honestly. My rules were complicated, and had arisen from more than one situation. I’d never explained them to anyone. Which was weird, considering how many girlfriends I had, and how often we talked about boys. But then…none of those girlfriends were really…friends. Not close friends, not the kind I’d unburden this kind of thing to. This was deep, and hard to talk about, and real. Which begged the question…why was I telling Duke? If I didn’t trust my inner circle of friends with this, then why was I trusting Duke with it?
Because even those dozen girls that formed my inner circle…I still didn’t totally trust them. They were wealthy, beyond wealthy, like me, but…they weren’t on my level socially. They didn’t have famous parents. My mom had been, and still was, one of the most famous actresses in the world, and my dad was a rock god, on the scale of Stephen Tyler and Mick Jagger. Some of the girls actually came from more money than me, so it wasn’t about money. It was about status. It was about the red carpet that got rolled out whenever the Kennedy name was mentioned, the constant press around my parents’ every move, and then add to that the fame I’d earned on my own with Temple, my reality show…everyone wanted to be close to me. I didn’t trust anyone to care about me for me. No one. I’d learned this hard way. I’d had too many so called “friends” sell stories about me, tip off my whereabouts to paparazzi so they’d be photographed with me, or invite themselves on vacations, or try to finagle their way into my house when they knew the cameras were running.
Duke? He didn’t give a shit about any of that. If anything, he was derisive of it.
I trusted Duke, literally with my life at this point, and I just didn’t see him being capable of trying to cash in on knowing me, or having fucked me.
“Fancy?” Duke asked. “You in there?”
“Yeah, sorry. Just…thinking.” We were on the freeway at this point, cruising at a steady seventy-five.
“About?”
“How weird it is that I’m talking to you like this.”
“Why’s it weird?” He asked, his thumb still constantly flipping that button back and forth on the scary-big shotgun.
“Because I don’t talk about myself with my girlfriends.” I twisted a lock of hair between my fingers. “I talk about boys, or gossip about who’s fucking who, or fashion, or pretty much anything else. But…I never talk about this shit with my girlfriends.”
“Why not?”
“Well, that’s what I was just trying to figure out.”
“And?” He prompted.
“You don’t seem impressed by who my parents are, or how much I’m worth, and you don’t seem too keen on getting your fifteen minutes of fame out of me. If you’re gonna use me for anything, it’s gonna be my body, and—I’m more okay with that than I am with you trying to use me to get fame or favors or money.” I paused, but then kept going to keep him from saying anything. “I guess it’s just weird, because I’ve known a lot of the girls in my inner circle of friends for eight or ten years. I’ve known most them since we were little. Our parents are friends, and a lot of us have traded boyfriends back and forth. But…we’re not the kind of friends that confide in each other, because none of us trust each other. Especially me. I don’t really, truly trust any of them.”
He frowned, and scrubbed the scruff on his jaw. “Doesn’t seem like much of a friendship, if that’s the case.”
“It’s how things are, the way I grew up. Famous parents and more money than god? Everyone wants a piece. I’ve been sold out and betrayed more times than I can count, so my cynicism is well-earned, I’d have to say.” I sighed. “But you’re different. And again, it’s weird because I barely know you. It’s been what, a few hours? But I’m literally trusting you with my life, so it doesn’t seem like that much of a stretch to trust you with some dirty history.”
Duke didn’t answer right away. I’d noticed that about him—if the answer was especially important he thought about his response before he spoke; it was a rare and unexpected quality. “I’ve got no use for your money, and even less for your fame.
Shit, I don’t even like being photographed for passport pictures, much less want to be have some picture of me out there in magazines with a bunch of bullshit speculation about my life or whatever the fuck.” He glanced at me. “Plus, I take trust very seriously, Temple. If I say you can trust me, you’re getting the full force of everything I am as a man behind my word. I don’t say that to many people. I mean, professionally, my word is my bond—if I say I’ll get your kid back, or shut down a blackmail attempt, then it’s as good as done. But personally, I trust about as easily as you do. Which is to say not at all.”
I realized we’d been holding hands for several minutes now, and for some reason that made my heart beat harder. I swallowed and stared at our joined hands, mine underneath his big paw, his fingers curled down to enclose my smaller hand. It felt…natural—not at all weird.
And that was weird.
“So,” Duke prompted. “Your rules.”
“When I was nineteen, I met a guy named Lane.”
“Sounds like a pretentious goof-tard.”
I laughed. “Yeah, he kind of was,” I admitted. “But he was…good-looking, in a pretentious, Beverly Hills goof-tard sort of way. And he came from serious, serious money. Like, Bill Gates, Koch Brothers, Warren Buffet sort of money.”
“I know a guy like that,” Duke said. “He’s actually a really good dude.”
“There aren’t that many people out there with that much money,” I said. “Who is it? Maybe I know him.”
“Valentine Roth.”
I gaped. “You know Valentine Roth? He’s, like, one of the most mysterious people in the world. He lives this wild, mysterious, Phantom of the Opera sort of life. Everyone I know was always going to Manhattan hoping to be seen with him. He’s a seriously big deal.” I grabbed Duke’s arm. “What’s he like?”
Duke shrugged. “He’s a good dude. Rich as all fuck, but cool. Not stuck up. Just…he’s cool. I don’t know him very well personally, but my boss, Harris, he worked for Roth for years and Harris’s girlfriend is best friends with Valentine’s wife. We get invited out to the Roth’s private island down in the Caribbean for Christmas parties every year. Those parties, man…they’re nuts.”
Temple made a disgusted noise. “I can’t believe you know Valentine freaking Roth. Until he up and left Manhattan with that girl he obviously ended up marrying, he was the most eligible bachelor like, anywhere. I know some girls who managed to score a hook-up with him a long time ago, but they said he was…difficult. Not very nice, but hot and rough and amazing in bed.”
Duke shook his head at me. “Well I don’t know about any of that shit, but I can see it being true. Miss Roth…Kyrie, she sort of turned him around. Gave him something in life worth being nice about.” He laughed. “Aside from billions of dollars, I guess.”
I tipped my head to one side. “Well, I can say from experience that money really doesn’t always make people nice, or happy. I mean, having money is awesome, and I don’t mind admitting my worst fear—until all this happened, at least—is being poor. But money doesn’t make you happy. If that was true, I should be happier than I am.”
Duke’s gaze shot to mine, and I regretted that last admission. “You’re not happy?”
“That’s not necessarily what I meant.”
“Sounded like the truth, especially now that you’re trying to walk it back.”
I slid down in the seat, put my feet up on the dash, and stretched my skirt over my knees. “I’m not trying to walk it back, I’m just—” I groaned in irritation, and started over. “Look, I’m stupidly lucky, and I know it. I’m spoiled rotten. I’ve never had to do a day’s work in my life, and I could have gone on that way forever. I didn’t want to, though, I wanted something of my own. I’m not an actress like Mom, or a musician like Dad, so I had to use what I have, which was instant recognition. Everyone knows the Kennedys. Mom and Dad have been married for twenty years and together for twenty-five, which is absolutely unheard of for people in their stratosphere. We’re just…well, we’re the Kennedys. And as their oldest and their only daughter, I’ve always been…sort of…just famous for being me, I guess. So I capitalized on that. I pitched the idea of a show to my agent, and he went bananas, because it meant a shitload of money for him, of course. So, I made my own fortune on the show. Then I started a bunch of product lines, clothes, makeup, perfume, branded accessories, jewelry, girly things like that.
“I’m not famous for nothing, though, and it bugs the shit out of me when people say that. I work my ass off. I design all the products myself, and I find distributors and do commercials. I’m a multi-million dollar company all by myself, and it’s a full-time job running it all, which is something I do myself. That’s not to mention the need for a constant social media presence, the sponsored posts and whatever? It’s a lot. It takes a shitload of work maintaining a constant level of presence in our society, which, can I just say, is crazy hard because as a society we’re pretty much Captain Distracto. We’re always looking for the next new thing, the next new fad, the next new Instagram or YouTube celebrity, so remaining relevant is damn hard.”
Duke glanced at me, looking amused. “You’re avoiding my question, Fancy. Don’t think I didn’t notice.”
I huffed. “I am not. I’m setting it up.” I glared at him. “Plus, you distracted me.”
“You mentioned some asshat named Lane?”
I lean my head back against the seat and sighed. “Yeah. When I was nineteen, I met an asshat named Lane. Only, I was young and naive and thinking with my hoo-ha, so I didn’t realize he was an asshat. He was hot, and he came from money. I thought that was a good thing, because I’d hoped it would mean he wouldn’t be interested in me for my parents’ money seeing as his were worth billions to my parents’ hundred and twenty mil or whatever it is.”
I thought back, warily letting my mind delve into the memories, and even more warily letting my frozen, walled-up heart feel some of the old pain. “He was hot, he was filthy rich, he was just…cool. He had a business degree from Stanford, and he was on track to inherit not just his father’s fortune, but also the reins of the company. He wasn’t just some lazy playboy, he was making tracks as a businessman in his own right, and he was only twenty…twenty-one, I think? Maybe twenty-two. It seemed like love. He wasn’t my first, but he was my first real boyfriend. I’d had enough friends lose their V-cards before me to know the first time wouldn’t be amazing, so I gave mine the year before, to a sexy asshole nobody at a party when I was half-drunk. It was…okay. A little ouchy, at first, but the asshole—James, I think his name was—he knew what he was doing. I don’t think I was his first virgin which, looking back, makes him even more of a dick, but whatever. It worked for me. Lost my virginity to some jackass I’d never see again and didn’t really care about. I cried a little the next day, felt a little buyer’s remorse or whatever you want to call it, but I don’t regret it now.
“I could claim honestly I wasn’t a virgin, but I was inexperienced enough that Lane could teach me. He liked that, I think. That I wasn’t a virgin, that he didn’t have to worry about that, but that I was so inexperienced he could show me how he liked things.”
“He sounds like a real winner,” Duke put in.
I shook my head. “Oh, just wait. It gets better.” I let out another breath, and kept going. “So things were fairly normal for the first year. We dated, we had a lot of sex, whatever. He’d take me to his family’s estates in Italy and Greece, we’d go to A-list parties in Manhattan or LA, it was classic rich assholes of Instagram bullshit. Lavish parties on mega-yachts, rolling up the PCH in his drop-top Rolls Royce— which, by the way, had crushed-diamond white paint, like several million dollars worth of actual diamonds crushed and mixed into the paint job. We’d fly to Antigua in his G6 on a whim.”
“Seems like you guys had it made.”
I nodded. “Everyone thought we did. Hell, I thought we did. The tabloids followed us everywhere, called us the it-couple of the decade. That was wh
en I really started to get media and social media attention on my own right, and not just for being my parents’ oldest kid. It seemed like everything was gorgeous and perfect. I was in love, and he loved me. We talked about it, said it to each other, and he’d even dropped hints about a wedding.”
“Hmmm, I wonder what could have possibly gone wrong?” Duke deadpanned.
“If you’re assuming he cheated on me, that’d be a smart assumption, but wrong.” Now came the hard part. “The first sign I should have broken up with him was when a sex tape of us got leaked.”
Duke glanced at me. “The motherfucker leaked a sex tape?” He sounded…pissed. “And you stayed with him?”
I shrugged. “It wasn’t immediately obvious it was him that leaked it. We’d taken the video with my phone, so the initial assumption was that I’d been hacked. I was devastated, of course. I mean, that was private, right? I was livid, and mortified. My parents’ press team did spin and damage control, and I mean, it’s not like I’m the first celeb to have a tape leaked, but it still messed me up. And Lane played the understanding, supportive boyfriend to a T, in private and to the press. And that was kind of the second thing that should have been a warning sign. You have to understand that Lane’s dad isn’t high profile. Most people haven’t even heard of him, honestly, even though he’s one of the richest people in the country. And Lane, he was even less high profile. He was a young businessman, working his ass off to take over his dad’s company the hard way, earning it rather than just inheriting it. But he wasn’t famous. Unless you were part of the elite business world, you wouldn’t have heard of Lane Behr.
“So when the tape got leaked, I went into hiding. Natural enough, right? I didn’t have the show yet, didn’t have the brand to worry about, so I just kind of went into seclusion. Stopped going out, declined party invitations, refused to go on vacations, wouldn’t even leave my room for the most part., stayed off social media. Lane sort of took over for my parents, in terms of dealing with the press on my behalf. He’d spin things into positive stories, talk about how I was rebuilding myself, and reassessing my future in light of the leak, bullshit like that. He was good at it. I appreciated it, my parents appreciated it—”
Duke: Alpha One Security: Book 3 Page 12
