by Katee Robert
She knew she wasn’t a pawn, but that didn’t change the fact that she wasn’t a big player in whatever conflict Beckett and Lydia had coming. She might be damn good at her job and work her ass off, but she wasn’t a King. She could work at Kingdom Corp for the rest of her life and, twenty years down the road, she’d still be cut out or moved about by Lydia because ultimately Samara was replaceable. Beckett wasn’t. Journey and her siblings weren’t. Samara was just another ambitious woman who had her eye on the prize.
Could I be any more depressing?
She shook her head and took a large drink of the hot toddy. It warmed her stomach, a nice contrast to the air-conditioning Journey had cranked on high. “You’re right. I can take twelve hours off.”
“Fuck, Samara—that wasn’t even a good dodge.”
“I know. And I’m not sorry.” Samara grinned. “You know what would make me feel immeasurably better?”
Journey laughed, the infectious sound rolling through the room. “I bet you’re about to tell me.”
“Brownies. Brownies would cure all my woes.”
“I suppose I could whip up a batch.”
“You’re the best.” Samara tugged on the ribbing of her sleeve. All the thoughts and fears and anger swirled inside her. Things weren’t finished with her and Beckett now any more than they had been two days ago. If anything, they were infinitely more complicated. She should just walk away from the whole damn thing. It was the smart choice to make.
I don’t want to.
Proving yet again that some things are hereditary. Both my amma and I have shitty taste in men.
Journey set out all the ingredients and paused. “I just can’t believe there was a fire. What kind of ship is my cousin running that his building is spontaneously bursting into flame?”
“Things only spontaneously burst into flames in the movies.” She thought back over the mad race down to the ground floor, to the smoke coating everything and making it impossible to see clearly. No flames, though. “I wonder what caused it? There isn’t exactly a lot of burnable material in that lobby.” She shook her head. “What am I saying? It was probably faulty wiring or something.”
“Faulty wiring is another thing that happens a lot more in movies than in real life.” Journey went to work making her famous brownies. Well, famous as far as Samara was concerned.
“I suppose it doesn’t matter what started it. We got out, no one was hurt, and the firefighters were able to save the building.” Not that she cared overmuch about Morningstar Enterprise’s headquarters. She definitely didn’t.
“I’m glad you’re okay.”
She looked up to find Journey uncharacteristically sober. “Beckett got me out.” She might have managed on her own, but he’d been the one to make sure it happened in the shortest amount of time. She made a face. “I should send him flowers or something. As a thank-you.”
“Trust me, honey—if you want to thank Beckett, I’m sure there are half a dozen ways to do it more effectively than sending flowers.”
Chapter Nine
Beckett met the fire inspector at the office bright and early Sunday morning. The small man was probably one-forty soaking wet, but he knew his shit. They walked through the lobby to the employee break room he’d had installed a couple years ago.
It was damaged beyond repair.
“You’re lucky the door was closed. Slowed things down.” The fire inspector held out a hand when Beckett started to lean into the room. “We still have to conduct a full investigation, but I can tell you right now that it wasn’t an accident.”
He studied the blackened walls and the destroyed cabinets. “This is one of the only rooms with flammable shit in it on this floor.” The door was usually locked, but there were currently half a dozen keys unaccounted for because of the employees he’d lost. Normally, there were more people in the building on Saturdays—there would have been if Lydia hadn’t poached the ranks.
Lydia.
Beckett wanted to blame her for this, but even without Samara’s voice in his head he knew he was jumping to conclusions. She’d caused him other grief, and he wanted to lay this at her feet, too. Someone could have snuck in through one of the side doors somehow, and there was a spare key the girls at the front desk kept hidden in case one of them forgot their own. It was against company policy and they didn’t advertise its existence, but it did exist.
The fire inspector pulled a toothpick out of his pocket and motioned. “That cabinet is ground zero. They left a cigarette burning down into a bowl of lighter fluid. Not fancy, but it got the job done.” He turned to survey the rest of the lobby. “If you had a different interior decorator, we might not be having this conversation at all.”
Because the fire would have spread too fast, preventing escape. Beckett cataloged every single thing about the burned room and imagined opening the bottom stairwell door to find the entire lobby on fire. Fear took root in the pit of his stomach. He could have died. Samara could have died.
She didn’t. She’s fine.
It didn’t kill the impulse to call her to reassure himself again that she was safe. It wasn’t his right. She didn’t want him hovering. He’d see her at the end of the week when they gave their respective proposals for the government contract. And then…
Then they’d go back to something resembling normal. Barely seeing each other. Pretending like he didn’t know what his name sounded like from her lips when she orgasmed.
Focus.
“Will there be a report I can read once the initial investigation is complete?”
“Yeah.” The fire inspector hesitated. “Are you filing an insurance claim over this?”
Beckett shrugged. “I was planning on it.”
The fire inspector huffed out a breath and nodded. “You have any idea of who might have set this? Disgruntled employee? Pissed-off ex?”
Lydia.
He didn’t say it. “Not off the top of my head.” He had no damn proof. Beckett had no proof of anything. Not of her meeting with Nathaniel. Not that she’d somehow orchestrated his father deeding her Thistledown Villa. Sure as hell not for the fire.
At least one of those things he’d be able to confirm soon. Frank was working on getting provable confirmation for the dinner, and he’d work forward from there to figure out how Nathaniel was on that particular road at that particular time of night.
Samara might be right. It might just be that the old man made a shitty decision and paid the price. I might be hyper-focusing because I can’t deal with my grief.
He set it aside. There was no other option. “Thanks for walking me through it.”
“No problem.” The fire inspector shrugged. “You might want to keep an eye out, though. Someone has it out for you. Doubt they’ll stop with a petty little fire.”
It hadn’t felt like a petty little fire when the alarms had gone off. “I’ll watch my back.” He walked the man out and stood just inside the door, surveying the street. It was too late for Sunday brunch and too early for dinner, so there wasn’t much foot traffic. It didn’t matter. He still searched the face of every person who walked past, wondering if they were all as innocent as they seemed, or if there was something deeper going on. He’d been outmaneuvered again and again since he got back to Houston. Pretty shitty track record for just a couple of days.
That had to change. Now.
As if summoned by his thoughts, a limo pulled to a stop at the curb outside the building. He knew who it was before a white-clad leg appeared, followed by the rest of Lydia King. She wore another white pantsuit, but the top below the blazer was gold lace. Giant sunglasses shielded her gaze from him, but he knew the exact moment she registered him standing on the other side of the glass doors. Her step didn’t hitch, but she seemed to focus in on him.
He moved back as she came through the doors. “Lydia, to what do I owe the dubious pleasure?”
“Beckett.” She nodded and made a show of looking around the lobby. “I heard you had a fire. I came to e
nsure you were unharmed.”
Uh-huh. Sure she did. He could tell her to get lost, but they were on his territory now. “Walk with me.” He didn’t want her in the building or near anything important. The gardens were safer across the board.
“Happily.”
He strode through the lobby, a little too fast to be perfectly polite, but her long legs kept pace without any visible effort. “Did you know Samara was here when the fire went off? It’s a small miracle we got out unharmed.”
“Not small, certainly.” Lydia allowed him to open the back door for her and stepped out into the sunlight. “I’m profoundly grateful that Samara escaped without any damage done. She’s invaluable.”
“I know.” Though he doubted they meant it in the same way. Beckett suspected that Samara’s deep-seated belief that she would be sacrificed as a pawn was at least partially Lydia’s fault. He might only know his aunt in the business sense, but she had a take-no-prisoners attitude that seemed to apply to her own people as easily as to the enemy.
Lydia stopped and inhaled deeply. “I haven’t been in these gardens in a very long time.”
He surveyed the area, trying to see it the way she did. Morningstar owned more of the lot than just what the building sat on. In addition to the gardens he put in at Thistledown Villa, Beckett’s grandfather had created a second paradise here. It was all local plants, rather than the imported ones in the greenhouse, but it didn’t make it less beautiful. He’d taken solace on one of the two benches situated in the area the same way he’d utilized the gardens in his childhood home. There was something about knowing that love sowed this space that gave him a sense of being anchored. Of peace. “My grandfather must have loved my grandmother very much.”
“Hardly.” Lydia laughed softly. “My father was a horrible snob. He put in these gardens to shield his precious eyes from having to look at the rabble of Houston. Mother wasn’t much better. She always preferred her fantasy gardens to the mess of real life.”
Beckett crossed his arms over his chest. “You have a high opinion of your parents.” He didn’t want to believe it, but what did it matter why the gardens had gone in? It matters. Damn it, it really matters.
She raised one shoulder in a shrug. “Can you blame me?”
“No.” He could blame her for everything after the split, but he understood why she’d felt she had to leave. Beckett had cut his teeth on the games and manipulations that went hand in hand with being a King, and even he couldn’t believe that his grandfather had passed over Lydia for Nathaniel. His father was a good businessman to be sure, but nothing short of genius would have enabled Lydia to be so successful so quickly as she had with a brand-new company. If she’d been the CEO of Morningstar, who knew what she would have accomplished?
Lydia moved to the nearest bench but didn’t sit. It was hard to read her expression with her sunglasses in place, but her mouth took on a brittle edge. “You’re so much like your father, it’s downright uncanny. Born with a silver spoon in your mouth and so incredibly sure of your place in the world that you’re willing to steamroll over anyone who gets in your way—though he never managed to fake compassion the same way you do.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Every King is born with a silver spoon in their mouth.” He could argue that he’d never steamrolled over someone less powerful than he was, but there was no point. Lydia obviously had the narrative she wanted when it came to him. Why should a little thing like the truth matter?
She tilted her head back and seemed to look at the cloud passing over the sun. “He left Houston once upon a time. Did he ever tell you that? He loved the money but not the responsibility that came with it, and when he turned eighteen, he told our father he wanted nothing to do with being a King and jetted off to Europe.”
As Beckett was growing up, his father hadn’t talked much about his time before he was CEO of Kingdom Corp. Beckett tried to picture the man who had constantly touted family first leaving with no intention of coming back. “Don’t you have a daughter in Europe right now? The model? Jetting off after graduation is something of a rite of passage.” Beckett had never done it—he’d gone straight into college after high school. There was no need to backpack through Europe to find himself, because he knew exactly what path his life would take, whether he wanted it or not. And after college, he’d traveled more than half the time to further Morningstar’s interests.
And to salvage what little relationship I had left with my father. Hard to fight when we weren’t even in the same country.
“Eliza knows what she’s about. When the family requires her presence, she’ll return.” Lydia trailed a finger along the back of the bench. “Nathaniel intended to stay until his money ran out—and we both know that wasn’t going to happen.”
Beckett made a noncommittal noise because he wanted to see what her angle was for this moment of sharing. She seemed to take that as an invitation to continue. “Do you know who our father sent to retrieve Nathaniel when it became clear he wouldn’t come back on his own?”
“You.” It was an educated guess. For all intents and purposes, Lydia should have been the one his grandfather chose as heir. She was the oldest, and she was more than capable of handling the job. If he’d trusted her with the job of retrieving Nathaniel, he should have trusted her with the rest of it.
“Me,” she confirmed. “I pulled my brother out of a high-class whorehouse, sobered him up, and brought him home. And do you know what my father did to reward me?” Tap, tap, tap went her finger against the metal bench. “The next week, he named Nathaniel as the next CEO.”
“I’m sorry.” He’d known she was passed over but not the story behind the events leading up to it. As much as he sympathized with the girl she used to be, that changed nothing about the current situation. They stood on opposite sides of a line that might as well have been the Grand Canyon for all they were going to reach across it. He might understand how she got to this point and the deep well of bitterness that turn of events had to have created inside her…but it didn’t excuse a damn thing he suspected her of doing.
“This company should have been mine, Beckett. You know it and I know it.”
Dredge up sympathy and then go in for the kill. He studied her. With her white suit, her impeccable blonde hair, and her ridiculous sunglasses, she would have looked more at home in some fancy resort than standing here in a muggy garden with him. “You got a raw deal, but you made the best of it. There’s no point in trying to turn back time. You have your company. I have mine.” All the posturing irritated the hell out of him. He had better things to do than circling his aunt and trading barbs. “Let this go, Lydia. You won’t like what happens if you keep fucking with me.”
“Darling nephew, I haven’t even begun to fuck with you. Yet.” She smiled that viper’s smirk. “It’s a shame about the fire, isn’t it? I hope the repairs won’t be too extensive. If you need a loan, don’t hesitate to ask.”
Alarm bells pealed through Beckett’s head, but he kept his expression even. “I’ll keep that in mind. Was there anything else? I have things that require my attention.”
If anything, her smile widened. “I imagine you do.” She strolled toward the doors, leaving him trailing behind her. He still didn’t miss her next words. “You’ve become awfully cozy with my Samara.”
Do not react. “I expect you had something to do with that.”
Her laugh raised the small hairs on his neck. There was nothing inherently wrong with it, but it set him on edge all the same. “Contrary to what you seem to believe, I’m not responsible for everything going wrong in your life these days.”
He wasn’t going to touch that. Beckett could number the things that had gone to shit since his father died, but Samara wasn’t on that list. He knew he couldn’t trust her—and that she didn’t trust him—but when she was in his arms he wasn’t worried about his next move or watching his words. Even with all their respective baggage, what was between them was honest in those moments when they let th
eir bodies do the talking.
He waited until Lydia had her hand on the door to ask, “What did you and my father talk about the night he died?”
She paused, but didn’t look back. “I don’t have the slightest idea what you’re talking about. I haven’t seen Nathaniel in months.”
For the first time since she showed up, a thread of tension worked its way through her words. She’s lying. He’d known Frank’s information was good, but this confirmed it independently. “Funny you should say that. I have evidence that says otherwise.”
She seemed to take a fortifying breath and turned to face him. He would have paid a significant amount of money to see her eyes just then. Lydia raised her hands in the universal sign of surrender. “You caught me. I had a private dinner date in the same restaurant he was at that night. He was already drunk when I arrived, and we shared a few words before I moved on.” She shook her head slowly. “I don’t know what you thought a thirty-second conversation would prove, Beckett. I’m sorry that your father’s gone, if only for your loss. I didn’t wish him dead.”
“That’s the second time you’ve lied to me today, Lydia.” He didn’t ask her what they’d allegedly talked about. It didn’t matter. She was scrambling to come up with a logical reason why she would be photographed in Nathaniel’s presence the night he died, and she’d just keep lying until he had the leverage to get the truth. “The games end now.”
“Oh, honey.” She smiled. “The games are only getting started.”
He waited for her to leave the garden, and then waited some more until he watched her leave the building altogether. Beckett pulled out his phone and brought up Samara’s number. Lydia bringing her up specifically was a threat if he’d ever heard one. He needed to see her, to reassure himself that she was really okay, to warn her that his aunt was the goddamn devil.
She won’t believe you.
Even if she does, the safest place for her is as far from you as she can get.
No, he couldn’t call Samara. He couldn’t avoid her indefinitely, but the closer she got to him, the closer she got to the target Lydia had painted on his chest.
