by K. I. Lynn
“Madeline is better behaved than her,” Hamilton argued as he loosened his tie.
Rhys shook his head. “Do you not remember the family dinner at all?”
Hamilton unknotted his tie, his aggravation growing, and pulled it from his neck before undoing the top buttons of his dress shirt. It was a tell of his—the tie was the first to go. He didn’t like Ophelia, but I had yet to discern the real reason.
“Yes, but you weren’t there for the rest of the weekend, Rhys.”
“She was nervous and unsure of herself,” I cut in. I refused to let Hamilton cut into her any longer. “None of you but Pen gave her a very warm welcome, and even that was a little frosty. But, she held herself in check despite the insults being thrown at her.”
Hamilton shook his head. “Dress her up all you want, she’s still a square peg trying to fit in a round hole, and she always will be.”
“Maybe I like that.” My voice was barely over a whisper.
Hamilton’s eyes narrowed on me. “Are you serious?”
I blew out a breath and relaxed back into my chair. “It doesn’t matter anyway. What does matter is a man named Lou Milner.”
“Who is Lou Milner?” they asked in unison.
“Someone I need to pay off and ruin.”
Hamilton’s lip twitched up, and excitement filled his eyes. The shark smelled blood. “What can we do?”
“Pay him, then bury him in legal action.”
Rhys perked up at that, excited for a challenge. “Who is he that I get to make him bleed?”
“Ophelia’s stepfather. He threatened her, so I will end him. The mother is a piece of work as well, but he is the focus.”
“Won’t that be more bad light shed on your bride-to-be?” Rhys asked.
I shook my head. “Not when he is arrested for extortion of his stepdaughter. Paint him as a monster.”
Rhys quirked a brow. “And you as her knight in shining armor?”
I nodded. “It will help tame the public opinion.”
“Why do we care about that again?” Hamilton asked with a groan.
“Because gods only hold power because their subjects pay tribute to them,” I said.
“Even if we were all hit with bad press, it will hardly make a dent in the company,” Hamilton argued.
“True, but I refuse to let the de Loughrey name fall like others. Names that are known to all, but have disappeared.” It was a common problem in those that rose in the industrial age—shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations.
“Through mistreatment of wealth,” Rhys pointed out.
Hamilton nodded in agreement. “We are constantly growing and evolving. A little shadow can’t hurt that. Look to Genevieve as an example.”
“She’s the exception,” I pointed out. “She’s trained them over the years to the point that the only way to truly get her to straighten up is by revoking access to her trust.”
“I wield the pen and you wield the power, cousin.” Rhys grinned a little too large for my liking, though I didn’t disagree with his excitement. “Simply speak the words, and it will be done.”
I sat back. “Let Father handle her for the time being. Right now, I need to concentrate on destroying my soon-to-be stepfather-in-law.”
“We will leave you to it,” Rhys said as he stood.
Hamilton didn’t move, gaining our attention. “How did he threaten her? You said he threatened her? What did he have on her?”
That piqued Rhys’s interest, and he looked back to me.
“I’m not sure, but I’ve always suspected it might come to this.”
Hamilton gripped his tie in one hand as he stood. “I may not like her, but whatever you need, I’m here. She’s yours, and that makes her a de Loughrey. Nobody threatens us.”
My lip twitched. “Thank you.”
He gave a nod before turning. “Call me.”
“You know where to find me,” Rhys said as he followed Hamilton out.
While it aggravated me that Hamilton didn’t approve of Ophelia due to her upbringing and status, he was still willing to fight for her. Then again, he also loved a fight.
None of that mattered. What mattered was their support in helping me rid the world of a cockroach.
From the background check, I’d always known in my gut Lou Milner was going to be a disturbance in my plan. Born of blue collar. A drunk.
Amy Milner, Ophelia’s mother, wasn’t much better.
I combed over the information I had and pondered how different Ophelia’s life would have been if her father had not died. Divorce papers had been filed, and in them he was asking for full custody of his daughter.
It didn’t get to judgment before a hit and run left him for dead.
Something about that rubbed me wrong, and before I could stop myself, I’d texted Hugo to look into it. The police report called it an accident, but with the new development with Lou Milner, and knowing he married Amy only a few short months later, there was something that didn’t sit right.
My hunches often worked out, and if I was correct, Lou Milner was about to be an easy one to bury.
No one threatens a de Loughrey.
There was silence when I stepped off the elevator. That wasn’t unusual, even with Ophelia sharing the space. We needed to talk, and instead of heading to my bedroom, I stepped across the hall into the library. After depositing my jacket, I moved to the bar and popped the top from the decanter before pouring a few fingers of whiskey. My neck ached from the tightness it held through the day, and I craned it from side to side in an attempt to loosen it.
Once I had enough to take the edge off, I removed my tie, popped the top buttons of my shirt, and headed down the hall. The silence continued as I drew closer to her bedroom. While I was prepared to be civil and knock, the door to her room was open.
My brow scrunched as I stepped in. “Ophelia?” I called out.
She wasn’t there, nor was she in her bathroom. There was also something off about her room, but I brushed it aside as I moved out of the bedroom and in search of her in the main living areas.
“Ophelia?” I called out again. Once again, there was nothing. Each room was the same—not a speck of evidence she was there.
Anger boiled inside when I got to the last space and found it empty.
I told her to stay. I told her not to leave. Yet she defied me?
Perhaps she was in the common levels? It was a solid idea, but that feeling of something amiss crawled in and I rushed back to her bedroom.
Quickly, I pulled out my phone and began a search for her. My stomach sank when the tracker couldn’t find a signal in the building. My chest tightened when the last ping signaled over eight hours before.
“What the fuck?”
A zing of cold zipped down my spine, and I rushed back to her bedroom.
I scanned the room, and nothing seemed out of place until I checked the bathroom. While makeup and perfume remained, the room was devoid of toiletries. In her closet, the dress she wore the night we met was missing. Her dresser was the true tell—her drawers were mostly empty. Drawers that had been filled with many of her clothes before we met, including her jeans, were empty, leaving behind only the designer ones Melanie had brought her.
She left me?
Anger rolled off me. I knew she was upset, but to the point of leaving before we could talk? My emotions oscillated, and I hated the swing that enveloped me.
She needed to be found. Returned.
She couldn’t leave me. I owned her.
Yes, that was why. Not the lie that I desperately wanted her. That my heart ached for her.
The thought that maybe someone could ever care about me was a lie to soothe my wretched soul.
But I refused to give up on her.
A single button on my phone was pressed, and after one ring, a deep voice answered.
“Hugo, I need you to track down someone,” I said.
“Sure thing. Who am I looking for?”
“O
phelia Evans.”
There was a pause. “Last seen?”
“Penthouse, Olympus Tower, seven this morning.”
There was the click of fingers on a keyboard. “Have you tracked her phone with yours?”
“I tried, but it cut out a few blocks away and I don’t know why.”
There was a small pause that felt like hours, but only mere seconds passed. “Looks like she pulled a couple grand off her credit card at a bank on Broadway.”
A couple grand? What would she be doing with that kind of money? Did someone force her to do it, then kidnap her? Her stepfather?
The panic that set off inside my chest had me gripping the edge of the counter, my knuckles turning white from the force.
“Find her. Now.”
“Yes, sir.”
I hung up the phone and rubbed at my chest as harsh breaths left me.
And then the wicked king fell, consumed by his grief from a situation he created.
Almost poetic, but nothing about my life created such beauty. No, I was a destroyer. A conqueror.
A king.
But without my queen…
Ophelia had taken over my heart without me even noticing, and my oversight was costing me and causing a pain I’d never encountered before.
All night long I tossed and turned, the worst possible scenarios coming to mind. Closing in on twenty-four hours and she still hadn’t returned, nor had she been found.
What had I done? It was my fault. I showed her, and that pushed her away. Who would want to be with a man like me anyway? I wasn’t some nice guy she could ever have feelings for, even if I couldn’t understand my own. Love in any form was not a nurtured emotion in the de Loughrey household.
All I could comprehend was that I wanted Ophelia in a way I had never wanted another woman in my life. She pulled at something inside me, deep in my chest, that I wanted her near. The problem was that once she was, I had no clue what to do. Affection was for the weak, or so I had been told my entire childhood.
Competition was cultivated from birth, and only winners were praised. That level of expectation of winning wasn’t just in peer competition, but also pertained to sibling and cousin rivalry.
It was a cycle I hated, because all it did was push me further and further away from people. The absolute need to be the best, to prove my worth, had me cutting off friend and foe at the knees. There was no room for failure. No room for second best.
And I craved the win. Not to gloat, but for the small, fleeting praise bestowed upon me. The more accolades I garnered, the more praise I received. It wasn’t until Ophelia that I began to understand that praise did not equal love.
I sat up, unable to take staring at the ceiling any longer, and rubbed my face.
“What are you doing, Atticus? What do you want from her?”
Her smile, the little smirk she would give, flashed into my mind. There was a light to her, and she drew me in, a moth to her flame, desperate to feel the warmth only she could provide.
I wasn’t getting any more sleep, and I pulled the covers from my body before settling my feet on the floor. There was no notification light blinking on my phone, and I’d been awake enough that the smallest vibration would have had me grabbing for it. None of that was enough to satiate the need for something to suddenly pop up, and when I woke the screen up, I was greeted with nothing.
What made my nerves ramp into overdrive was not that she had run away from me—a reaction I could have predicted if I’d wished to indulge my worry instead of focusing on destroying her stepfather—it was that the signal from her phone had disappeared.
That was what had my hands shaking. Me. The wicked king, supreme ruler of the heartless kingdom, was consumed with the fear that my fake fiancée was hurt and needed me.
For all my fucking resources, they couldn’t find her after nearly twenty-four hours.
After a shower and still no notice, I dressed in simple slacks and a button-down with the sleeves rolled up. It was then I noted how my wardrobe consisted of mostly suits. With summer coming in and with Ophelia in my life, more trips to the Hamptons would be had, and I would require more casual dress. I tasked Jack with contacting Melanie about a summer wardrobe.
An odd thing to do at that moment, but for those few seconds, my mind wandered from the anxiety that vibrated through me.
What the hell are you going to do?
It was the question that buzzed around in my brain, but no answers came.
I ran away.
It was an act of desperation, of sheer need to be away from anything de Loughrey related…away from him. My mind was a whirlwind, and all I knew was that I couldn’t stay. I had to go.
So I did. I withdrew an amount that was pretty much pocket change to him and destroyed the sim card in my phone. I needed space away from him, and I wasn’t going to get it if he knew exactly where I was. To make it harder, I boarded the train and rode into the Bronx.
But after many hours of sitting in some budget motel in a sketchy part of town, the adrenaline long ago having worn off, I began to question my rash plan of action. I couldn’t hide forever, especially not in New York. He would find me in a heartbeat.
If he was even looking.
My chest clenched at that thought. What if, after my disappearance, he gave up on me? But didn’t I want that?
My mind was a massive rat’s nest of contradictory confusion. Was that due to the feelings I had for him? The more space between us, the more I began to realize that as much as I was angry at him, it was my own fear that thrust me out the door.
I was a flighty personality when things got too heavy, whether that was from an overbearing fear of a drunk, or the emotional upheaval of being thrust into a spotlight. There was no real preparation for it, just a general warning of things that would happen.
How could he be so blasé over firing others? He was like ice when he dictated that not only would they be fired, but it was my fault entirely. While I knew my actions at the club were on no one’s shoulders but my own, I couldn’t reconcile the thought that I’d never again be allowed out for a little breather… some fun.
I should have predicted Lou’s response to the announcement. His eyes were probably shining with dollar signs when he’d watched the news and concocted his plan. The amount wasn’t much in the de Loughrey world, but to Lou, it was riches beyond his dreams and all he had to do was threaten me.
When I grasped at straws before signing the contract with Atticus and mentioned skeletons, it was a true air grab. Anything to postpone the inevitable, but I didn’t believe there was anything. My life had been standard, with the only thing hanging in the air being the identity of whomever killed my father. It was a mystery that was still unsolved two decades later.
I suppose I could have declined his proposal, but there was something that stopped me from saying no, from just flipping him off and storming out.
Yes, the money was part of it, but there was more. The promise of different, of not having to worry about so much, of spending time with Atticus.
But the shiny had worn off, and I found that the life of the rich was harder than it looked. Rules and etiquette and an aching loneliness prevailed.
I fell back down on the bed, my stomach choosing that moment to rumble—no surprise since I hadn’t eaten since I’d grabbed a sandwich before checking into the hotel. Since then, I’d lived off the snacks I snagged from his penthouse condo when I left. The problem I faced was that I finished off the last bottle of water, and had to leave the security of the crappy walls that surrounded me.
The temperature was near ninety out, so I slipped on some shorts and a tank top, then my flip-flops. My identity was out there all over the place, so I’d made sure to conceal my face beneath a hat and sunglasses. Even if someone thought I looked familiar, nobody would suspect a future de Loughrey would be caught dead in an area like this dressed the way I was.
After picking up a gyro and fries, I dipped into a corner bodega for drinks and an
abundance of soul-nourishing chocolate.
And a pint of Ben and Jerry’s.
When I was done, I rushed out and back down the street.
In and out. Avoid all people. Just walk. Get back to the hotel.
Hurry.
“Hey, lady, got any change?” a man asked.
The hairs on the back of my neck rose.
Ignore. Get back.
“Hey, sweetheart, I’m talkin’ to you.” His voice lost its friendly edge.
I picked up the pace, hoping the guy would move on to the next person.
“Listen, bitch,” he sneered.
My arm was yanked, throwing off my balance and halting me, my leg kicked out to stop my fall. I was met with dark eyes that seemed to glow with anger, his pupils blown from whatever drugs he was on.
“Let go,” I said through clenched teeth. There were people everywhere, but nobody seemed to take notice of us.
“Gimme your money and maybe I will.”
I was just about to laugh at him when I heard the distinctive schnick of a switchblade. My stomach dropped, and my eyes peered around trying to catch anyone’s glance.
“Ain’t nobody gonna help you. Not here.”
Fuck this. Fuck him. Fuck all the men who think they can control me and walk all over me.
“I said leave me alone!” I cried out, pulling my arm to wrench it from his grip, not caring if I was cut in the process.
Suddenly I flew back, my arm free. I stumbled briefly but regained my balance in time to watch as a man slammed his fist into the druggie’s face again and again until the man lay groaning on the ground. There was a small wave of applause, but everyone ignored the man lying in an outcome of his own making.
I watched the heaving back of the man who saved me, a chill running down my spine. He turned, his blue eyes lit with anger, but also an edge of panic as he raked his gaze across my skin. My heart thumped wildly in my chest. He came. He actually came, and I wasn’t sure what scared me the most—the fact that I was bound to be in trouble, or the relief I felt that he found me.
Glancing away, I fought my desire to flee and clenched my jaw to keep the tears at bay.
“What are you doing here?” I demanded while steadfastly refusing to look at him.
