Chapter 18
EIGHTEEN
STORM
T he room smells like sex and Shae.
I collapse into the armchair across from the sofa and glare at my phone until the text arrives from Anderson that Shae’s safely back in her suite.
Two minutes and forty-three seconds. That’s how long it takes for the message to come through.
After I get the confirmation, I darken the screen and stare at the sofa where Shae and I just hate-fucked our rage toward each other.
I can’t believe Shae and I screwed.
I can’t believe how fucked up I feel about it.
“ Fuuuuuuck, ” I groan, running my hand down the side of my face…then regretting the action because it smells like Shae.
She’s everywhere. Absolutely everywhere.
The truth is, I don’t want to hurt Shae. I don’t want her to hate me. But I don’t know what the hell to do with this tornado of emotion I’m stuck in.
For the first time since I laid my eyes on Shae Rivers outside the Econ building, I wish I could create emotional distance.
I wish I had the ability to be objective when it comes to her, rather than all-consumed and obsessed.
Because that’s what I’ve been in the near decade I’ve known her: Obsessed. Possessive. Uncontrollable.
I’m the flame, and Shae’s the kindling.
And we’re about to burn each other alive.
My whole body awakens as if electrified, and I surge to my feet, pacing the length of the living room. My skin feels wrong; my mind feels wrong.
Everything feels wrong when Shae and I are out of sync.
I chuckle. Out of sync? We’re on two completely different planets right now.
My eye catches the file on the desk across the room. A dossier on Tempest and Raiden Rivers that Axel compiled and sent over while I was at the palace.
I stare at their last name. Rivers.
If it weren't for their middle names, I’d think she’d completely erased me from their genealogy.
Tempest Amaya, after my mother. Raiden Alexander, after my own middle name.
But that’s it. There’s no mention of me on the birth certificate, like Riale said. The twins could just as easily have been made in a test tube from all the data I gathered on them.
I move to the folder, opening it to stare at their Kindergarten pictures. Shae was right. They both look like me—especially Raiden.
No wonder he stared at me so intently at Versailles. He probably thought he was looking at a mirror.
I flip through more pages: progress reports from their Montessori schools, medical records from their premature births and their two-week stint in the NICU after being born at thirty-four weeks.
I read on, rubbing my chest when I learn Shae’s water broke at thirty-two weeks, and she spent that time until birth in the hospital on bedrest, trying to keep them in.
I should have been there.
Riale’s voice batters my guilt. I have no one to blame but myself.
I was the one who broke us. I was the one who sent Shae away.
Shae hurt me by denying my children knowledge of who I am, but I hurt her—hurt us—first.
And that I’ll have to live with.
The sound of my phone ringer is jarring in the quiet, so I snap toward the sound as if it were a bomb. Making my way toward the coffee table, I snatch my cell and growl when I see Riale’s name, my attitude going murderously dark.
Riale. I’m really struggling with the fact that I want to torture and then murder my best friend.
In many ways, I can give Riale more grace than I’m able to give Shae. It’s probably fucked up, and I should be able to see Shae’s side of things.
In many ways, I do.
But it hurts me in a place I rarely acknowledge that she’s taught my children I don’t exist. The reality is, I would love them deeper than anyone else on this planet, differently from but just as intensely as I love Shae.
Eight years. She stole eight years from me. And she might not see it now, but she stole eight years from Tempest and Raiden, too.
I reject the call, and it’s not seconds later when Axel calls me.
Why can’t I just be left alone?
“What?” I spit out as soon as I answer.
Silence on the other end ratchets up my agitation. I’m entirely too sober and too wrung out to deal with Axel’s goofy ass.
Before I hang up, Axel says, “So…big day, huh?”
I grit my teeth.
“Axel, don’t piss me off,” I grind out, and Axel chuckles. I head toward the bedroom, stripping off my shirt.
“Why are you calling me?” I ask, irritation growing because I get another wave of Shae’s sweet scent when I move the fabric over my head.
Shower. I should shower, but the idea of washing her off my body repulses me.
Shae Olivya Rivers is in my blood, in my DNA. There’s no coring her out of my soul, and right now, I fucking hate that.
Because while I can’t get rid of the ache I feel every time I think her name, she’s managed to find ways to erase me, not only from her life, but from our children’s, too.
I throw my shirt into a corner, wishing it were something harder, more fragile.
I wish I had something to break that’s brittle like me.
Fuck. I’m so goddamn fucked.
“I’m calling for two reasons. One: Are you going to kill Riale? I’d prefer it if you didn’t, but I can understand if you feel it necessary.”
I blink at Axel’s bluntness, as if he isn’t asking me if I plan on offing our friend. The thing is, I know he’s completely serious.
Friend. Riale thought he was doing what was best. The logical part of me can realize that. But the emotional part of my psyche? I want to go scorched earth.
“Nah,” I say dismissively. “He’s straight.”
Axel’s disbelief is loud in his silence.
“Next question,” I press, heading into the bathroom. I turn on the shower for the second time tonight.
“The second thing: Lakeland’s gone ghost.”
My eyebrows slam down.
“I’m not surprised.” I pause in front of the long bathroom counter, avoiding my reflection.
“Yeah. He left Isla Cara last week, and I’d tracked him to far upstate New York and then around to Los Angeles, which is where he called us from.
The trail goes dead there. I can find anyone almost anywhere there is any type of camera, and I have an up-to-date photo, but he’s not pinging on anything,” Axel says.
“He’s hiding because he’s planning something,” I grind out. Lakeland was too gleeful to mention Shae in our last conversation, and I know he will try to hit me where it hurts the most.
She is my weakness.
I take a deep cleansing breath, then crack my head from side to side. Lakeland wants war, so he’ll get war.
“I’ll find him,” Axel says, unbothered. “But there’s something else. There’s some unusual chatter on one of the backchannels I follow. A bounty for five million.”
My stomach drops.
“You think it’s Lakeland?” I ask, dread filling my entire body.
“That’s the thing, it doesn’t look like it’s him,” Axel says. “But if it stinks, it stinks.”
Hypervigilance crawls out of my synapses like ants. I know Lakeland has as many eyes on me as I have on him. I know this because I know exactly where all his spies are.
My eyes roll to the ceiling as if I could see my children sleeping a floor above me.
And Shae. Shae’s there, too.
“More security. Here and…in Gold Coast.”
The silence over the line sings.
“Gold Coast…so you’re planning on going back home?”
The back of my neck itches when I think about returning to my parents’ home—the place I last saw them alive.
The place where I witnessed their deaths.
But the reality is, I can better secure their house than I can the condo.
“People. I need you to tap your contact list and get the meanest bastards you can to protect them. You have carte blanche to give them as much money as you need to keep them loyal.”
“They’re already loyal,” he says with a yawn. “They’re with me.”
My jaw twitches. There’s no one I trust completely. Not when it comes to Shae and my kids.
My family.
“Shore up all the weak spots, Axel,” I say. I don’t have to say more about the risk to his life if he were to fuck this up.
“Ten-four,” Axel says, his keyboard clacking in the background, already at work to get things sorted for me and my family.
The concept hits me square in the back of the head.
Family.
I have a family.
My gut twists.
My whole life, I’ve been chasing after control, after power.
After revenge.
But now...now it’s not just me. I’ve got something real to protect. Shae, Tempest, Raiden—this is my family.
And I’m willing to burn it all down to keep them safe.
“I have an idea,” I tell Axel. He pauses for a second before responding.
“You gonna share with the class?” he drawls. The thing is, I should get on this idea now , not later. But I have to reconcile my morals with what needs to be done next, and I know Axel, of the three of us, will have the biggest problem with what I want to do.
“Not yet. I’ll tell you when all three of us are in person again.” I can practically hear Axel’s eyebrow going up.
“You including RiRi?”
For the first time tonight, I feel like chuckling.
“I’ll give you a thousand dollars to call him that to his face.”
“Done,” he says. “But because I’ll obsess over this, can you give me a hint?” I think about it for all of three seconds before deciding he’ll need time to get used to the idea.
“I know how to draw him out,” I say, feeling a dark mass settle in my gut as I decide. “We’re gonna take his daughter.”