Chapter 25 – King
Chapter
Twenty-Five
KING
Iread the words on the screen again. This must be my third attempt at the same email, and the content still isn’t sinking in. Frustrated, I shake my head and command myself to stop thinking about Mason fucking James and get my mind back in the game.
Cassidy Jones deserves so much more than what I’m giving her.
But he is so damn distracting. Everything about him gets under my skin in all the worst and best ways.
Every time I see him, all I can think about is having my hands on him or my cock inside him.
I’d give him another blowjob if that’s what it took to be close to him, and that should tell me all I need to know about how bad I have it for him. Because I get head; I rarely give it.
But Mason … The mere thought of swallowing his thick cock makes my mouth water.
What in the ever-living fuck is wrong with me?
I have no idea how much longer I can go on working with him and not end up buried inside him.
But he has made it abundantly clear that his ridiculous ultimatum still stands.
It’s been a week since he made it, and despite us being alone and in close proximity at least half a dozen times since then, he’s been nothing but professional, and curt with it.
My cell vibrates, and the message that lights up on the screen does nothing to curb my frustration or clear my head.
We need to discuss this will and come to some arrangement that will suit everyone.
No hint of affection. No loving kiss. Not that I should expect anything like that—she’s only the woman that gave birth to me.
The woman whose body I ruined, as she reminded me countless times when I was growing up.
Why would anything change now just because her father is dead and I’m the only living blood relative she has left in the world?
Fucking hell, get ahold of yourself. My mother being a robot with less warmth inside her than the cold heart of a lizard is not a new development.
I need to stop feeling sorry for myself and grow the fuck up.
With a final glance at the screen in front of me, I close the laptop.
Maybe a visit to my parents’ house is better than combing through the last year of Cassidy’s emails anyway.
So far all I’ve found are complaints to her landlord and annoying newsletters from various chain restaurants and beauty websites.
Not a lot of personal stuff on there at all, which isn’t too surprising given that most people under the age of forty no longer use email as a form of personal communication.
Everything is WhatsApp and Snapchat now, and those servers are much harder to access than email.
Some good old-fashioned detective work in the form of talking to Curtis Jones’s prime suspect is the way to go.
I find my father in his study, puffing on a cigar.
He urges me to take a seat, and I comply out of habit. “Where is Mother?”
“In bed with a migraine.”
I refrain from rolling my eyes. More like she passed out following the bottle of wine she drank after having to endure the agony of texting me.
“I didn’t expect a visit from you today,” he says, eyeing me with suspicion.
I shrug. “I got a text from her. I came to talk.”
“Ah.” He stubs his cigar out in the black marble ashtray on his desk.
A present I bought him when I was fourteen and trying to appease him for something.
It doesn’t exactly surprise me that he’s hung onto it.
I bet he tells visitors that his son bought it for him, making out like he’s a contender for father of the year. “Your grandfather’s will.”
“His airtight will,” I say, reminding him of Nathan’s words.
“Let’s not sully this with lawyers and paperwork, son. We’re family.”
Son? Despite everything and as much as I hate to admit it, that word still means something to me. I see right through his scheme to get me on his side, but I still bend. “What exactly did you want to discuss, Father?”
He runs his tongue along his top teeth. “Your grandmother meant for that money to go to your mother, her daughter.”
I shake my head. “That’s not what Grampa or the will says.”
“Your grandfather was a sick man. If he’d known your mother was—”
“If he’d known she was only going to get the million she knew about, you mean? He did know that. He knew all about it. Yeah, his body was sick, but his mind was sharper than anyone else I know. Don’t you dare try and tell me he didn’t know how this would pan out.”
His right eye twitches and anger radiates from him like heat from the sun, but he keeps a lid on it.
Which tells me he’s eager to keep me here and talking because any other time he would simply let it rip and tell me what a constant disappointment I am to him.
He clears his throat. “What could you possibly need twenty-five million dollars for, Kyngston? We could come to an agreement. A few million, even five, would set you up for life.”
“You and Mother are living in a mansion filled with her pretty stuff. What the hell do you need twenty-five million dollars for?”
His jaw works. “Will you at least consider coming to some sort of settlement, son?”
The fuck I will. But saying that would put a swift end to this conversation, and I have things I want to know. I change the subject instead. “I heard you earned the former mayor a fortune on the stock market. So work must be going well?”
My father walks the fine line between morally bankrupt and respectable enough for his services to be courted by the rich and powerful from all walks of life—city officials to drug lords.
At least in his working life, he’s all about equal opportunity.
It makes for as many enemies as friends, but he has enough powerful people in his debt and in his pockets to drift through life without consequence.
“It’s good. As always. It’s a shame you didn’t take the same path, Kyngston. You could have made something of yourself.”
I ignore the barb. “I like my job.”
“Oh, yes. A private investigator.” He manages to make the title sound like an insult, but I’m immune to his disdain.
“Yeah. It’s interesting. The case I’m working right now, for instance. It’s a real head-scratcher.”
He takes the bait, too curious not to. “And what is that?”
“It’s a disappearance. Cassidy Jones.”
If he recognizes her name, he doesn’t show it outwardly, but he’s always been a master at hiding his true emotions when he needs to.
“Young girl. Daddy issues. Cops seem to think she up and left to get away from him.”
His right eye twitches again. His only tell. “Yes, well, some children are ungrateful little shits like that.”
I don’t let that barb get to me either. The man taught me all of his best moves in that regard, I’ll give him that.
“Thing is, she has no history of running away. No evidence that would support her leaving and starting over somewhere else.”
“So maybe she changed. Maybe she hid her intentions well.” He shrugs, staring at the portrait of his father hanging on his study wall as though it’s the most fascinating thing he’s seen all year.
“That would take some planning though, right? And there was no evidence of that either,” I say, folding my arms and following his gaze.
It’s a well-painted portrait at least, of a man my father hated almost as much as I hate him.
I have no idea why it hangs in here, but he stares at it now to avoid my gaze.
“No evidence of hidden bank accounts. No evidence of a boyfriend anywhere. Well, anywhere except for this rich guy in New York she told her father about.”
He rolls his eyes. “Why are you boring me with this, Kyngston?”
“Oh, I assumed you’d be interested. You know, because the cops spoke to you about her. You were the one of the last people to see her alive, weren’t you?”
The vein in his neck pulses, and he grinds his jaw before quickly reschooling his features into nonchalance. “Ah yes, I remember being spoken to about that. I’m not sure about being one of the last people to see her alive, considering she is neither missing nor presumed dead.”
“Well, technically you were, because I can’t find any record of her being seen by anyone since.
And as for whether she’s missing or dead, that all depends who you speak to.
Her father for sure thinks she’s the former, but me …
” I tilt my head, scrutinizing him for any hint that he knows more than he’s admitting.
“Well, seeing as it’s been fourteen months, I’d say the latter, wouldn’t you? ”
He sucks on his top teeth, a sure sign of his irritation. “I think I’d go along with New York’s finest and their professional assessment that she is neither.” Anger bleeds into his tone now too. He’s unable to keep a lid on his temper for too long when provoked—at least when he’s provoked by me.
“She say anything to you about her plans? You know, when she was giving you your lap dance?”
That vein in his neck bulges now. “Why do you insist on pushing me, Kyngston?”
“Because I’m working a case, and you were definitely one of the last people to see her in New York. Possibly the last person she had any meaningful form of conversation with.”
He sneers. “You think I was interested in conversation with some whore while she had her tits in my face, son? Then you really don’t know me at all.”
I know you all too well, you misogynistic, homophobic asshole. “She never mentioned anything to you then?”
“No.”
“Not even when you took her back to her place and fucked her?”
He moves quickly, much faster than I would have given him credit for.
His hand is wrapped around my throat and his teeth bared as he snarls at me, telling me everything I need to know.
Kyngston Worthington, who regards himself as calm and collected—and he can be, at least on the surface.
And at least until he feels confronted and vulnerable.
Had he not taken Cassidy home and done what I accused him of, he would have brushed me off. And the real kicker is he knows that too, which means he also knows he’s revealed far too much. “How fucking dare you accuse me.”
I pry his fingers from my neck and twist them enough to make him wince before pushing him away. “Not accusing you, Dad. Just aware of your nature. Pretty little brunettes are your type, right? I’d be disappointed if you hadn’t taken her home and fucked her.”
His eye twitches again, and he glares at me.
Pissed because he’s not strong enough to subdue me anymore and no doubt wondering how far I’d go to see him burn.
And the truth is … I don’t know. At this point, I have no idea what I’ll do if I find real evidence that he had something to do with Cassidy’s disappearance.
It’s a strange concept to hate one’s parents as an adult yet still have an inner child that craves their approval and affection.
There’s a soft tapping at his office door, and when he barks for the intruder to come in, the housekeeper pops her head inside. “Will you be joining us for dinner, Mr. Worthington?” It takes me a second to realize she’s talking to me.
My father curls his lip. “No, he has plans.”
She mumbles an apology and disappears back into the hallway.
For once, his dismissal of me doesn’t sting even a little.
I have no plans at all, but I would rather stick needles in my eyeballs than endure a dinner with my drunken mother and my cruel, narcissist father.
I make a show of checking my watch. “I suppose I’d better get going then. ”
“Seems that would be for the best.” His tone is back to ice-cold calculation.
No hint of the temper he lost with me a moment ago.
“As would be you leaving that case the hell alone, Kyngston. If you know what’s good for you.
” It’s a threat, and we both know it. We also both know it means there’s something for me to find, but he already revealed as much when he lashed out the way he did.
Even when he beat me as a kid and chained me in that goddamn basement to try to “get all the evil out,” he rarely showed anger.
Only stone-cold cruelty, which made him all the more terrifying.
He only loses his temper when he’s scared.
And I scared him. Cassidy Jones’s name scared him.
And I am going to find out why.