Chapter 28
Parker left a fucking shit show behind for me to deal with. To be fair, he hadn’t known he was going to die, had no idea his work would be cut short.
Knowing him the way I had, he always lived as though he had a thousand years or more to play with. Time, instead of being limited, was like chips at a casino table, and he tossed away his moments flippantly.
His paperwork is a fucking joke.
Stanic assured me he would have everything I needed sent to me. Everything in me wanted to go home and get piss ass drunk. I want to forget everything and everyone and let the world go straight to hell for a few hours. Or a night—however long I can get.
Instead, I sent a quick text to Sherry telling her where I’d be, then booked it to the office and found it empty. True to word, within the hour, Stanic had everything delivered, packed in boxes with discrete brown tape to keep them closed. There were currently seven waiting for me to go through, and I had literally a couple hours to get acquainted with the whole thing.
I glance at my watch, already over the edge with anxiety and pissed the fuck off.
I’ve got to get home and check on Empire. There’s no way she’s still asleep at this point, and she’s not answering any of my texts. So far, no one is getting back to me, and nothing goes according to any sort of logical plan.
I groan, letting my head fall back and staring at the ceiling to the count of ten.
The sooner I get this shit done, the sooner I’ll be able to get home.
Grab the bottle.
A little drunk might make it easier to keep my hands off Empire too. Hands, mouth, whatever else I’ve thought about sliding over her silken skin thousands of times. I’m fucked hard enough by life to do something I’d regret at this point.
Maybe staying in the office is the best idea after all.
“Goddamn Parker Heath,” I groan out loud.
I hope he rots in whatever purgatory or hell he’s in. No doubt I’ll be joining him eventually. I straighten and smooth out the line of papers in front of me. They fan out one right after the other, an endless sea of black on white, with several of Parker’s notes hand scribbled in the margins.
He’d blamed a lot of his production choices on Empire and the way I finagled her contract.
Fucking lies.
Nothing but a blame shift tactic to cover his own ass.
I groan, pinching both sides of my nose and drawing in a long, deep exhale through my mouth. If Stanic wants more money out of this picture, then I’ll give it to him. I’ll make him so much money on Wretched, he’ll trust me implicitly on any future projects, and that kind of trust gets me one thing I can’t buy: leeway.
Future projects without Empire.
The thought of her has me gritting my teeth as tension splits my head in two.
Will there ever be a day she isn’t at the front of my mind? Probably not. She’s lodged herself inside of me in every way possible. Right now, she’s probably at home freaking out.
I check my phone again to see my texts haven”t even been opened. Or maybe she’s not freaking out. It’s possible the verbal diarrhea of truth from last night terrified her into distance, and now she doesn’t want to speak to me.
Which is fine, I tell myself.
She’s entitled to her space, especially when I gave her a lot to digest.
Too much, I argue mentally, too much to think about and not nearly all the truth.
She’ll never look at me the same way again.
And right now, if I don”t go over Parker’s crap and figure out exactly how to switch things around to benefit The Family, they’ll kill me—and her. If I don’t provide them with exactly what they expect, we are both goners, and I can’t allow that.
I’m not even sure Parker knew what Stanic and his people really wanted out of the picture, not really. He spent too much time seeing to his own devils to worry about the demons on his back and their long-term plans.
They’ve been making inroads money laundering through various umbrella corporations, I assume as I continue to flip through the paperwork from the first box. Pretty good inroads, but not enough to cover most of their expenses. What were they trying to do with Wretched?
“If I had to do it all over again…” I mutter.
I’d shoot him somewhere to make it hurt, where he’d bleed out slowly and have to watch me watch the life drain out of him. I should have found a better way to dispose of him where Empire was far enough away not to hear the gun go off.
I scrub my hand over my face. I really fucked this up.
What had I been thinking?
Too many missteps to count from start to finish.
So far, nothing is really making sense to me, and maybe it’s because I’m only halfway through one of the boxes, or because Parker had been a complete dick when it came to keeping track of things. Hell, things might have gotten lost during the boxing process.
Either way, the headache is here to stay, and the second cup of coffee gives me no relief.
I shouldn’t have let the Stones get on the plane that day.
That’s where the fuckups started.
I’d had a bad feeling about it from the start, but I hadn’t paid attention to my gut, hadn’t thought about the price someone else might have to pay for my escape from the streets. I thought I’d be able to make it on my own in Hollywood, without Stanic or the avenues his money brought me.
I did a damn good job of it for a long time.
And I’d thought we made a clean break from each other when I got out. He hadn’t been happy about it. In fact, I’d gotten a gun pointed at my back on the way out the door. He hadn’t pulled the trigger, though, and a part of me thought he might even have respected me for pulling the stunt.
I’ve never been more wrong.
Groaning, I flip through several boxes until I find the rest of the documents for Parker’s current film. The first few folders detail the projected budget for the film, but the numbers are still way off when I run them. My eyes cross, head hurting even more as the numbers start to blur together. What the hell am I looking at?
I’m halfway through the stack when the answer smacks me upside the back of the head: Stanic and the rest of his people are moving money through the movie deals they make, and the one starring Empire is set to make them their biggest profit yet. Parker had been a decent little mule until his last two films. Then, the profit margins had gotten smaller. And smaller.
No wonder he’d been set on having things go his way for the film. It was probably his last shot to make things right for The Family.
I’ve got to try to convince her to finish it, though, and keep her from finding out about everything else.
I lean back in my chair, fingers pressed against the papers, thinking about the scenes we’d run through.
A reluctant smile pulls at my mouth.
The last one ended up with her sweet pussy pressed to my lips and my tongue inside her.
I don’t want anyone else touching her the way I’d touched her. Immediately, the grin vanishes, and my headache roars back.
Greg is a decent actor, and he’s managed to stay out of the tabloids so far, though I’m not sure if it’s because of genuine goodness on his part, or because he has a damn good manager and a team of lawyers at his disposal.
He’s been nothing but professional any time I’ve had to deal with him, but I’d seen the way he looked at Empire on the set that day.
He also hadn’t spoken up. She told me he’d been kind but insisted things are done a certain way for certain reasons.
His laser focus on her shaved cunt tells me I’ll have to watch him closely.
Do I trust him around Empire? No.
I haven’t got one fucking option left; I’ve already made my choice, so now I’ll have to just get over it. It’s not like I”ve got a shot at touching her again. The best I can do is make sure to be there on set with her, to somehow rearrange Parker’s budget to get an intimacy coordinator hired as soon as humanly fucking possible.
There wasn’t a whole lot of wiggle room. He hadn’t been lying there.
With the headache reaching unmanageable territory, I whip out the phone and call Sherry for the second time.
“Hello, boss man,” she says after the third ring.
“Sher, are you taking the biggest breakfast break of your life?” I grind out.
“Hell no. You think I’d just disappear for hours to stuff myself at a buffet? Are you nuts?”
The woman gives me nothing but grief.
“I have no idea what you’re doing, but you haven’t answered me, and I’m in the office without you.”
She chuckles, the sound too girlish for the surly older woman I know and adore. “We must have missed each other, then,” she returns.
‘“I’ve been here for about an hour.” I shift in the chair, my ass numb and uncomfortable.
“You don’t need me right now, do you? I mean, you know how to make your own coffee, and you”ve got other people around to grab you something to eat if you get snippy.”
The headache is only going to get worse if I have to go around in circles with my assistant. “Look, I’ve got a shit ton of work today, and I’m going to need you to meet me at home. There are a few things we need to go over in person, but I’ve got to have my laptop to do anything,” I tell her.
“Oh, isn’t that funny?” Sherry laughs again. “I’m actually at the house now, with Empire. We’re going over the paperwork for the house and the inheritance.” She sucks on her teeth. “Aren’t you happy you have me? Otherwise, you would have left this loose end open.”
My heart seizes.
“What do you mean, you’ve got the inheritance papers?” I ask, my tongue numb.
“I mean, you’ve been putting it off for so long, I decided to get the papers signed for you, Marcus. What do you think I mean?” Sherry asks. “The lawyer called the office the other day asking if you’d gotten these papers signed or not. I thought you’d be happy to have one less item on your plate.”
I think I’m out of time, and Empire already knows I signed the papers to cut ties with her. At this point, there’s no chance in hell she hasn’t figured it out.
I bolt from the chair, standing swiftly enough to get lightheaded. I signed those papers angry and drunk, one of those moments I’m not proud of, where I’d been furious at her for staying in bed all day and determined to let her sink or swim on her own.
Fuck.
The phone falls from my limp fingers, and I race out of there.
I’ve got to get home and talk to her before she jumps to conclusions, before she thinks I signed those papers to get rid of her and I actually meant it. Otherwise, she’ll never forgive me.