Chapter 2
TWO
F rantic nerves drive me out of my office to my apartment and everywhere Empire has ever haunted. The cafés and the spas. The shops on Rodeo and the galleries on the side streets.
Every new place that turns up nothing has my fingers curving over the steering wheel hard enough to crack the frame and my frustration mounting.
My teeth grind together.
She has to be somewhere.
Empire taking the fuck off and not giving me shit all notice about it is the last thing I want to deal with today. No fucking courtesy.
Why would she ? a snide voice repeats in my head. I didn’t tell her the truth about the paperwork, and with the press having a field day with their latest salacious gossip, she has even less of a reason to be in my company than any given day.
Which doesn’t stop me from going on a mad hunt all over the goddamn city for her.
A woman like her can’t disappear off the map.
“She didn’t tell you where she was going?” I growl into the phone.
My assistant, Sherry, only laughs at me. “Marcus, the girl didn’t look ready to go anywhere. If she decided to leave the house, I say good on her! You cast a big shadow.”
Sherry promptly hangs up on me because she is absolutely no help—why do I pay her? And by the end of another hour of searching, I’ve got nothing. Not a hint. Empire Stone is off the radar.
Sweat dampens my skin, and my heart is about seconds away from having an attack just to fucking spite me. Wherever she went, there has got to be a trail behind her, and I’m too out of my head to find it.
Unless—
“Marcus, you ignorant fuck.”
Using my name sharpens the moment, and I slam my hand against the wheel in agitation, the pain further sharpening things for the briefest moment.
Another curse, and I pull out of traffic amid the displeased honks and middle fingers of several other drivers. I cut off a cab to grab a spot on the side of the street. I flash them all a finger of my own, throwing the car into park before rooting around for my cell.
There’s no valid excuse for me being this stupid. Why didn’t I remember?
When her parents died, I installed a tracking app on her phone. And no matter where she went, she’d have her phone with her. It’s practically surgically attached to her hand these days.
She’s addicted to the thing like some people are addicted to crack or meth.
With a few presses of the button, the screen comes to life with a small circle narrowing as the app does its job.
“Come the fuck on,” I mutter at the screen. Waiting, always waiting, for the software.
Finally, it pings a location I’m utterly familiar with and should have thought about before I drove all over Los Angeles like an asshole. I have just solidified my grand title as World’s Biggest Idiot.
Her father and I spent many happy weekends at the bungalow in Malibu. On the outskirts of what many, including Olivia, had dubbed the rich-bitch area, the small cottage-style house became a home away from home for us all.
There were drunken weekends and times when I’d traveled for work only to be too tired to make my way to the city and end up crashing there…happy memories.
Happy and morose.
Stressed and satiated.
The bungalow saw those milestones and more, heard our secrets and our fears and our hopes for the future uttered over a bonfire or a bottle of booze. Those walls carried stories from a time when family and relationships meant something to me. Of course Empire went there to get away from me.
Stashing the phone on the dash, I pull into traffic with a screech of tires and an unhealthy pressure on the accelerator.
Maybe she needs the space.
Those fucking internet alerts had to have gone off for her as well. I know because I set them myself, checking the parameters to go off whenever she or I were mentioned.
Too bad she’s not getting her space.
I’ll reel her back in no matter how far away she tries to go.
I’m a selfish bastard. The press is right to call me a lech and a pervert and insults I can’t dream up for myself.
And at this point, I have to go get her. For her sake and mine.
It takes a good hour to navigate traffic and get to the beach house. Relief courses through me and lightens the pressure on my chest at the sight of her car parked in the driveway. The ocean waves crash on the shore beyond, and the now setting sun casts shadows of gold and peach across the sand. Couples are walking by, and children are still playing in the cool waves.
Every window in the bungalow is open.
“Fucking Christ.” Shuddering, I palm the keys and stomp toward the front door.
Does she have any idea how dangerous it is to leave the place open this way? Anyone could walk inside and hold a gun to her head. Even in this neighborhood. It’s not what it used to be back in the day, with security beefing up and McMansions rising where the quaint older beach homes used to reside.
Does it matter if danger is gilded over with gold? No, it fucking doesn’t.
Money just buys better guns and better lawyers.
Another groan burns the back of my throat at the unlocked door. Not even closed, simply closed over. Empire’s voice reverberates through the small square of the living room from the rear of the house. No, not her voice alone.
A second female voice rises in tandem with hers. She must have called River over here.
And they are the perfect targets, blissfully unaware of the rest of the world chugging along without them. Ire churns in my gut, and my hands curl into fists at my sides.
I stalk ahead, finding them sitting on the floor in the kitchen, absolutely oblivious to anyone entering the house. Immediately, anger replaces everything else, even my concern for her.
“Excuse the hell out of me,” I say sweetly. “What’s going on here?”
They jump when they hear me. Empire goes dead white, and River scrambles to her feet. A pretty girl, hers is a face made for social media. She has no use for the filters and fillers and layers of makeup other content creators use these days.
She’s grown up in the business alongside Empire, but the two of them might as well be night and day, two sides of the same coin. Only one of them is willing to bask in the glow of the spotlight.
A long moment passes before anyone speaks.
The girls are twin statues, frozen in various states of surprise and, in Empire’s case, dread. Her face blanches, color rushing south to mottle her chest, and my gaze immediately drifts.
Goddamn it, she’s gorgeous.
Even more so when I’m trying hard not to see her that way.
In contrast, River looks young, too young. Both are eighteen, but something more than just demeanor separates them. Is it the grief? How Empire has struggled to survive the loss of her parents while River has been blessed with more?
“Marcus.” River is the first to speak, and she swallows compulsively. She swipes her hair behind her ear. “I’m sorry, Em called, and she didn’t really want me here in the first place, but I didn’t want her to be alone. I forced her to tell me where she was.”
I bristle, my shoulders squared and my chest rising with every forceful inhalation.
Am I such a monster they have to rush to defend themselves? It’s not that River is here—I’m glad she is, to give Empire company when she desperately needs someone in her corner.
Because apparently, I am a shit person and a worse guardian. Ex -guardian.
Fuck.
“It’s probably a good thing you’re here,” River babbles, balancing on her toes like she’s not sure what to do with herself. “I bet the two of you have a lot to discuss, and really…”
Empire takes her time getting up and finding her composure. She stares at me, shoulders pulled back, features drawn tight, and chin jutted out, waiting for me to say something, anything.
This is her territory.
But she is mine. And right now, I’m furious enough to be the beast in her eyes, to prove I’m exactly the kind of asshole who deserves the looks she’s tossing me.
“Get out.” I jerk my chin toward the door, speaking to River even though my eyes never leave Empire. “Leave, now.”
“You can’t just toss her out!” Empire says. “She came all this way to be with me.”
“Seriously, I can go in the other room if you need alone time,” River says at the same time.
I glare at River in the middle of their protests; I don’t give a shit what either one of them has to say.
“Leave.” I’m not going to repeat myself again.
River jumps at my scratchy tone and hustles toward the purse she haphazardly cast across the counter. Flinging it over her shoulder, she glances back at Empire.
“Hey, call me again if you need me. I’ll head over as soon as I’m able. Anything you need, I’ll be here.” River glares at me, her agitation falling way short of the bubbling fucking eruption inside me, and she stalks toward the door, somehow managing to look haughty and aloof at the same time.
“You have no right to come after me and talk to my friends that way,” Empire mutters the moment we’re alone.
She heads toward the attached living room to put distance between us.
“You should apologize to River.”
To River, but not to her?
Red flares at the edges of my vision again. “Do you have any idea how fucking terrified I was with you taking off?”
I descend on her. Grabbing at her elbow to stall her motion. I cage her between my arms and the countertop jutting out from the wall. Crowding her and forcing her to look at me.
“I don’t care how you feel. Be terrified. You should have kept your distance,” she snarls at me.
She shakes her head, and I grab her chin between my thumb and forefinger to force her to look at me. “I’m done keeping my distance. We need to have a conversation.”
“I don’t want to hear anything. I don’t want to see you or listen to you. Your voice is giving me a headache.” Empire bares her teeth. “Why don’t you take off the way you usually do? If you stay, you’re only going to piss me off and give the press something new to chew on. Especially in this house.”
My stomach drops. It’s foolish to think she hasn’t seen the articles. No doubt she’s been going through every single one of them and allowing them to devastate her with their mentions of her parents. I know Empire. I know exactly what she does to hurt herself. Even when she tried to come here to get away from it all.
“You don’t have a choice,” I growled. “I’m not taking off, and neither are you.”
She sneers at me, her skin twisting where I’ve gripped her. Not hard enough to leave bruises but pretty damn close.
“Oh, trust me, I absolutely do have a choice. You made sure of it. I am now legally my own entity because you. Didn’t. Want. Me.”
She slaps at my wrist, but I refuse to let go.
“We need to have a conversation,” I repeat, “and it means keeping us both alive. So, you’re going to shut your mouth and listen. Because I’m not willing to let you die.”