She was holding the hand of a boy who looked a little older than her, who was smiling from ear to ear.
I wanted to reach through the computer and break his fucking hand and then break every single one of his pearly white teeth.
Senator Westmore Bigelow Price, with daughter Ramie Elizabeth and long-time beau Tanner Preston Redmond at the Heart Ball Gala to raise money for pediatric cancer.
Even though it was my second time scanning the pictures, my blood boiled. I don’t know what made me madder. The boy who was touching my girl. Or the man they listed as her father.
A senator running for president. A man who would want to avoid scandal at all cost. That’s probably why they didn’t even try to find their missing daughter.
Fucking asshole.
I stood from the kitchen table and threw the laptop across the room. It smashed against a cabinet and fell to the floor in a million pieces.
Bear came storming into the kitchen. “What the fuck?” he asked, looked over at the broken laptop. “You on the rag man?”
“We have to take a trip,” I said, staring down at the now broken laptop as though the image of Doe or Ramie, or whatever the fuck her name was and her boyfriend were still up on the broken screen that was flashing from blue to black over and over again.
“Where we going?”
“Tell me something, Bear, and be honest. What are the chances of us getting the kind of money we need for the payoff to the senator for Max?”
My eyes met his for the first time since he came into the kitchen.
“Slim to fucking none, man” he answered honestly.
“Then, get the fucking truck. I’ll drive.”
“But you still haven’t said why I’m getting the truck.”
“Because, my friend, there is a deal with the devil that needs to be made.” I looked down the hall at the closed door of my bedroom, where the girl I’d fallen in love with slept peacefully in my bed. She was mine, and I would always think of her that way. But she deserved a better life than the one I could give her, which seemed to only hurt her at every turn.
After Preppy’s funeral I was thinking about giving her the truth.
Now, I was just going to give her away.
“And who is the devil in this scenario?” Bear asked, shrugging on his cut.
I was going to see the senator and offer Doe in exchange for him making sure that I had signed custody papers for Max.
The only family I had left.
I stared out the kitchen window, but couldn’t see a thing. It was like I was staring into a white abyss, a place I was about to go, that I wasn’t ever going to be able to come back from.
“Me.”
Twenty-Nine
King
When you fall in love, you know it’s the real deal because you come to the realization you would take a bullet for that person. And when you become a parent, you realize that you would not only use your own body but the body of the person you love as a human shield to protect your child.
That is the place where I existed.
The Senator had a daughter who had a life, a boyfriend. I wasn’t doing Doe any favors by keeping her with me, involved in shit she shouldn’t be involved in. It got Preppy dead. I wasn’t doing my daughter any favors by leaving her hanging out there in the world without protection. She needed her father. She needed her family.
She needed me.
I was going to give it all up for her. I couldn’t manage the payoff, but if the senator accepted my offer of a trade, then I could keep what money I did have and that was enough to sell the house, and disappear of the radar to somewhere where nobody knew who we were.
Me and Max.
I was going be a good father to her. A good influence. A good role model. I would get us a house in a good neighborhood and send her to a good school. I would read to her at bedtime. I would make this fucking work because it had to fucking work. I was going to disappear because my life was going to reappear.
I lost my best friend, and that made me realize that sooner or later I was going to lose my girl, too. Because as soon as she learned that I’d known who she was from the very beginning, she would hate me forever.
I needed Max because she was all I had left, and I was bound and determine not to fuck that up. I prayed to any god who listened that if I could just be with her, I would make things right. I would give her my all.
My love.
My heart.
My daughter.
My everything.
I made a decision that broke my fucking heart and made it sing all at the same time. So what if I felt like a piece of me would always be missing? Fuck it. I would have my daughter.
And she was my heart.
In exchange for Max, I was going to give Doe, or Ramie, or Pup, or whatever you want to call her, back to her father.
By not telling Doe about what was going to happen, I wasn’t giving her an option. But there was no doubt in my mind that when she found out what I’d been hiding all along that she was going to look at me like the monster I am.
But then again, she might be grateful to me for giving her her life back.
Maybe, not.
I pretended not to care all the way to the senator’s office.
I was going to have to be prepared to pretend for the rest of my life.
“Do you have an appointment?” the receptionist with curly black hair and dark freckles across her nose asked, without looking up from her computer.
“My name is Brantley King, and I don’t need a fucking appointment. Let him know I’m waiting. Give him this. He’ll want to see me.”
I placed the folded up picture on his desk, one I took of Doe this morning while she was sleeping. I didn’t wait for her to answer. I took a seat in the waiting area in a plastic chair that faced her desk. When she finally looked up from her computer, her jaw dropped. She’d probably never seen someone who looked like me waiting to see the senator. I didn’t have the patience to be inconspicuous. I needed to make shit happen and make it happen before I changed my fucking mind.
The receptionist stood and walked down the hall. She emerged a few moments later and dialed a number on her phone. She held her hand up over her mouth as she whispered into the receiver.
“Senator Price will see you now,” she said, with a fake smile, setting the phone back on its cradle.
She stood, and I followed her down the hall until we came to an office with a double-door entry. She opened it and stood aside to let me through. When I stepped inside, she shut it behind me. There was another click, which I’m sure meant that she locked it as well.
“I know who you are, Mr. King, and the only reason I’m even letting you in this office is because I know you had to pass through the metal detectors. So, I know you’re not armed,” the Senator said, standing up from behind his oversized mahogany desk, holding the picture I’d given his receptionist in his hand. He was trying to even the playing field, but he didn’t seem to understand that I was the one holding all the cards.
“That’s where you would be wrong, Senator.” I lifted up the front of my shirt and removed the pistol from the front of my pants. I was wearing my big metal junior rodeo belt buckle trophy. The one I got for looping a sheep at the fair. “Crazy thing about those metal belt-buckles. They make the alarms go off every single fucking time.”
The senator sat back down and folded his hands on the desk, gesturing to the chair in front of him. “Let’s cut the shit then, shall we?”
A picture on a shelf beside his desk caught my eye. It was my Pup, several years younger than she was now, on some sort of beach, her smile bigger and brighter than I’d ever seen. She’d been happy once, and it was seeing that bit of happy that made it easier to propose my deal.
“I have your daughter. You have ten seconds to tell me why you don’t know where she is and why you aren’t looking for her. The truth. Not some bullshit lie either,” I warned.
The senator’s eyes grew wide. “You better
not have harmed my daughter so help me…” He stood abruptly, his chair tipped backwards and crashed onto the floor. “What do you know?”
“Calm the fuck down. What I know is that she has big blue eyes and a tendency to talk too much when she’s nervous.” And then just for fun I added, “I know how her heart beats faster when she’s turned on.”
“What the fuck did you do to my daughter?”
“Oh, no. That’s not how this works. You need to answer me first. Why haven’t you reported her missing? Why haven’t you looked for her?”
“Why do you think we haven’t been looking?” the senator asked, settling back into his seat, nervously wringing his hands.
“Because if the senator’s daughter went missing, you would think it would be kind of a big deal. All over the news and whatnot. And it isn’t.”
Senator Price picked his chair up off the floor and sat down, rubbing his hands over his eyes.
“We’ve been telling people she’s studying abroad in Paris. But as you already know, that’s not the truth,” he admitted. “We didn’t report her missing because Ramie is a troubled child. She started hanging with the wrong crowd. Disappearing for weeks at a time. This time, it’s been months, and she hasn’t so much as used my credit card. Her mother and I thought she was rebelling, teaching us some sort of lesson. We’d gotten into a huge fight before she stormed out. We haven’t seen her since.”
“So, you didn’t report her missing, because she was a troubled child? Or because you were up for reelection and you were afraid the story would taint your oh-so-perfect political image?”
“Did you see what happened to Sarah Palin when they found out she had a sixteen year old who was unwed and pregnant? It killed her! I couldn’t do that to my party, and I knew Ramie wasn’t really missing. She’d just run away like she’d had so many times before. So I made up excuses, lies. I told people what they wanted to hear, and her mother and I prayed every day she would at least call.” He looked distraught. “Tell me she’s okay.”
“Yeah. She’s fine.”
The senator let out a relieved breath.
“Why did she never come home? Does she really hate us that much?” he asked, his fingers pressed to his temples.
“She doesn’t remember. She was in some sort of accident. She woke up with no memory. She doesn’t even know her own name.”
“What?” He stood up again. “Take me to her. Now! I need to see her!” he demanded.
“Not so fast.” I held up a hand. “Sit the fuck back down, Senator. It seems we have a little trade we need to work out.”
He sat back down. “Yes, of course. What are your terms?”
“No bullshit. No money. What I’m offering is a flat trade. Ramie for Max. My daughter. Here is her information.” I placed a receipt on his desk. “On the back is my daughter’s name, social security number, and the address of the foster home she’s been living in, as well as all my information. Be at my place. Tomorrow at noon. Bring Max and all the custody papers, giving me full rights to my daughter and then and only then, you’ll get yours back.” The words hurt coming out of my mouth, but they needed to be said because the trade needed to be done.
“That can be arranged, but I’ll need more than a day,” the senator said, nervously shuffling his thumbs one over the other over and over again. I stood and walked to the door.
“Tomorrow at noon. If you’re not there, if you don’t bring Max—” I turned and faced him one last time. “I’ll slit your girl’s throat. No hesitation. If I can’t have my daughter, I won’t let you have yours. I don’t give a shit what happens to me after that.”
I waited until I was in the car and Bear was driving out of the parking lot to exhale.
“How did it go?” Bear asked.
I sighed.
“That bad?”
“It went about as good as it could have gone. It’s what I did that I’m sighing about.”
“What exactly is it that you did in there?”
“I just traded, Doe.”
“For what?” he shouted.
“Who,” I corrected.
“Okay, for who?”
“Max. I just traded Doe for Max.”
“Oh. My. Fuck.”
“Yeah, that about sums it up,” I said, running my hand over my head. “If I wasn’t sure whether I’d ever sold my soul, I’m positive I have now.”
Thirty
King
I was in bed with Doe. It was almost midnight, and I was already counting down the hours to noon. Noon was when I would see Max for the first time since I held her in my arms the night I let my mom burn in the fire.
Noon was also the last time I would ever see my girl.
Doe was going to become the person she was supposed to be, the person she was born as, Ramie Price. She probably wouldn’t bother glancing back at me in the rearview mirror after realizing the life of luxury she was heading back to. I was never good enough for her to begin with, and this was going to be both the most selfish and selfless thing I’d ever done when it came to her.
I was giving her back.
I was getting my daughter back.
I’d never been so miserable, and excited at the same time. A few months ago, I didn’t think that if I got Max back I would be doing it all alone. I thought at least I’d have Preppy. Then, I thought Doe would be in the picture.
Now, it was down to just me.
I lifted my leg over hers. I couldn’t get close enough. I’d convinced her to let go of the person she was to be with me, but unlike Preppy, her past life had risen from the grave and had been haunting me since I hit the search button.
I was tossing her back like a fish that wasn’t worth keeping.
But she WAS worth keeping.
She was worth fucking everything.
Everything I couldn’t give her.
There was no doubt in my mind if something like soulmates did exist that Doe was mine. The problem was that Ramie wasn’t. Ramie had a boyfriend. Ramie had money. Ramie had a future that didn’t include a felon with tattoos and a penchant for violence. Ramie wasn’t going to have to put herself in danger, risk getting shot, or ever have to worry that either one of us was going to get hurt or end up dead.
I wanted more for her. I wanted to break her heart and mine and get it over with so we could both heal.
Her with her family.
Me with mine.
I turned her onto her back and rolled on top of her. Spreading her legs, I lowered myself until I could taste her sweetness one last time. I slowly lapped at her folds as she woke with a moan on her tongue. Water welled up in my eyes. I’d licked her into her first orgasm by the time the first tear fell. I was glad her eyes were closed when I entered her and began thrusting fiercely into not just the greatest pussy I’ve ever had, and the greatest girl I’d ever known, but the greatest love I knew I’d ever have.
The only love.
If things were different, I’d put a ring on her finger. A baby in her belly. We’d have Max. We’d have Preppy. We’d be the family I always wanted but never knew could exist.
Because it didn’t exist.
Preppy was fucking dead, and my girl was about to return to the life of privilege she was born into.
I told her I loved her with each thrust of my hips. I told her I was sorry. I told her that I wanted her to stay forever. I told her I wished she would have my child. I told her everything with sex that I dared not speak out loud. I told her that if things were different that we would be together forever.
Forever.
I’d never spoken the word in my life, but looking down at Doe, still half-asleep as I brought her to the brink of another orgasm, I saw what forever would look like.
And it was fucking beautiful.
A wayward tear dripped from my chin. I reached out and caught it in the palm of my hand before it had a chance to wake Doe from the state of sleepy ecstasy she was currently in.
Before she could find out how I really felt.
Before she was gone.
Forever.
The next morning, for the first time in my life, I made love to a woman. I didn’t fuck. I didn’t have sex.
I kissed her the entire time. I held her as close as two people could be. I told her she was beautiful. That I loved everything about her.
I waited until she was in the throws of her orgasm to whisper, “I love you.” I don’t know if she heard me, but I was saying it more for me than for her.
I needed to say those words while I still had the chance.
I think a part of me loved Doe from the first moment my eyes landed on hers. Haunted, beautiful, scared. I wanted her, body and soul.
I would only have her for a few more hours, and I was going to spend every second of that time, inside my girl.
While she still was my girl.
Doe
Every time I woke during the night, King was touching me. It was like no matter how close we were, it wasn’t close enough.
I dreamt that he told me he loved me. Once before, after finishing my tattoo, he’d told me to shut up and let me love you. But what I heard in my dream was the real deal.
There was something wrong. I felt it in my bones. I’d asked him what was bothering him, but he brushed me off and just kept making love to me.
For hours.
Maybe, he was lost in thoughts of Preppy, and just needed me to be there for him.
So, I was.
Out time together that morning was so unlike anything I’d experienced with him before.
I told him over again that I was okay after Isaac forced himself on me. It was a moment in life, a horrible one. But I know I’d be okay. As long as I had King, I would be okay.
It would all be okay.
I was helplessly, passionately, in love with the complicated man who touched me like I was a thin square of glass, and he was afraid I was going to shatter.
He whispered to me how gorgeous I was as he dragged his cock against my clit. He pulled out of me and rubbed against my sensitive bundle of nerves when he thrust back in.
KING SERIES FIRSTS: King, Lawless & Preppy Part One Page 24