Fame And Secrets (Lords Of Lyre Book 2)

by Cora Kenborn

  “Shit,” he mumbled, pulling me away from the window. “Sit down.” He motioned the agents over, and Everson stood over me as they disappeared outside. Satisfied with their interrogation, they brought the package inside.

  Forty-five minutes later, they’d dusted it for fingerprints and set it on the table. I stood up to inquire why we hadn’t opened the damn thing when the front door opened to flashing cameras and a chorus of paparazzi shouts.

  Dressed in jeans and a red t-shirt, Julian slammed the door in their faces and scowled. With red-rimmed and sunken eyes, he looked like shit.

  He looked perfect.

  “About time,” Jaxon called over his shoulder from the table.

  “You called him?” I asked, my eyes wide.

  Julian arced an eyebrow. “Problem?”

  His abruptness stunned me. “N-no. I just didn’t know.”

  Julian continued to walk toward the box. “He called me because this concerns me too. I need to be here to see it opened.” He stormed over to the table where Agent Hyatt already started cutting into the corners of the cardboard.

  Stepping behind him, I peered around his shoulder. His unique scent hit my nose, and I held in a cry. Julian could come off stage from a three-hour concert and still smell like soap, spice, and sex. I closed my eyes and tried to bottle as much of it as I could for later.

  “What the hell?” His voice broke through my reverie, slamming me into the present. Opening my eyes, I moved in front of him. Slowly, I scanned through the white tissue paper and zeroed in on what lied beneath.

  The faded unicorn stared up at me—the matted rainbow mane dingy with time, and white fur stained with dirt. Trying to catch my breath, I shoved the box as hard as I could across the table. It flew with ease and landed with a thud on the floor.

  I heard my screams in my own ear, echoing as if they came from someone else. Present faded into past as the muted tan walls of my kitchen dripped into the disgusting mauve and blue flowered wallpaper that peeled off every corner of the tiny trailer. Voices muted as they called my name.

  All I heard was the one that stood above me as my eight-year-old hands clutched the only birthday present my mother had ever scraped enough money together to buy for me.

  “Whaddya got there, girl?”

  “It’s my unicorn, Daddy.”

  He kicked it with his boot. “Looks gay as hell. Where’d you get it?”

  “Mama gave it to me.”

  “She did, huh? Your mama should learn her place. I make the money around here. I say how it’s spent. And I don’t spend my money on shit like that.”

  I held it close. “Daddy, please…don’t.”

  He leaned close, his breath reeking of beer. “Gimme that horse, girl.”

  I cried. “No, Daddy, please.” Prying my fingers open, he took it out of my hands and grabbed me by the arm, dragging me behind him. “Stop, Daddy! You’re hurting me!”

  “Shut up, girl. You need to learn respect.”

  Dragging me outside and across the trailer park, he took me to the neighbor’s fence. It was a place Chloe and I were forbidden to go because of the Rottweilers that had already attacked a boy down the street. As I watched in horror, he tossed my unicorn over the chain-link fence and laughed as the dogs mangled it.

  I screamed, and he yanked me against him until we were face to face. “Remember those dogs, princess. Remember respect. Princesses can fly over fences too.”

  “Phoebe!” I vaguely recognized Julian’s voice as I struggled against his grasp. Visions of dogs and trailers faded as my kitchen came back into focus. I blinked rapidly, desperate to clear the memory from my mind.

  As Julian held me down, the only thing that resonated was my father’s hands on me. Violently shaking, I worked my way out of Julian’s hands and into Jaxon’s arms. My head told me I was being irrational, but fear twisted logic. Jaxon reluctantly held me as I calmed, and I snuck a small glance at Julian. He stood where I’d left him, jealousy burning hard across his face. I hated myself for seeking comfort from another man, but he’d pushed me out of his life. He’d started this. I refused to be the sole blame holder.

  “Phoebe?” Jaxon leaned away from me, capturing my eye. “Do you recognize that stuffed animal?

  Nodding, I relayed the story I’d just relived. Some of them grimaced, Agent Hyatt openly wept, a few shook their heads. Julian leaned against the wall and closed his eyes. I couldn’t blame him. I knew what ran through his mind. That same monster had our daughter.

  As I took in their stoic faces, bowed heads, and down-turned mouths, I realized what most of them thought.

  Iris was dead.

  They weren’t looking for her. They were hoping to recover a body. They didn’t have to say the words. Their lack of activity said it all.

  Chloe’s text from last night ran through my head, and immediately, I knew what I had to do. I’d given the LAPD and the FBI long enough to find my daughter. They’d had their chance. Their time was over. No one knew the man who had Iris like the one who’d bested him once already.

  “I’m calling Predator Confidential,” I announced, suddenly standing.

  “You’re what?” Julian came alive with my outburst, his eyes trained on me. I swallowed all my self-doubt.

  “Chloe said they want an interview. Hell, they’ve wanted an exclusive from me for years. My father is taunting me. He wants me off-balance and scared. I’m tired of being scared, Julian.” I held his stare with tears in my eyes, my voice cracking. “I’ve got nothing to lose.”

  “How about Iris?” He finally stood and faced me. “What does she have to lose?”

  I spread my arms wide. “He’s hiding in plain sight! It’s the only way to blow his cover. He’s got help. If we go national, someone out there knows something. We just have to find them.”

  “It’s not a half-bad idea,” Jaxon agreed, placing a hand on Julian’s shoulder.

  Julian cursed, scrubbing his face with his palms. “I don’t like it. What if he sees it, freaks, and it gets Iris killed?”

  My arms ached to hold him. Instead, I wrapped them around myself and fixed my eyes on the package resting on the floor. “He’ll kill Iris anyway if we don’t do something.” Then, because I needed to reach him, and needed him to remember what I saw in my head every night, I walked slowly toward him. My heart beat in my throat as I took his hand and placed it against my stomach. “Do you need a reminder of what he’s capable of?”

  My tactic to reach him had the opposite effect. Pulling his hand back as if he’d touched fire, he stormed toward the door, calling out of over his shoulder as he flung it open.

  “If you’re going to get our daughter killed, I won’t be a part of the media circus that broadcasts it.”

  The door slammed behind him.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Julian

  “Mom’s coming tomorrow.”

  Glancing up from my cereal bowl, Ryker stared at me from the kitchen.

  “I know,” I mumbled.

  I actually didn’t know. I’d forgotten. The days melted together since I’d been staying with the guys. I appreciated the couch to sleep on, but I missed my own bed. I missed my house. I missed my wife.

  The last thing I needed was my mother letting me have it for acting like a jackass.

  “She says you’re a jackass.”

  Exactly.

  “I know.”

  “You are a jackass.”

  “I know.” I went back to eating my cereal.

  Ryker slammed the cabinet. “Damn it, Julian, is that all you’re going to say?”

  “Yep.”

  God, I’m an asshole.

  “I saw Phoebe.”

  That got my attention, and I pushed the bowl away. “You did? When?”

  “Oh, he does have a vocabulary. Amazing.”

  I stood and dumped the contents of the bowl down the sink. “Don’t be a smart-ass. When did you see her?”

  He peeled a banana and took a bite. “Yeste
rday. You asked me to get you more clothes, remember?”

  When I left, I’d taken a backpack stuffed with enough clothes for a few days. I’d been at Ryker’s for over a week. With paparazzi now camped out on his lawn, the last thing I needed were pictures splashed across the tabloids of me in the same fucking clothes. Phoebe didn’t need mixed messages of me showing up at the house.

  Nothing had changed. I still didn’t trust myself, and she refused to back down from her Predator Confidential publicity stunt.

  The last time she pulled this shit, she wrote an article in Vinyl magazine outing my stalker. A few hours later, she was in the emergency room having her stomach pumped from being poisoned with a high potency narcotic. I thought she’d learned publicity didn’t come without a price.

  “I see the old Phoebe coming back,” he said, tossing the peel in the garbage. “This interview is giving her life.

  “Too bad it’s going to take Iris’s.” I stumbled back to the couch, unaware he’d followed me, until I felt a boot on my ass knocking me forward. As my face hit the arm of the couch, I jumped back, ready to knock him out.

  “Sit down,” he hissed.

  Never knowing my brother to buck up to me, I let it play out, curious to see where he’d take it. “Fine. Say what you have to.”

  He snapped his fingers in my face. “Wake the fuck up, Julian. Don’t you watch the news? This shit happens every day. You think you’re fucking special because you’re famous? There are thousands of families who’ve lost children. Some get them back and some don’t.”

  “Is this supposed to be helping me?” I growled through clenched teeth.

  “The point is, I’ve read stories about how it tears families apart. The stats are against you, bro. Couples blame each other, they blame themselves, they blame the police. They blame everybody but the person who took the kid.” He groaned and raked his hands over his shaggy hair. “Don’t you see, man? You’re playing right into his hands. He took your kid, now he’s taking your marriage. The only thing left is your sanity. From the looks of Phoebe and you, he almost has it.”

  “What am I supposed to do, Ry?”

  “How about not let him win? After all you and Phoebe have been through, are you going to let this asshole break you? Because that’s not the brother I know.”

  His speech gutted me. “I don’t know how to fight him.”

  Ryker waited a long time before answering. Finally, he reached in his pocket and handed me his phone. “If anyone can get Iris back, it’s you and Phoebe. But only as a team. She’s doing this interview with or without you. How’s it going to look to Dalton if she’s sitting there alone? Easy target? Ready for a matching set?”

  Matching set.

  The phrase resonated in my mind as if he’d shot an arrow into it.

  Lord’s Princess.

  Little Princess.

  My mind finally made the connection to what’d been confusing me the whole time. What sat as a seed in the back of my brain, refusing to sprout into the reality it’d always been—Dalton’s end game.

  He wanted them both.

  “Christ!” I bolted off the couch and ran for the shower. The press conference was in less than an hour.

  I just hoped it wasn’t too late.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Phoebe

  The confidence I’d portrayed to everyone vanished the minute I stepped foot outside the Infiniti. As usual, the paparazzi littered the entrance, hoping to get the perfect shot of the grieving mother, recently dumped by her rock star husband. In a way, I couldn’t blame them. I was a walking, talking meal ticket. Cheesy made-for-TV movie writers couldn’t craft a better storyline.

  “Everyone out of the way, now!” Everson’s voice boomed over the chatter as Jaxon shielded me with his own body and walked me inside the Burbank studio.

  Once safely inside the walls of the Predator Confidential set, my body shook uncontrollably. My head told me the interview would help Iris. God, anything seemed better than cowering in the corner of my living room. But my heart cried for Julian to be beside me, holding me against him and telling me we were in this together.

  But we weren’t. He’d made that perfectly clear when he all but told me to go to hell.

  “Phoebe?” Jaxon cleared his throat and nudged me toward the hallway to my right. “They’re waiting. Are you sure you’re up to this? We can leave right now.”

  A defeated smile played on the corners of my lips. Noble Jaxon. Dependable Jaxon. If only I could somehow mesh his support with the man who owned my heart, I’d have the perfect prince.

  But I learned a long time ago, princes didn’t exist. They didn’t rescue you. Even when you hid under your bed and begged them to take you away from the pain. Nobody saved you but yourself. And I’d be damned if I’d let Iris learn that lesson if there was a chance she’d make it out of this.

  Princes may not be real, but mothers were. I’d show the world, and the bastard whose blood ran in my veins, I couldn’t be beaten. Not as an abused child, not when he drove my mother to her death, not when he left me to die, and not as he held my precious baby in his hands like some goddamn carnival prize.

  Glancing down the hallway at the makeup artist motioning for me to follow her, I squeezed his hand, my body rigid with resolve. “Let’s do this.”

  Three words were all I spoke as I left him standing there, my gait strong and purposeful.

  I’d had enough.

  ***

  Two hours of makeup, hairstyling, and interview coaching later, I sat underneath the blinding lights of the Predator Confidential set in a shitty, red wingback chair facing famed sensational journalist Phil Carlson. His jet-black hair gleamed under the heavy lights. He’d slicked it back with enough hair gel it seemed crunchy. With a bad spray tan and veneers too large for his face, in any other situation, his cartoonish appearance would’ve made me laugh.

  I tried to portray a put-together, determined woman, but if I didn’t stop fidgeting with my skirt, I’d come off as a neurotic basket case. That was the last image I wanted my father to see. Iris’s only chance was for me to reach him through the eyes of a fearless woman…not the cowering child he’d always known.

  The cameraman counted down from three and pointed to Phil. In an instant, his face changed to an insincere warmth as he looked into the camera and began his intro.

  “We were all told fairy tales as children, ones where the prince defeats the dragon, rescues the princess, and they live happily ever after. Only this tale started long ago in a small town in coastal North Carolina. One with so many twists, turns, and dragons, one would fathom to think how the royal couple could even make it this far. Ironically, they thought they’d beaten the odds. This tale, about a notorious rock star and his beautiful author princess, doesn’t have the happily ever after we’re used to hearing. Young and talented, they seemed to have it all—even a little princess. Until a monster from their past took it all away.”

  Hearing the words strung together made the vomit rise in my throat and stagnate at the base of my tongue. How in the hell would I get through this without blowing breakfast all over his shiny black suit?

  “I’m sitting with Phoebe Bale, wife of Lords of Lyre front man and overnight sensation, Julian Bale.” He turned to me. “Hi, Phoebe.”

  I nodded politely. “Hello, Phil.”

  “How are you holding up?”

  I’m throwing a fucking picnic.

  What kind of dumbass question was that? “I’ve been better.”

  “Most Predator Confidential viewers will never forget the documentary we ran a few years ago on the slaying of Phoebe Dalton—attacked as a college freshman outside her dorm at Dreighton University. The story resonated with so many, not only due to the brutality of the attack, but because the perpetrator was the girl’s father. Miraculously, the victim survived, changed her name, and went into hiding.” He switched his gaze back to me. “Mrs. Bale, would you like to give your full name to our viewers at home?”

/>   Not really, thanks. I’d like to kick you in the balls.

  “Phoebe Ryan Bale.”

  “More specifically, please.”

  Asshole.

  “Phoebe Dalton Ryan Bale.”

  “Why have you come out of hiding, Phoebe?”

  I glanced at Jaxon standing behind the cameraman, nodding in encouragement. I swallowed and licked my dry lips. “My father, Daniel Dalton, kidnapped our infant daughter. I’m hoping someone out there can help us find them.”

  Phil turned back to the camera, his fake sincerity starting to grate on my last nerve. “To set the scene, let’s take a look at previous clips from our unauthorized broadcast, Into the Mind of a Monster. I must warn you, the images you are about to see are disturbing.” The camera panned away and Phil looped his finger in a circle, motioning for the control room to roll the clip. He patted my knee. “You’re doing great.”

  As the red light above the camera flickered off, I let out the breath I’d been holding. I rubbed my hands against my face. Fuck the makeup. I didn’t give a damn. My nerves were about to snap. I never anticipated having to nosedive into the past. Phil Carlson pulled a classic bait and switch on me, and I’d have his balls on a platter for it.

  Just as I felt tears sting my eyes, a hand landed heavily on my shoulder. Not in the mood to talk, I batted it away. “Not now, Jaxon. I can do this by myself.”

  “I’m sure you can,” a familiar baritone voice called from above my head. “But if you’ll let me, I’d like to be beside you.”

  My two lives collided as my throat tightened. I didn’t have to turn around. My heart saw him. My eyes didn’t have to. “You’re late.”

  Our go-to banter during a crisis took center stage.

  For some reason, it seemed like the right thing to say.

  His other hand wound around my hair, pulling it back until I looked up at him. His face softened, and his eyes were no longer hard. “Traffic. It won’t happen again.”

  And just like that, I knew we were okay.