“No,” he says abruptly, and her eyes dart to his face. He forces a smile, gentles his tone a touch. “I’ve never used a prostitute. I wasn’t the brother who enjoyed the impersonal aspect of sex for money.”
“Caleb?” she asked, and her voice is startled. How well did his cousin know Caleb—it is hard to say. Was anyone close to him? Could anyone know Caleb, with all his secrets and suspicions?
Her gaze wanders, assessing this new knowledge. Bamboo makes sense, seen in this light. She is mildly disgusted at the thought of her cousin with one of the women Rama had inspected, but there is guilt mixed with her disgust—is it fair, to be disgusted? The accusations from Rama float in her head, and she wonders if that is how they truly appear. What did he mean, that the king had murdered the heir? She shivers.
“Caleb didn’t need them,” she says nonchalantly, pushing thoughts of Rama aside—they are not safe here, not with Seth’s too sharp eyes probing her as if he knows her every thought and secret.
Seth smiles, a softly reminiscent smile. “Caleb appreciated the honesty of whores. Everyone wants something, Em. Working girls are honest about what they want.”
She stares at him, wonders how they have come back to this. The waitress is back, setting down long rectangular plates. Seared salmon with a light lemon cream sauce, wild rice and onion, steamed baby asparagus. She sips her wine as the waitress retreats, and takes a moment to focus on her meal while her thoughts race.
Since that interesting night in her mother’s bar, Seth has brought her closer, pulling her from her quiet waiting into a position at his side, somewhere between assistant and confidant. It has been over a month, and she is learning the subtleties that drive him. He never speaks without cause, even in casual settings such as this. So what is he trying to teach her, as they sit sipping wine, alone and unwatched—why is he pushing this?
“Not everyone wants something,” she says softly, speaking to her food. It’s heartbreaking, the defensiveness, the naive hope in her voice. Seth stares at her, until finally she looks up, pushes hair from her eyes as she forces a smile. “You don’t think Nicolette wants something, do you?”
“Of course she does,” he answers easily, taking a neat bite of salmon. “The difference with her is that we both want the same thing—we want peace and the city.”
“What if you can’t have both?” she asks suddenly, and it is a loaded question. More even than the question about prostitutes. “What if ruling and peace do not coincide? What if control and power means spilling blood?”
He frowns at her, but she senses that his thoughts are on something other than her—something that haunts him. “I don’t know,” he finally answers.
“Is that what happened, to Caleb?” she asks, voicing the question so softly he almost does not hear it. His eyes, when they find her, are desolate, desperate.
“I don’t know. I thought so—thought that he wanted the throne,” he says quietly. “But you knew him, Em. Nothing with Caleb is clear-cut.”
They lapse into silence, she watching him as he stares pensively into his wine. When he speaks, it is hesitant, quiet, almost grudging. “He didn’t trust Mikie. I don’t understand—in two years, what changed so much that he couldn’t trust our uncle?”
Emma processes the words. With Rama’s accusation still ringing in her ears, she is forced to reassess her dead cousin. The caustic care he showed to her, the way he would position his allies around her, even at Irving Prep—was it more than just a possessive flair? Had he been protecting her from a threat of which she had been unaware? It would be like him—Caleb would hide his true motives behind a pompous superiority that made her grit her teeth. But she loved her cousin, and he taught her, cared for her when no one else was around to do so.
Yet, that cousin is gone and his younger sibling is sitting before her, the prince she serves so well. She sets her fork aside, her food forgotten as she lets her fingers brush his arm. Seth startles, his eyes jerking to her. Hers are questioning, and he summons a smile, tired but there. “Don’t worry, Emma,” he says with a false confidence.
“You have something that he didn’t, you know,” she says, and his eyes widen. “Caleb was so secretive. He accepted no help—no allies.”
“I have no one,” he says, his eyes darting away, and she wonders what he is hiding that he denies it so quickly. She considers pressing and remembers Rama, his lips against her, her hands fisted in his silk hair, his exotic eyes almost glowing as they stared up at her. She flushes and looks away—secrets, some secrets, should remain that way.
“You have me,” she answers, forcing him to acknowledge her.
His eyes warm for a moment as he studies her. Secrets that weight so heavily on both fall away in a breathless moment of time before he reaches for his wine, breaking the quiet of the moment. “Eat, Em,” he says softly. “We have to meet Mikie soon.”
Chapter 21
China Town, New York City. June 14th.
He stares at the phone, a smile curling his lips.
She has stayed away for over a week—long enough that he began to wonder if she was gone. He told himself it was for the best and tried not to remember the ecstasy of being within her. He told himself that a daughter of the Morgan syndicate was not—could never be—right for the heir of Ratchaphure.
But there was no way to hide the truth in the darkness—he missed her in his bed, missed her swaying on his dance floor, missed her voice in his car, missed her.
She called unexpectedly, saying she wanted to see him. He is a prince, a king-in-waiting. The absurd urge to race to her is appalling and infuriating. The meeting he has tonight cannot be ignored, and he agrees to meet her at his apartment, later. He wonders if she will be comfortable there, with the memory of other women so fresh in her mind.
Kai is watching him, and Rama straightens as the big man slides the newspaper to him. It’s folded to a picture, and Rama’s lip curls a little as he recognizes the newly returned heir. Seth Morgan.
He’s been in the society pages almost constantly, a barrage of photographers following him, trying to glimpse him and his icy fiancée, Nicolette Oliver. They are hungry for the antics of the renowned playboy—he has been out of the city for two years. The photographer caught Seth in a rare moment, his dark eyes staring directly into the camera, a cocky half smile turning his lips. His arm is wrapped protectively around a young woman, and the first thing Rama realizes is that it is not his famed Nicolette. Red-gold curls. A brilliant, unconsciously sexy smile. Scarlet flowers glittering in the light, wrapping around her throat.
He knew Emma was high in the Morgan family. Knew that someone powerful protected her. But seeing her on Seth’s arm, the man shielding her so carefully, is like a blow. His hand curls in anger, and a ripple of fear. Does she know?
She couldn’t. The fury and revulsion in her eyes when she saw the girls in his apartment, she couldn’t possibly know about Caleb and the kings’ interest in branching out.
He sighs, looks up. A ripple goes through the table, and silence filters through to him as drug dealers and thugs and pimps turn to him. He sets the paper aside, forces himself to focus and push all thoughts of her aside.
Emma steps out of the dirty cab, and the stench of rotting vegetables and Chinese food and oil hits her like a wet slap. It shocks her again, the refuse and dirt, the flickering neon signs and scent of incense rising above the smell of poverty.
A dealer stands under the overhang of a liquor store, his blue mohawk vivid in the neon light. Two girls in tiny skirts over stick thin legs loiter near him—working girls without the class and protection Rama offers. She can feel the pimp’s gaze on her, and Emma’s chin tilts up almost subconsciously as she tugs her light coat tighter around her. Her hand clenches around the key Kai had left with security at Bamboo, and she stalks to the side door.
As the elevator doors glide open onto Rama’s elegant penthouse, her phone rings, startling her. She glances down at it and is surprised to see her mother’s n
ame on the caller ID. She rarely uses the phone that Seth provided for her—is startled to see that Bethania knows the number at all. Idle curiosity is not enough to make her answer it, and Emma silences the shrill noise before she drops it carelessly back into her purse.
He said she was welcome in his place, but it is odd, she thinks, to be here without him. She shivers at the slight chill in the air as she sheds her jacket and purse.
In the kitchen, Emma pours a glass of filtered water and carries it with her to the low, satin couch in front of a black lacquered wood table. She sits, her legs crossed under her, uncertain.
There are papers scattered messily on the coffee table, photos of young women. She frowns at them—they’re in Thai, and there is no way she could possibly understand it. A list of numbers on one sheet makes her eyes widen: even in another language, the accountant in her recognizes numbers for what they are, and she is startled by the profit prostitution can bring in.
The haunted and smiling eyes gleam up at her from grainy photos, young women with ancient eyes, sultry and exotic and so unbelievably gorgeous, she feels her blood heat unexpectedly.
She sits back, muttering a curse. Pushes to her bare feet and pads down the dim hall to his office. She shouldn’t snoop. She knows she shouldn’t. But Seth’s worries hang on him, and she can turn to no one else.
Nicolette still believes that Rama is somehow connected to Caleb.
The office is small, a simple desk and sleek computer, a printer, and two chairs. She can picture Rama and Kai, hunched here, talking in their fluid language. A photo sits on the desk, and she glances at it, curiously. Rama and Kai and a brightly smiling Thai girl, leaning on Kai. It was taken at Bamboo—she can see the familiar paper lanterns and décor in the background.
And Caleb, his sardonic gaze on the threesome posing.
Shock makes her drop the photo, and she winces when it lands with a loud clatter. She stands it up with trembling hands and hurries from the office to the relative safety of his bedroom.
Rama finds her there, almost an hour later, asleep in his bed. Tears have dried on her cheeks, and he wonders what caused them. She jerks awake as he sits on the bed, wide eyes finding his in the dimness. She relaxes a little when she realizes it is him leaning against the pillow.
“I am sorry,” he says softly. Her brow quirks, and something like confusion fills her eyes for a moment. He wonders if she has ever heard a prince apologize. Surely not the one who is her cousin.
He leans down to kiss her, and she almost allows it. Almost lets the warmth of his lips wash away her questions. She pulls away, shakes her head. “We need to talk.”
Rama nods and stands. She stares at him, a piercing gaze that makes him nervous, and nerves make him angry. “Seth is your cousin.”
The words drop, flat and angry and accusatory.
Emma blinks, startled. She should admit it, but his tone irritates her. “My family has nothing to do with you.”
He laughs. “Do you really believe that, Em?”
The picture in his office flashes in her mind, and her hands tremble as she shrugs, deliberately nonchalant.
“Why would my cousin concern you, Rama?” she asks, her eyes finding his liquid black gaze.
Pain and hope flash in them for a moment before he goes blank. “Then it’s true? What the paper is saying?”
He throws the paper onto the bed next to her, and she glances at it, recognizes the photo from three nights ago when she and Seth and Nicolette left Mikie’s apartment.
She pushes her curls from her eyes as she looks up at him. “What of it?”
Rama stares at her in surprise. She doesn’t deny it. She claims the drug lord with calm quiet. “How can you accept him and not my trade?” he demands, anger sparking in him.
Emma blinks. “We deal in guns and drugs. It’s nothing like pimping.”
“Your cousin disagreed,” he says so softly she almost misses the admission.
Emma jerks, her eyes searching his. “Seth would never do that,” she says, and the certainty in her voice shakes him.
He makes a dismissive movement with his hand. “It’s nothing, Em.”
Her eyes are narrow as she stares at him, and he can almost see her mind working. It is not at all shocking when her head tilts, and she says, a statement more than a question, “Caleb, though, would. And you knew that cousin.”
Rama’s eyes are wide and almost panicked when she stands and pushes past him. Stalks out of the bedroom and returns with a familiar heavy silver frame.
Kai and Chenya smile at his side, but he sees what she saw immediately—the golden Morgan prince.
Pain hits harder than Rama expected. It’s been almost six months, and it still startles him how much Caleb’s death hurt. But he understood Caleb, and they trusted each other—as much as Caleb ever trusted anyone. It had all happened so suddenly that it had been shocking, unexpected, brutal. The overtures from Mikie Morgan and Remi Oliver stopped as if they had never heard of the Asians and their expensive women.
Rama wondered if it was not because of Seth and his ill-timed return to the city. Caleb had spoken increasingly less of his younger brother, but Rama knew the other man’s strangely protective way of sheltering Emma. Had it extended to Seth, that caustic care? And if it had, why had he died so soon after Seth returned?
He reaches a shaky hand to take the picture from Emma. She looks like him, he thinks, not for the first time, as she stands so arrogantly, her eyes daring him to deny what is so obvious.
With her red-blonde hair and pale skin and soft lips and distrust in her eyes—she looks like Caleb.
“What does it matter?” he asks bitterly, “If I knew him or not? He’s dead. None of it matters anymore.”
She barely reacts. But, as attuned to her as his body is, he notices the slight tension that fills her. His eyes find hers, questioning.
“How did you know him?” she asks in a voice that shakes just a little.
Rama wonders what to tell this princess. Her loyalty is to Seth—he knows that as surely as he knows his should be to his own family. And yet—Caleb trusted her. “Caleb wanted an alliance with Ratchaphure,” he says abruptly.
She sucks in a sharp breath, her eyes wide. An alliance? Caleb was forging ties without the king’s knowledge?
“He came at Mikie’s request,” Rama adds, seeing the doubt and shock in her eyes.
“That makes no sense,” she says faintly.
“Do you think your king is above whoring?”
She flinches as the question hits her like a slap, but shakes her head, her face so pale he worries for her. “No. Mikie would. But the Cubans…” Her voice trails off, and her eyes dart up to find his. “I have to go,” she says abruptly.
Confusion swamps him, and panic. “Wait, Emma,” he pleads, and hates himself for pleading.
“I have to, Rama.” Her shock is fading, leaving anger behind. She summons an icy smile and kisses him, hard and quick. It’s like kissing lightning, he thinks as she leaves the apartment.
Or Caleb.
Chapter 22
Bethania’s Brownstone, New York City, June 15th.
Emma ignores the worried look from her driver as she steps out onto the street she grew up on. The imposing brownstone façade is as familiar as breathing—far more so than the expensive penthouse Seth put her in. It is heavy with memories and her mother’s silent disapproval.
She shakes off the thought and strides up the steps, unlocking the door. The air is still, and she realizes she is alone. She wanders through the dimly lit rooms, so familiar it’s painful.
The library is empty and tempting, but she pushes past it, walks deeper into the interior, up the stairs. There is a familiar closed door near the end of the hall, a door to memories.
She had been nine when Isaac died.
She has no clear memories of her brother. Everything she knows of him is colored by the change in her mother, the distance of her father after Isaac’s death. And the closed
door. For almost nine years, she has lived with it, and the silent command to leave it alone. No one but Bethania was welcome in Isaac’s room.
She snuck in once, when Beth had been gone, and stood in the clean room—stunned that it was not the least bit dusty. The room was a shrine to a dead son, an unknown brother. Disturbed by that morbid fascination even at twelve, she closed the door and never again challenged that particular rule.
She should go to her mother’s office—if there is any information to be found, it will be there. Despite the anger that pushed her to her mother’s home, Emma finds herself hesitating. Instead, she turns to the carved door that has always been her retreat here. The one place that carries her imprint instead of Isaac’s or Bethania’s.
She opens the door and her breath catches.
The room has bare walls. An elegant four poster bed occupies one wall, a gliding rocker the other. It is very Victorian, very tranquil—very much her mother.
All traces of Emma, herself, are gone. The tastefully hung Van Gogh's and Seurat are conspicuously absent, as are the messy bookshelf, and the dresser with her small array of makeup, and the tiny box of letters she had kept through the years.
The picture of her and Quinn that had been propped in the window.
Even her sleigh bed and dark green spread—all of it is gone. The only traces of her presence is the blue-gray walls.
“What are you doing here?”
Her mother’s voice is icy, controlled anger. Emma takes a deep breath as she stares at the room, and turns, meeting her mother with her own cold fury.
“What the hell is this?”
Bethania’s lips curve, a hint of amusement. “A guest room, dear.”
“This is my room, Mother,” she says, her voice is vibrating in anger.
“You left, Emma.”
“So you wait for the door to slam shut and throw my shit out? Isaac’s been dead almost ten years and his room is still a fucking shrine.”
Prince of Blood and Steel Page 16