The Empire
Page 1
Table of Contents
DEAR READERS:
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
CHAPTER FORTY
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
EPILOGUE
THE DIRTIER DUET
A PERFECT LIE
ALSO BY LISA RENEE JONES
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to the supplier and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. To obtain permission to excerpt portions of the text, please contact the author at lisareneejones.com/contact
All characters in this book are fiction and figments of the author’s imagination. www.lisareneejones.com.
DEAR READERS:
I am so excited to finally share Eric and Harper’s finale with you! Just a friendly reminder: if you haven’t read THE BASTARD (book one) and THE PRINCESS (book two), please be sure you’ve read those before you begin this book! THE EMPIRE begins right as THE PRINCESS ends, so you will be spoiling the story if you don’t read the trilogy in order.
If you’re ready to delve into THE EMPIRE, here’s a quick recap of where we left off: Eric’s father suffered a heart attack (or was he poisoned?), when he went to visit his father to confront him about sending someone to attack Harper (end of book one), sending an assassin after him, and leaving them coded messages. However, since Eric’s father has been in a coma, Eric and Harper received another coded message leading them to point their suspicions elsewhere, namely Isaac (Eric’s half-brother) and/or Gigi (Eric’s grandmother).
Upon their return from the hospital, Eric and Grayson enclosed themselves in Eric’s office to discuss the second coded message he and Harper had received, and their conversation turned to speculation that the messages, assassin, and Harper’s attack could be linked to something in Eric’s past. More importantly, it could be linked to a secret he’s kept from Harper, that could destroy any trust she has in him.
So we return to that office, where Harper is confronting Eric about his secret…
CHAPTER ONE
Eric
Only moments before, I stood here in my office, in a heated conversation with Grayson, with no idea that Harper could overhear from the bedroom upstairs. No idea that I was jeopardizing our relationship. No idea that she’d confront me.
In this moment, with Harper staring at me, caging me and Grayson inside my office and demanding answers, my world shifts and spins, the ground no longer solid beneath my feet. I’m not solid without her. It’s a realization that shakes me to the core.
She stares at me.
I stare at her.
A million unspoken words fill the space between us with her pain and accusations pulsing through it all.
“Harper,” I say softly.
Her response is to cut her gaze sharply, as if her name on my lips guts her, while her attention lands hard on Grayson. “We need to be alone.” Her voice quakes and trembles. “We’ve needed to be alone and—”
“Understood,” Grayson says, and I can feel his gaze on me as he says, “I’m going home, but we need to finish the conversation I came to have.” I’m not looking at him though. I’m focused on Harper, and Harper only, the woman I want in my life and could easily lose.
Numbers punch at me and my hand goes to the Rubik’s cube on my desk. I don’t pick it up, but I mentally solve the puzzle, each block I turn, taking me down one notch and then another.
Grayson moves toward the door and Harper steps into the room and out of the archway to allow his exit. He pauses next to her and waits for her to look at him. She resists, her attention on my hand and the Rubik’s cube that I know she knows is me working more than its puzzle. It’s me trying to find a way to make this right with her. It’s me trying to find a way out of the trouble her overhearing my conversation with Grayson has created.
“Harper,” Grayson finally says, compelling her attention.
She jerks her gaze to his, and then and only then, with her focus, does he say, “It’s not what it seems at first glance. There’s a reasonable explanation for what you heard. Listen to it all before you react.”
She swallows hard and nods but doesn’t speak. I notice the delicate line of her neck in profile, which might seem like an odd observation to some, but to me, it’s about how easily it would be to those who didn’t know her well, to assume her to be as delicate as her petite, feminine body. They’d be wrong. She’s strong; strong enough to walk away from me no matter how much we might share.
Grayson grips her shoulder, a gesture of support and friendship that I appreciate in this moment. It’s him telling her that she’s family now. It’s him telling her the confession she just overheard, the secret I appear to have kept from her, means nothing and it doesn’t. It’s not as big of a deal as she might think.
Fuck.
I think about us upstairs, naked, fucking without a condom again. Maybe some part of me allowed that to happen because I wanted her to have a reason to stay. Because the only way I’d have a child is with her. Her child. Our baby. A beautiful little girl with her dark hair and blue eyes. It’s not something I deserve or want. My child might well be like me, a savant, a freak, and I don’t wish that on anyone, let alone my child.
The door firmly shuts as Grayson leaves, jolting me out of my thoughts, back to this room, and the confession she overheard. Harper leans against the wooden surface of the door, as if she can’t hold herself upright, as if she’s that jolted by what she overheard. Her hand goes to her belly, obviously trying to calm a reaction to the stress. She’s that affected by what she’s feeling, by her obvious belief that I’ve betrayed her. And I have. I hate it, but I have. I don’t want her to feel these things and yet, I can’t deny the pain I’ve caused her.
I step toward her, but she holds up her hand. “No.” Her voice is rough, a tremble of emotion. “No, I don’t think clearly when you touch me. Talk to me, Eric, like you should have already.” Dark hair falls over her face and I want to shove it away, but she does it herself with an angry swipe of her hand.
I want to touch her. I want to pull her to me and force her to stop fucking thinking so
much but that’s not the answer. She’s right. We need to talk. She deserves honesty. “You think this is a big lie, but it isn’t. This is not some shocking revelation.”
“That’s not what you said to Grayson.”
I scrub my jaw. “I was angry with the Kingston family. You know that.”
“Okay,” she says. “And since that’s not news to me, keep talking. What do you really have to say to me?”
Too much. Not enough. Too fucking much. I walk to the sunken alcove that frames the only window in the room, folding my arms in front of my chest. I don’t know what to say to her and seconds tick into a full minute before she steps to my side. My side, where I want her to remain. Together, the way it should be, we stare out of the glass. “This skyline,” I say finally, indicating the jagged edges of buildings and the ocean that is our view, “this damnable skyline is what I thought would make me forget the mountaintops of Denver I always loved so damn much.”
“But it didn’t? It doesn’t?”
I turn and lean on the inner wall of the alcove and she does the same, facing me. I meet her stare, I let her see the truth she questions in my eyes. “I thought it had but there were times when I forgot nothing—times when I wanted the mountains back. When I wanted what I couldn’t have. Times when I wanted to destroy every Kingston that lives and breathes.”
“Past tense?”
“For the most part, yes but I have nightmares, Harper. They come and go and all of them are either about my time living with the Kingstons, or about my mother, and how that family all but held a gun to my mother’s head.”
“How often?” she asks, sounding worried. “How bad?”
“Not often, not any more, and as for how bad? Bad. Really fucking bad. So much so that I usually take a week off at the office, hole up in here and get a grip on myself. I still work, but I’m absent from the rest of the world to avoid any exterior triggers.”
“Grayson knows?”
I nod. “Yes. Grayson knows.”
Her lips thin and her expression tightens. “What else does he know that I should know?”
“The last time it happened was right after I heard about the second Kingston recall. The company was weak, ripe for an attack.”
“An attack?” she asks. “By who?”
“A lot of people, but in this case, I’m referring to me. I set out to weaken them, and take them over. Grayson knew. It was a business move, nothing more, our path into the automobile industry, or that’s how I painted it.”
“And Grayson believed that?”
“No, Grayson believed it was personal but if it finally gave me closure, he wanted me to have closure.”
“What about all those morals you say he possesses?”
“He’s a businessman and it’s not like someone else wouldn’t have done it, had they seen the opportunity. We both knew we’d treat the employees and the customers better. We’d make them all safe. We’d make them all more secure.”
“And I was a Kingston. Is that where this is going? It didn’t matter if you hurt me?”
“Yes,” I admit. “Exactly. I had plans to ensure your trust fund was defunct. That you’d never see it and I did that because I didn’t want the Kingstons to have a way to use it to save themselves, which is exactly what they did. They used your money and—”
She tries to move away. I catch her arm. “Harper. Damn it, you agreed to listen. To hear me out.”
Her eyes are fire and pain. “You tried to destroy me. Didn’t you?” Her voice trembles with barely contained anger. “Is that why my trust fund is gone? Was I supposed to come to you and beg for help? Was I?”
“No. No. And no. Listen to me. I told you I wanted to ruin them. I told you I included you in the Kingston family. I never held that back.”
“Did you take actions to destroy me and my mother?”
“I prepped a plan. I didn’t act, but I was close. I even negotiated with the banks that Kingston uses for their credit lines to strip them away. Now, ask the next obvious question.”
“Why didn’t you do it?”
“You. You are the reason I didn’t do it.”
“You say that now but—”
I drag her to me. “Ask Grayson. I was sixty seconds from pulling the switch but you stopped me.”
“Me? You hadn’t seen me in years.”
“I did. I had. I went to Denver to finish the takeover. I was at the bank when you walked in. You fought with Isaac. I didn’t know why. I couldn’t hear you, but you fought with the same fierceness I always felt when I fought with him, when I believed I was right and he was wrong. When something mattered to me. Watching you with him made that night in the cottage came back to me. That conversation you and I had about your need to protect your father’s empire came back to me. You’re the reason I backed out of the takeover. I know it’s impossible. I knew then, I know now, that I fell hard for you the moment I met you, harder than I wanted to admit. That’s why I never forgot you. That’s why I tattooed you on my damn arm.”
“Fell for me? You hated me enough to try to destroy me then. That wasn’t a long time ago. And now you say you love me?”
“I never hated you and I would have told you all of this but the events of the past week have been lightning speed.”
“You’re only telling me now because someone else knows. You’re telling me because the message on the back of that business card made you believe that someone else knows about your plans to destroy me.”
“Do you think I want you to know what a vengeful asshole I was? I am? I didn’t, but I would have told you.”
“When?”
“After I knew you knew what you mean to me. After you agreed to stay here with me. After I saved your mother so you believed I would.”
Her fingers curl on my chest. “You want me to stay?”
My hand comes down on her face, tilting her gaze to mine. “Yes. I do. I know this is happening fast, Harper, and I’m not an easy man to understand or live with. This savant thing is hell. I’m hell sometimes in ways you don’t know yet, but I don’t want to do this without you.”
“Do what without me?”
“Everything. Anything.” My voice lowers, a tremble in the depth of my words that I can’t control. “Stay with me.”
Harper stares up at me, searching my face, probing as if she’s looking straight through to my soul, looking for answers. Looking for a reason to stay with me. “Stay because I can’t live another day, let alone another six years, without you,” I add softly. “Stay because I hope like hell you feel the same.” And with that confession, I wait, I hold my breath, and pray that she doesn't walk away from me and us.
CHAPTER TWO
Harper
Eric and I stand in that alcove of the window in his office, the warmth of our bodies doing nothing to wash away the coldness of what he’d planned to do to me and the Kingston empire. “You tried to ruin me,” I whisper. “I don’t even know what to do with that information.” I lean against the stone wall behind me, needing the extra support as I search his handsome face, probing his blue eyes that tell a story I need desperately to understand. “Is this all a lie? Are we—”
“No. God, no. We’re not a lie.” He steps toward me and presses a hand to the wall just above my head, but he doesn’t touch me. I want him to touch me. I want to push him away. I’m a conflicted mess where this man is concerned.
“Nothing I have told you is a lie, Harper.”
“You tried—”
“If I wanted to ruin you, you have to know I would have. I stopped before I went too far.”
“You intended to. You made plans. You met with bankers.”
“But I didn’t do it.”
“You should have told me on your own. Not because that message I was given at the hospital forced you to. Not because I overhead your conversation with Grayson.”
“What you overheard was pieces of a bigger picture, not the full picture. It’s been a crazy few days. I would have told you.”
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“Grayson didn’t believe you were going to tell me.”
“Grayson doesn’t know all that’s transpired the past few days. He doesn’t know how much either of us have had to digest. He doesn’t understand the extent of this war which we’re in together. Together, Harper, and fuck, I want to touch you right now, but I feel like you don’t want me to. I would have told you. I swear to you on my mother’s memory, God rest her soul.”
“No.” My hands come down on his chest, heat and emotion spiking between us with the connection. “No, don’t do that. Don’t swear on your mother’s memory. I believe you. I have to believe you would have told me because any other place my mind goes is not a good place. I don’t want to believe that you saw my visit as a way to attack the family.”
“I was done with them,” he replies, his voice a snap of barely contained anger. “I went back for you. I saved that damn family for you.”
“Saved them from yourself?”
“Yes. You saved them from me. If we’re going to be honest here, you saved them from me more than once, at least where my father’s concerned.”
“How do I believe I have that power? Why would I have that power?” I shake my head. “I don’t know how I have that power.”
“And yet you do. There are only three people in my life who have ever been able to pull me back when I’m charging forward: my mother, Grayson, and you.”
“I want to be able to do that for you, but we just talked about trust on the plane. You say you would have told me—”
“I would have.” His words are low, rough, emotion-laden in ways he doesn’t do emotion except with me.
“But you didn’t want to. You didn’t trust me and what I’d do with that information. That was clear in what you said to Grayson. You didn’t trust me or us. I need us to be more than that or I can’t do this.”
“When this family gets out from between us, we will be.”
“They don’t get to be between us, Eric. That’s not how this works. No excuses. No secrets. You trust me. I trust you.”
His eyes sharpen. “Are you sure you can live with those terms, Harper?”
The implications of that question are clear. He believes I have another secret. Maybe I do, but it’s not like his. I duck under his arm and walk toward the desk, whirl around to face him, even as he faces me. “I want that kind of trust with you.”