“If you’re trying to make me fall in love with you, Harper it’s working, but that doesn’t save my father or that family. You can’t save them. Not this time.” He sets me away from him and this time when he heads for the door, I can’t stop him.
I whirl around just in time to watch him exit the room.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Harper
I don’t stand in the bedroom and hope for the best. I’m out the room and on Eric’s heels in the blink of an eye. I don’t call after him, though. Not yet. Not with a houseful of people and I doubt I’ll stop him at this point anyway. He believes he’s protecting me. Now, I need to protect him. He clears the stairs before I do and by the time I’m around the corner, Eric is following the Walker team toward the front door.
“Eric!” I call out.
Much to my relief, he stops walking but he doesn’t turn, tension tracking his shoulders down to his fingers where they curl into his palms at his sides. I’m not discouraged. I hurry forward and I step in front of him, planting my hand over his chest, holding him right here with me. “Where are you going?”
“You knew I needed to talk to the Walker team.”
“Talk? Just talk? Or make plans that you can’t come back from?” I don’t give him time to reply. “Promise me you won’t take any permanent actions until we can talk.”
“We’ll talk,” he replies, his expression inscrutable.
“That’s a not a promise. I need a promise, Eric.”
There’s a flex in his jaw before he’s suddenly dragging me to him, his hands firmly on my waist. “Bastards don’t make promises they actually keep.”
“Then don’t be a bastard, because we both know that’s your choice. You told me your promises matter.”
“I swear to you, princess, if you—”
“Don’t finish that sentence and turn into a bastard by choice. If you do, we’re going to end up fighting right here in the middle of all these men. I’m trying to protect you.”
“What the hell do you think I’m trying to do?”
“Protect me. I know that.” I meet his stare. “I know. Make the promise.”
He cups my head and kisses me. “I promise,” he says. “For you. Only for you.” His voice is low, gravelly. Rough. “I won’t be long.”
I don’t get to ask him where he’s going or what he’s doing. He sets me aside and heads for the door, but I let him leave this time. He made me a promise and I trust him to keep it. The door opens and shuts behind me and that’s when I find myself in the spotlight. Grayson and Davis are standing in the living room, watching me.
Davis arches a brow. “That was something to observe.”
“What are you talking about?” I ask, confused.
“You,” Davis replies. “Eric. I’m not used to seeing him invested in a woman.”
“He’s known me a long time,” I say, closing the space between the other two men and me. “For all kinds of reasons. I’m his stepsister. I’m his—”
“Woman,” Grayson amends, his voice low, but no less absolute. “You’re the woman. I saw it in his eyes when he looked at you. And I saw him in your eyes when you looked at him. I knew the day you came to the office.” He motions toward a bar on the wall next to the patio door. “Drink?” He doesn’t give me time to reply to his stunning revelation. He walks to the bar and Davis joins him, but my gaze locks on that door next to them, on the patio entrance.
Eric had planned to talk to the Walker men out there before we went upstairs. Instead, he left with them. He made sure I couldn’t interrupt this time. He promised me he wouldn’t do anything permanent before we talked, and yet, he didn’t go to the patio. He left the apartment.
He promised me.
He wouldn’t break his promise.
Grayson hands me a glass. “Drink. It’ll help calm your nerves. You’ve been through a lot tonight.”
“I’m not worried about me.”
“Let Eric do what he needs to do to make sure this ends sooner rather than later.”
“He wants to end it by ending his father.”
“He’s wanted to end his father for a very long time. He didn’t do it. He has reasons not to do it.”
“Because of his mother, I know, but he believes they tried to kill me tonight, Grayson. He wants his father dead.”
“He promised you he’d talk to you before he did anything permanent. I heard him.”
“That’s all you’re going to say? He wants to kill him.”
He eyes Davis and Davis nods. “I actually need to deal with a client at the office. I may or may not be back.” He glances at me. “He’s intense. It’s contagious. Drink the drink.” He turns and walks away.
I frown and eye Grayson. “Did he just tell me I’m wound too tightly?”
He chuckles. “I do believe he did.” He motions to my drink.
“I know. Drink it. It’ll help. I’m following the theme going on here, but I’m not a good drinker. I need a clear mind right now for Eric.”
“Eric isn’t going anywhere without you. You were attacked. You could have ended up dead. He is not leaving your side. His father is safe for the night. He’s not on his way to kill his father. The man is still in an airplane.”
“Do you believe he’d do it?”
“Not tonight, and I know him. By morning, he’ll decide death is too good for him.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Because I met him when he was still bleeding out over his mother’s death, and even then, he didn’t go after the family. His mother’s wishes meant too much to him.”
“They went after him through me. They went after me. He knows this. He’s not going to let that go. I feel it. I see it in his eyes.”
“He promised you that he wouldn’t act. You proved you have the power to affect his decisions.”
I down my drink. “You just put the world on my shoulders.”
“No,” he says. “The world is on his shoulders and has been for a very long time. You can ease that pressure. You can make him let go of the past once and for all.”
“I’m part of his past. I’m part of them and he hates that.”
“He’s a part of them, too, but both of you can choose to walk away.”
“They won’t let us, Grayson. I believe in my heart that they tricked me into setting him up for my own murder.” Saying that out loud to someone other than Eric twists me in knots. “I need another drink. No. I need Eric here. Now.” I reach for my phone and remember that I don’t have it. “I have no phone. I have no purse. I have no clothes.”
“My wife, Mia, is bringing you some necessities, including a new phone.”
“Because Eric’s like a brother to you and you’re protecting me to protect him.”
His eyes warm with that statement. “Eric is my brother.”
Brother.
That word radiates through me and I walk to the bar myself, refill my glass and down it again. “I believe he’s hit a limit,” I say when Grayson offers me his glass to fill. “If you really love him like a brother—”
“I do,” he says, taking the whiskey in my hand from me.
“Help me stop him.”
“What are you suggesting?”
“I don’t know, Grayson. I just know if he does this, he’ll lose sleep. He’ll feel pain over it. Even if he doesn’t get caught—”
“I wouldn’t get caught.”
At the sound of Eric’s voice, I whirl around to find him standing a few feet away and relief washes over me. He’s back. He’s already back.
“And I told you, Harper. I would sleep just fine, but I don’t plan to kill him or anyone. That would be too gentle a punishment.” His cellphone rings and he pulls it from his pocket to glance at the number. His expression is stone, his entire body more stone than man, as he allows seconds to count down before he answers the call.
He takes the call, gives a clipped greeting, listens seve
ral seconds and then says, “When?” Another few beats pass and he adds, “I’ll be there.” He disconnects the line and cuts his stare, seeming to think, perhaps calming his mind a moment, before he says, “I’ll be back,” and turns and heads for the door.
Warning bells go off in my head and I run for him, planting myself between him and the door, watching him slip into a jacket. “Who was that, Eric?”
“My father.” He opens a drawer to the foyer table, pulls out a gun, checks it, and sticks it in his pants.
“You need a gun?”
He faces me, his stance wide. “Would you rather me go without one after what happened at the warehouse?”
“You’re not going to meet him. Not tonight. Sleep this off. Think about what comes next.”
“I don’t need to think.”
“You aren’t going to meet him.”
“Yes,” he says. “I am.” And once again, he sets me aside, opens the door, and leaves.
I try to follow, but Savage steps in my path. “Sorry, honeybunch. I can’t let you leave.”
“Move, Savage, or I will hurt you.”
He arches a brow. “You do appreciate the ridiculousness of that statement, I’m sure.” He steps back just enough to indicate another man with sandy brown hair and lots of muscles, standing beside him. “I even have back up. This is Smith. He’s going to be your regular doorman.”
Smith gives me a nod, confirming that I’m outnumbered. I grimace and turn back to the apartment. Grayson appears in the foyer and I look at him. “He went to meet his father. He won’t kill him, right?”
Grayson’s eyes darken. “That’s not his plan.”
“That’s not a no.”
“It’s the only answer I have for you.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Eric
The past…
Jennie pulls her giant truck to the edge of the trailer park and stops. “I have to let you off here.” She looks at her watch. “Hurry. You have to go. I’m so late to work, it’s insane. If I get fired, my mom will be pissed and we won’t be going out this weekend.”
“We aren’t going out this weekend,” I say. “You know that. I’m staying with my mother.”
“You’re only sixteen. You still have to live.”
“What part of she’s dying do you not understand?”
“I can’t date a guy that can never date.”
I cut her a look. “Then don’t date me.” I open the car door.
“Eric, damn it.”
I don’t reply. I get out of the truck. “Thanks for the ride.” I slam the door and slide my backpack onto my shoulder. I have homework that will take me all of about thirty minutes. I can do it in the morning before class, but my mother likes to see me open books. I’ll open them for her.
I start down the road that leads to our trailer, and just that easily, I’m already done with Jennie. I don’t need anyone in my life right now but my mother anyway. I don’t know why I tried. My mother is what matters. My mother who can’t die. We have to find another treatment. There has to be a way to pay for it. I’ll volunteer as a guinea pig. I’ll let them study my brain. I know my mom doesn’t want that, but she’ll have to understand.
I turn the corner to our street and the sight of ambulances and fire trucks slams into me. My heart explodes in my chest. My stomach knots. Numbers begin to pound at my mind. “Mom. Mom!” I charge forward, blood pumping through my veins and in my ears. “Mom!” I run and run and I don’t stop until I’m right on the edge of the yard and only then because a monster of a police officer catches my arms.
“Son,” he orders. “You need to stay right here.”
“I live here. I live here! This is my home. You can’t stop me from going into my own home.”
“Are you Eric Mitchell?”
“Yes.” Tears start streaming down my cheeks. “I need to see my mother. She’s sick. She’s got cancer. She needs me. I’m her son!”
The officer hits a button on his arm and says, “Get that social worker here now.”
“Social worker?! I don’t need a social worker. I know she has cancer. What’s wrong? Is it a reaction to the chemo? What’s wrong?!”
“Son,” he says, his voice vibrating with an undercurrent that touches his eyes. With something he doesn’t want to say. “Son, your mother—”
“She’s dead. She’s dead, isn’t she?”
He doesn’t have to reply. I see it in his face and the numbers attack my mind, diving at it like sharp blades.
My knees go weak and I fall down, grabbing my head and in a tunnel of pain, I hear, “Get me an EMT tech! Now!”
I black out.
No. I don’t black out. There are numbers.
11111
77777
88888
99999
11111
They won’t stop. God, make them stop. I sit up, ramrod stiff and find myself in the back of an ambulance. “Easy, son,” a male voice says, and I bring him into focus, sitting next to me. “I gave you something to calm you down.”
“I don’t want to calm down.” I sit up. “I want to see my mother.”
A woman with long brown hair in her mid-fifties appears at the end of the truck. “Eric, she’s gone. I’m sorry.”
I swallow hard, and try to find the numbers again, the ones I control but I can’t find them. “How? How did she die?”
“She was in a lot of pain. She took her own life. “
“No. No, she was fighting. She was fighting!”
“She was tired. She wanted more for you, too. She left a letter. I called your father and—”
“I don’t have a father. I don’t fucking have a father!” I try to get up, but the EMT holds me down, my head spinning with the damn drug he gave me.
“I want to see the letter,” I whisper.
“At my office,” the woman says.
“Who are you?”
“Evelyn Minor. Your social worker.” She holds out a hand. “Come with me.”
***
Two hours later, I sit in her dingy office with a scuffed desk and yellow chair, the letter in hand, but no numbers in my head. That drug the EMT gave me makes me dizzy again as I start reading:
My dearest Eric—
I had to do this. I had to do it because I love you with all my heart and soul. I did this for you. It was time for you to get on with your life. It was time for your father to claim you. Make him. Accept him. He can help you make the most of your gifts. He can get you the help you need to control it. Don’t fight him. Don’t lash out at him. Do this for me. Do this so that I know I left you behind better than I brought you into this world. Please, son. I beg of you. I need you to do this. For me. Do this for me.
Before I can read on, the door to the office opens and in walks a man in a blue suit, his brown hair slicked back. I know him. I don’t want to know him. Jeff Kingston, the man my mother claims is my father, ignores the social worker and steps in front of me, towering above me. “Looks like your mother got her way,” he bites out. “You’re with me now. Let’s go.”
“Excuse me,” the social worker says. “But there’s paperwork and—”
“Fuck your paperwork. Sue me if you want to. He’s coming with me.” He motions to me. “Get up. Come with me. Now.”
No words of sorrow or sympathy.
Just a command.
And I have no choice but to follow it. It’s what my mother wanted and she’s gone. She’s dead. She killed herself and any version of me that I knew.
***
Harper
Present day…
I’m still standing in the foyer of Eric’s apartment with Savage and Smith just outside the door, and Grayson standing in front of me, dismissing my worries about Eric and his father. “I thought you were the level-headed brother Eric values,” I say to Grayson. “He doesn’t plan on killing his father, but hey, if it happens, it happens, is not level-headed.”
“I didn’t say if it happens, it happens,” Grayson replies, his tone cool but his voice is still low.
“You aren’t worried at all. If you are, you hide it well.”
“I know Eric well enough to know that he’ll do the right thing.”
“The right thing? How do you define the right thing when staring into the face of a man who just tried to frame you for the murder of your girlfriend? Call him. Call him now so he’ll answer and let me talk to him.”
“I’m not going to call him,” he says. “He needs to focus. Someone tried to kill you. He could be the next target.”
“All the more reason for him to be here. Call him.”
There’s a knock on the door and then it opens. “Hi,” a female voice says, and a pretty brunette walks in with bags in her hand, a pretty green chiffon dress floating around her legs, her eyes finding mine. “Shopping trip successful. My favorite personal shopper worked miracles and got the stores to open for me. Did you know that Apple has a twenty-four hour store in Manhattan? Amazing. Oh.” She laughs. “I guess I should introduce myself. I’m Mia. Grayson’s wife. Nice to meet you, Harper.” She sets the bags down. “I brought you some necessities.”
The door shuts behind her and I give her my full attention, but introductions are the last thing on my mind. “Tell him to call Eric. Tell him.”
“What?” Mia looks at Grayson. “What’s going on?”
“Someone tried to kill me and frame Eric,” I say, not sure what she knows. “Eric wants to ‘end’ his father, and now his father is here, in the city. He went to meet him. I couldn’t stop him.”
Mia looks between me and Grayson. “End him how?”
“Kill him,” I say. “I think he wants him dead.”
“He won’t kill him,” Grayson bites out. “He’s got this under control.”
“He was quaking, literally, after he found out about his father. That is not under control.”
“Quaking?” Grayson demands.
“Yes. His entire body was trembling, and I know it was one of those attacks he used to have trying to come back.”
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