Everything lurched.
The ground trembling beneath my feet.
“What are you saying?”
Memories flashed. Me in that hotel room. Someone from room service interrupting the attack.
She edged a little closer. “He came to sign your band, Emily, but instead he found you.” I stumbled back a step, unable to process what she was telling me. Maggie kept on, her tone dipping in emphasis. “That girl would haunt him. Make an impression he couldn’t erase, and he would do everything in his power to make sure he could protect her, too. Just like he protected his sister.”
My hands went to my mouth. “No . . . he couldn’t have—”
But I knew it. The familiarity I’d felt. The intense warmth. The comfort I’d felt when I’d first seen him at that bar.
As if he’d been sent to find me.
Royce.
“He did, Emily. And I know you don’t know me. That you don’t trust me or him, but you needed to know. You didn’t become a part of the plan. You became a part of the reason. His reason.”
Hope and doubt warred, my heart taking off at breakneck speed. “But what about his wife?”
I was gripped by the echo of the night he’d made love to me. When he’d confessed the name, uttered it aloud as I’d traced my fingers over the words forever marked on his chest.
“Anna.” I spoke her name like a plea. “He loves her. He told me.”
It nearly buckled me in two admitting it.
To give her voice.
Confusion craned Maggie’s head, and her eyes narrowed before a tender smile took to her face. “Anna?”
She said it like a question.
I nodded frantically.
She slowly shook her head. “Emily, his wife’s name was Nadia. Anna is his daughter.”
I was shaking, trembling so hard I could feel it rattling the walls.
Rattling my soul.
“His daughter.”
Her smile was somber. “He’s had to fight for everything in his life, Emily. For everyone he loves. He lost her, and I hope to God he gets her back. But you need to know, he needs you just as much.”
Maggie reached into the flap of her bag and pulled out a massive envelope. “I intercepted this from the attorney yesterday. I thought I should deliver it myself—just in case you had any further doubts.”
She handed it to me. Weakly, I accepted it, my knees wobbling and spirit trembling. “What is it?”
She angled her attention toward it. “Something you need to see.”
She moved for the door, turned the knob, and paused in the threshold. “It was so nice to meet you. I really, really hope I see you again.”
Then she stepped outside and left me there holding the papers that felt as if they weighed a million pounds.
Overcome, I rushed for the high table set up at the wall beneath the stairs, my nerves clanging in desperation as I quickly dumped it out, my heart in my throat and my stomach on the floor.
Frantic, I scanned the paperwork.
The first was a copy of the acquisition of Mylton Records by Stone Industries.
Sebastian Stone’s production company.
Royce had let the company go.
What did this mean?
Scrambling, I flipped to another stack sitting underneath.
I jolted in surprise. It was a new contract for Carolina George.
The offer double what it had originally been.
Or we were given the choice to walk away.
Tears blurred my eyes, and my pulse came in rampant, erratic beats. I started to shout for Richard, to give him encouragement that the band was secure.
That Royce had been looking out for us after all.
The way he’d promised.
But I froze when a tiny slip of ripped paper floated free, dancing and dipping until it hit the ground.
Energy surged.
As if he were right there, watching me with those fierce, unrelenting eyes.
I picked it up, hardly able to read the words scrawled on the scrap.
I never knew what it meant
I thought my heart was breaking
Turns out it was only making room for you
So catch me
Catch me when I fall
I’m right here
Waiting for you to catch me when I fallAnd I knew . . . I knew it was time to finish our song.Thirty-TwoRoyceFrom the front seat of my car, I stared across the busy street at the fenced-off lot on the opposite side of the road, heart screaming like an engine roaring down the interstate.
My palms slick with sweat.
What was I doing?
Sitting there like some kind of creeper.
But today . . . today I found that I couldn’t force myself to drive away.
Children ran through the playground, their shrieks and laughter suspended in the heatwaves that clung to the stagnant Los Angeles air. Ricocheting and reverberating.
Shouting of the kind of joy I’d lost four years before. The day my heart had been ripped from my chest and my world had been cast into nothingness.
Thrown into darkness.
Nothing left but a hunger for revenge.
A quest for retribution.
It’s funny how people came into your life so unexpectedly and changed everything.