The Princess (Filthy Trilogy 2)

She rolls into me, pushing me to my back, her hands on my chest as her stare meets mine. “I will never betray you,” she says, suddenly intense. “I need you to know that. Never.”

There’s a jolt of numbers in my head, emotions pounding at me. “I know that.” And I mean it. I just pray like hell when this is over, she doesn’t feel that I’ve betrayed her, and I know, I know, that I’m going to have to make some confessions of my own.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Eric

Harper in my bed.

I focus on just that for the moment. I pull her to me and turn her, her back to my front and wrap myself around her. “I don’t know how this ends well,” she whispers.

“It already did,” I assure her, holding her tighter. “You’re here.”

Her hand comes down on mine. “I just want to make sure—”

“Don’t say anything else,” I warn. “For right now, just be here. Don’t let that family in right now. Sleep like they don’t exist.”

She snuggles in closer to me and whispers, “I wish they didn’t exist.”

I used to, I think, fighting a fade into the past that I know leads to the day my mother killed herself to make me a part of that family. That family is why I met Harper, and I, of all people, know that there is an equation to life and how we all come together and break apart. My mother was dying. That wasn’t going to be stopped. I know this now. I’ve read her records. I’ve read her words to me over and over, ten million fucking times, and I don’t believe the path I took after she left would have changed. She’d set that in motion. She simply sped it up when she killed herself.

The Kingston family was my destiny.

But the problem for them right now is that I’m theirs, too, and the minute they tried to kill Harper, they woke a sleeping beast who will sleep no more. I shut my eyes, but I don’t sleep. I think about Harper’s assumption that I can’t see what my father is planning because I don’t want to see it.

When I finally fall asleep, I haven’t proven her hypothesis wrong. When I wake up, nothing has changed, but the dim light of a new day has now become bright sunshine that I hope translates to just that: hope. I slip out of bed and shower, dress in jeans and a Kingston Motors T-shirt I kept just to piss myself off here and there when I need motivation to make more money for Bennett Enterprises. I put it on now to think like my father, to sink back into that life. Now it’s time for coffee and an empty space that I fill with equations that equal solutions, but I can’t leave the bedroom without staring down at Harper, who’s snuggling under the blankets.

My woman.

She’s mine now, and that means she’s mine to protect. That means I’m going downstairs, and I’m thinking us the hell out of this.

Ten minutes later, I have my MacBook open on the island, three Rubik’s cubes, and a package of peanut M & M’s on the counter while coffee brews. It might not be the breakfast of champions, but it’s my thinking process. What I eat. What I drink. What I use to focus.

My lips curve with the understanding I’d come to yesterday.

Focus. That’s what my father was trying to do.

Break my focus.

I pick up a cube and start replaying every deal I’ve ever watched him manipulate. That leads me to analyze all the ways he manipulated me when no else in my life had been able to. And he did. Somehow, at some point, I went from the boy who hated his father to the boy who wanted to live up to his expectations and even please him. It’s the one thing Isaac and I had in common. We both wanted to please our father. We competed for his approval. I always saw that need as something that defined Isaac, but objectively it defined me as well. If I hypothesize that it still does, where does that leave me? No. Wrong question. If I hypothesize that it still does, and my father knows this, how would that knowledge create each action he’s taken thus far?

***

Harper

I wake to the warm wicked wonderful scent of Eric and roll over to discover he’s gone. I sit up and look around the room to find I’m right. He’s gone. I twist around to find the time on the clock on the nightstand and find that it’s only ten in the morning. Worried about where Eric is, and what he’s doing—about what the Kingston family might push him to do, I throw away the blankets and remind myself that they deserve what they get. And Eric isn’t thinking emotionally. He’s a man of logic and planning, even with his father.

I pull on my robe and hurry out of the bedroom and to the railing overlooking the lower level of the apartment. I find Eric sitting at the island with a Rubik’s cube in his hand and a coffee cup by his side. He’s thinking and for a long time, I’m not even sure how long, I just stand there and watch him turn that cube, pop M & M’s, and drink coffee. Over and over he turns the cube. Solves the puzzle. Stops. Eats. Drinks. Repeats. It’s an incredible sight that entrances me, not because of how gorgeously male he is while doing it, but because this is a genius at work, and his mind is a gift I don’t think he sees as a gift at all.

Eager to join him, but not to disturb his thinking, I return to the bedroom and my God, I stood there an hour and he didn’t even know I was there. I grab my bags, head to the shower, and it’s not long before I’m dressed in black pants and a black sweater, with my hair flat ironed, and my make-up lightly done. I spray on a jasmine perfume from FRESH I find in one of the bags Mia brought and grab my phone to find a message from my mother. I punch the message and listen: Your stepfather needs to speak to you. Please call him. I don’t understand this new you, but it seems to be the you that stepbrother of yours has created. Please call Jeff and let me know you did.

My jaw tenses. My stepfather is an asshole, using my mother to get to me. He knows how badly she wants to please him. He knows how badly I want to protect her. It even feels like a threat. Like he’ll pull her into this, like she’ll no longer be protected. I don’t like it. I have to talk to him. It buys us time to figure out what’s going on. It buys Eric time to make a move. It buys my mother time to live in the safe oblivion I know will end soon.

I grab my purse, and a black Chanel trench coat, and head down stairs. Eric is now sitting on the couch and he doesn’t even seem to know when I enter the room. I set my coat and purse on a chair and stand in front of him. “I wondered when you were going to stop watching me and actually join me.”

“You knew I was watching you?”

“Of course, I knew.”