The Empire (Filthy Trilogy 3)

“What do you need from me, Eric?”

“Everything. I want everything and that means honesty. I want every emotion. Every feeling. Every thought, good or bad, baby.” He cups my face. “We do this together. She’s your mother. We protect her if we can, which means we need to cut through all the shadows. We need to figure out what those damn messages mean.” He releases me. “If that message was telling us that I connect the dots, what is it on my body that connects the dots?”

“You have to tell me what they all mean. Let’s sit down and write them down. Maybe if we see them on paper, if you see them especially, we can figure out the puzzle.”

“All right. Let’s do it. And let’s warm up that Chinese food while we’re at it.”

“Yes, please.” I smile, and give his naked chest a once over. “Somehow I’ve become quite hungry.”

I reach for the fridge, and he catches my arm and pulls me to him. “We didn’t use a condom again.”

“No.” My chest tightens. “But don’t fret. We didn’t, but you know what? If by some miracle I get pregnant, it must be meant to be. You’ll have to accept that and we won’t have a child that’s born a Kingston anyway. Our child will be a Mitchell. A gifted, gorgeous child and—” I cut my gaze. “It doesn’t matter. I told you. The odds of me getting pregnant—” My eyes land on the jaguar tattoo on his arm and I stop talking. “Eric.” I grab his arm and look up at him. “The most obvious marking on your body that relates to Kingston is the jaguar.”

His eyes narrow. “The jaguar’s symbolic of a competitor.”

“No. It’s symbolic of you. The black sheep of the family. You were right to say those messages are about you. This is more about you than we realized. Maybe this is all about you.”

“I was minding my own business. I was nowhere near this family when they got into trouble.”

“No, but for reasons we don’t know, for reasons we have yet to understand, they needed you back here. They wanted to end you and me. Why?”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Eric

The Kingstons wanted to end me and her.

Harper’s right but this is nothing new. “We already know they tried to kill you.” I grab the beer she set on the kitchen counter and chug it. “We know they tried to set me up.”

“Are we sure this is about the mob at all?” she asks, taking the beer from me. “That’s my point. Did they find out that you tried to end them?” She takes a swig from the bottle. “Is that what set this off? You said you talked to bankers.”

“My father was poisoned. Without that piece of the puzzle, I’d buy into that theory. Whoever wanted me, and you, out of the picture wants him gone, too. Blake believes the mob’s involved. So do I.”

“Then we’re back to how Isaac got them in trouble with the mob. He set you up not once, but twice. He had to have convinced your father to come here. That made the hit on him look like it came from you.”

“My father isn’t convinced to do anything. He didn’t come here at Isaac’s direction. I told you. He was distracting me.”

“From what? What would your father need you to look away from if this isn’t about you, but rather Isaac?”

“I promise you that my father didn’t choose to involve me in whatever is going on, but now that he knows you’re with me, and Isaac tried to take us both down, he knows I’m a problem. He was giving Isaac time to seal our fate and pin his mess on us.”

“Or maybe he was going to ask you for help.”

“Never. He wo

uld never ask me for help.”

“Maybe he was. Maybe that’s why Isaac had him attacked. Of course, maybe Isaac just wanted the money he’d inherit to pay off the mob.”

I thrum my fingers on the island. “If it was that simple, he’d never have involved me, and Gigi didn’t plot to kill her own son. She’s a bitch, but that man is her world.”

“Okay, but what if Gigi really did know what Isaac was into? Maybe she even believed your father knew but he was too prideful to ask for your help, so she did it herself through me. You’re a savant. We should call Gigi.”

“She’s on a plane to Europe.”

“Running. She’s running when her son, the man you said is her life, could be dying. We need to know what she knows. Why would she run?”

“The mob is every reason you will ever need to run, baby. I promise you. That’s why. She doesn’t believe Isaac put a hit on my father. She believes it’s the mob and that means she thinks they’ll come after everyone in the family.”