The Empire (Filthy Trilogy 3)

I sit there on the couch with numbers shooting through my mind, and I start writing them down on a pad of paper I don’t even remember grabbing. They all translate to questions and equations that need to be solved. Who did what to who and why? Who benefits? Who loses?

I look down. I have rows and pages of numbers and letters. With one scan down the log, I’m texting Blake for a copy of my father’s will and other random documents he might not think are important, but I do. I set my phone aside and just as I reach for my pen again, Harper slides a steaming hot cup of coffee in front of me, right along with a bag of peanut M & M’s. “In case they help. I remember you said they’re part of your process.”

I stare at her, this beautiful, intelligent woman that I walked away from partially because of this damn hell we’re living right now, because of where I knew this family would lead us. “How long have I been sitting here?”

“Two hours.” If the fact that I’ve ignored her for that time bothers her, she doesn’t show it. “I left Gigi three urgent messages,” she continues, “but Blake tells me she’s still in the air.”

“If Gigi was going to tell us what was going on, she would have told us before she left.”

“Or she left and put distance between whatever this is and herself before she tells us. If we believe she’s the source of the messages, then she clearly wants to tell you.”

We don’t know it’s Gigi, though the numerical odds sway heavily in her direction.

Harper motions to the pad I’ve been writing on. “Anything worth sharing? If it doesn’t disrupt your thoughts.” She glances at all the numbers and letters on the page.

“Assuming Gigi sent me the messages, and that she was warning me about Isaac, message number one should be easy to figure out. It should somehow tie to that warning. It should represent something that we both touched that has somehow come full circle.”

“But it doesn’t?”

My lips thin. “I don’t know yet.”

“Why didn’t she just tell us?” Harper asks. “These messages—”

“Must expose something she doesn’t want anyone else to know.”

“But you? She hates you.”

“And yet she convinced me to come back to Denver through you.”

“Are you suggesting she really wanted help? That she’s not a part of my attack?”

/> “I need to figure out what the first message says. Then I’ll answer that question.” I pick up my pencil and start writing, the numbers in my head driving me back in time, processing everything I know about Isaac and the company. Every deal he touched that I touched as well. I’m looking for something Gigi, assuming she sent the messages, wants me and only me to know. Something she thinks will make me protect her interests, and my father’s, which translates to hers. I lose myself in the numbers and when I finally come back to the present, I blink the room into view and find it showered in shadows, the sun long gone, and Harper lying on the couch next to me with a blanket pulled over her. Damn it, I didn’t even know she’d joined me again.

I scrub a hand through my hair and grimace. And I ignored her for what? I don’t know what that fucking message is telling me. Maybe I do need to get on a damn plane and go see Gigi, and depending on how the new day goes, including my confrontation with Isaac, I just might. I squat down next to Harper and she doesn’t move. She’s that secure. She’s that safe with me, and unbidden, I’m back in the past, I’m in the trailer a few nights before my mother died—no—killed herself because of this damn family. We’d been watching a movie with the lights out when a shadow had passed the window.

I jolt with the large shadow. My mother grabs my leg. “Shh,” she murmurs and when I nod, she stands up and walks to the television, lowering the sound.

She then points at me and mouths “stay” before she walks to the cabinet in the corner and shocks me by pulling out a gun I didn’t know we had, ready to fight. I stand up. “What the hell is that?” I hiss in a low whisper.

“Survival and we’re survivors.”

“This is about that family you say I belong to, isn’t it?” I demand. “I don’t want—”

Someone bangs on the door. “It’s Richard. Open up.”

My mother’s lips thin. “Go away, Richard. We’re done.”

“He wants to make you an offer. I can shout it through the door or you can come out here.”

My mother squeezes her eyes shut and then walks to me, handing me the gun. “If he comes in the door, shoot him.” And then she leaves, exiting the trailer. I run to the window and open it, listening, but they get into a car. I sit down with the gun and I wait only ten minutes. After that, I head to the door, and I plan to go get my mother any way I need to get her. Only she walks back in, looking flustered.

She takes the gun. “Let’s get ready for bed.” She starts to walk away and I grab her arm.

“Mom,” I plead.

“We’re good, honey. I’m going to get into that study, beat the cancer, and we’ll be just fine.”

I blink back to the present and remember my mother sleeping on the couch that night with the gun in her hand. She was ready to fight. She didn’t want to kill herself. She didn’t want to die. Richard was my father’s security person who died not long after that in a car accident, which I found out when I tried to confront him about what happened that night.