The Empire (Filthy Trilogy 3)
“Those attacks don’t align.”
“They’re connected.”
“And yet they’re not.”
“What does that mean?” I ask.
“It means we’re guessing and chasing our tails. We need facts, and that means we need to give Walker time to work. We need a break. They need space.” He laces the fingers of one hand with mine and kisses my knuckles. “Let’s go shopping. Actually, let’s go eat first. I’m starving.”
“Me, too. I’m in.”
He strokes my cheek. “This will be over soon and the reward we get on the other side is each other. No one is taking you from me, Harper. Not even you.” He doesn’t give me time to respond. He inches out of the alcove and I don’t miss how he scans the area before he guides me onto the walkway.
He immediately bends our elbows and sets us in motion. “What do you want to eat?”
We’re doing this. We’re taking a break, which isn’t really a break since the world could implode around us at any moment, but the truth is, if that’s going to happen, we need to enjoy every moment we have together. I’m going to enjoy this man. “Your favorite restaurant,” I say. “Take me there.”
“I have a lot of favorites,” he says, “but how about my version of Denver’s North Italia here in New York City.”
“Perfect,” I say. “I’m all in.”
“You better be, baby, because I am.” Again, he doesn’t give me the time to respond. He hurries us along and I look forward to sitting down with him and having time to talk, to find out what’s really in his head.
***
Thirty minutes later, we’re sitting in a cozy booth in the back of a restaurant that is dimly lit with dangling lights shaped like lanterns, glasses of wine in front of us. Eric glances at his cellphone. “Per Adam, your mother is asleep.”
“Honestly, that doesn’t break my heart,” I say. “I’m having a hard time with her willingness to look the other way where your father is concerned. How can she know what he did to your mother and stay with him?” Guilt eats at me. “I’m sorry. I should have told you sooner, but I just—”
“Didn’t want to punish me with something I can’t change. I know that.” He strokes my hair from my face. “I don’t blame you. I blame him.”
“I hate that my mother is okay with this.”
“She’s desperate and afraid, baby, and she could be afraid of him. He’s powerful and she knows he basically killed my mother. That has to come with fear. He’s a bad person.”
“And you saved him. Do you think you would have called the ambulance had you known about what he did to your mother first?”
“Yes. Because if I let him die in that situation, I would have looked guilty and then I wouldn’t be here with you now.”
He saved his father to be with me? I don’t even know what to do with that, what it must be like to hate someone that much. To hate your father that much. To love me enough to get past that hate. It matters to me. It matters so very much. “You think your father’s still in danger?”
“Yes. He is.”
“But didn’t Isaac just try to get you to protect himself and your father?”
“Isaac tried to get me to protect him. Hell, Isaac might have told the mob to take our father out to inherit and then found out that he doesn’t inherit.”
“You really think there’s another sibling?”
“We’ll know by morning when Blake’s people bring us those documents.” His cellphone rings. He grabs it from his pocket and glances at the number before sticking it back in his pocket. “Fuck,” he curses and sips his wine.
“What is it?” I ask anxiously.
“One of the investors in the NFL deal. I’ve neglected everything over this Kingston debacle. I have to deal with real life and this deal, which is too fucking good to lose. I’m going to set-up a few calls for tonight when we get home.” He punches in a text message.
I watch him, savoring the word “home” because he used it with the word “we.” Our home. Our home together. He sets his phone aside. “Let’s talk about you. Me. Us. Movies. Anything but that family.”
“How about my house?” I ask. “I have to deal with it soon.”