The Empire (Filthy Trilogy 3)

He sucks in a breath, his expression tightening. “I’m a Kingston,” he says. “I share the same blood, the same genetics. I might even be a fucking savant because of fucking Gigi.” My heart lurches with the spike of his anger that falls around me in suffocating complexity.

“Eric—”

He stands and drags me to my feet. “Let’s go.”

He laces his fingers with mine and I barely have time to grab my purse before we’re moving, weaving through a few tables toward the front door. The evil Kingston comment was clearly a mistake. No. No, it’s not a mistake. He’s not a Kingston. He’s a Mitchell. Talking about the Kingston bloodline while talking about his mother, though, that was poorly timed. The fact that he left that hospital today and needed an escape, should have told me to dial things back. He needed an escape. He needed a breather. He needed to face his fear of his father dying when he hates his father, but it’s more than that. So much more and there is much I have to say to this man.

We approach the door and he opens it, stepping outside to scan before he pulls me outside with him. “Where are we going?” I ask as we walk toward our hired car.

“My apartment,” he says. Not home. Not our apartment. It feels intentional. It feels calculated and I’m officially angry now, too, for about five different reasons.

The driver is waiting by the car and he opens the rear door upon our approach. I attempt to enter the car, but Eric catches my arm, leans inside the vehicle to check inside and then motions for me to enter. He doesn’t look at me and I want to punch him. This is not what we need right now. I climb inside the vehicle and he follows behind me. I rotate to face him, poking a finger at his chest before the driver joins us and I say just what I’m thinking. “This is not what we need right now. We’re a team. We have to be a team. If we’re not. If that’s not what this is, then I need to know right now. If we’re not—”

“We’ll talk,” he says. “At my apartment.”

“Your apartment? Maybe we should go back to Denver and talk at my house.” I rotate and face forward. The driver settles in behind the wheel and our moment for privacy is lost.

The SUV starts to move, and I’m hyperaware of the fact that Eric and I are not touching. I’m hyperaware of how much I want to touch him, how much I want him to touch me, but he’s shut me out. I don’t know what is going on with him, but I know neither of us can take this right now. We have too much eroding our bond, our lives. We can’t do this. I can’t do this. My fingers curl on my legs, and I’m suddenly about to explode. Everything I knew as my world is no longer my world. All I have is him and this life we were starting together. Now, it’s all about his apartment. His decisions. This has to be about us. I really am about to explode.

Thank God the ride is only a few blocks. We stop in front of the building. The doors are opened on both sides of us and I’d normally get out with Eric, but I don’t. I slide out the opposite direction and I can feel Eric’s eyes on my back as I do so. I round the SUV and find Eric there talking to the driver, who he tips well, right along with a building staff member, who is paid well to bring our packages upstairs. God. I let him spend money on me, too much money. I can never feel secure like this. I head for the building. I need to get to the apartment before I start showing emotions right here in front of witnesses. I’ll meet Eric at his apartment door. He didn’t even correct me on that topic.

I rush through the doors of the building and through the lobby, barely waving at the doorman. I reach the elevator and gasp as said doorman steps to my side. “May I help you, miss? Do you have an invitation into the building?”

An invitation. To my own apartment, that isn’t my apartment at all. Eric joins us, his eyes meeting mine. “She’s with me.”

“Right,” I say. “Do I need a visitor’s badge or something?” I’m not looking at the guard. I’m looking at Eric. “Something that says temporarily yours?”

His eyes flash and he shocks me by dragging me to him. “Is that where you want to go with this?”

“We’re not alone,” I whisper.

He looks at the guard and that’s all it takes. The guard walks away and it’s game on for me and Eric. The explosion is about to happen.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Harper

Eric pulls me into the elevator and punches in the code for his floor. I don’t know that code. Another reason to feel like I’m a visitor. Eric turns me into the corner, his big body crowding mine as the elevator doors shuts behind him. “Don’t trap me against the wall,” I whisper, shoving at the hard, unmoving wall of his chest. “Don’t bully me.”

“That’s what you think I’m doing? Bullying you?”

“It wouldn’t be the first time, now would it? You did it the night we met.”

“You followed me.”

“Because you—”

“Because I what?”

Because he challenged me. Because he woke me up in ways I needed to be woken up physically and emotionally. Because he made me see the light. “Because you acted like an asshole then, like you are right now.”

“I am an asshole, Harper. I might even be the devil himself. I’m a Kingston, remember?”

“Don’t do that. Don’t twist my words and make them—”

The elevator dings and he pushes off the wall and takes me with him, anger radiating off of him and slamming right into my own. I’m furious with him and the reasons are many, so many that I am bursting to proclaim them all. He doesn’t have to drag me to the apartment. I’m keeping pace with him. I’m right there at the door as he unlocks it, he who has a key while I do not. He shoves the door open and I don’t wait for a visitor’s invitation. I enter and whirl around to face him.

He locks the door and stands there, his back to me, his spine stiff, seconds ticking by like the arm of a clock weighted with lead. I can’t take it. I don’t want to wait to say my piece, but he doesn’t want to hear it. H