The Empire (Filthy Trilogy 3)

“Most definitely not lost,” I say. “I followed you, but you know that.”

“I got that impression, yes.”

“I’m Gabe.”

“Gabe,” she says. “You don’t look like a Gabe.”

“What do I look like?”

“A Ken doll,” she says and it’s not the first time I’ve heard this comparison, usually with irritation that I don’t feel now as she adds, “Tall, blond, and from what I can tell, well-defined beneath that tuxedo. Why are you wearing a tuxedo, Gabe?”

“My brother got married today.”

“Are you married?”

“No,” I say. “I’m not married.” Which makes me ask, “Are you?”

“Not anymore.” And then suddenly, she closes the space between me and her, a sweet floral scent teasing my nostrils as she presses herself to me, pushes to her toes and touches her lips to mine.

I take it from there, tangling my fingers in all those red curls with one hand, molding her closer with the other, and licking into her mouth. She doesn’t hold back. This woman, whose name I don’t even know, kisses the hell out of me, like I’m the last kiss she will ever experience, and then suddenly, our lips part and linger. Neither of us moves or speaks until she suddenly pulls back and looks at me with eyes I now know to be a stunning grass green. “I’m Abigail,” she says, and then she’s putting a step between us.

I let her simply because I want to know what she will do next. I want to see her, to drink her in, and feel her close again. “Thanks for waking me up, Gabe,” she says, and then she’s walking away.

What the hell?

“That’s it?” I call out.

She glances back at me. “Afraid so.” And then she rounds the corner.

Oh no. This is not over.

I start to pursue, but my damn phone rings, and with the small chance it’s my brother on his wedding night, I yank it from my pocket even as I keep walking and damn it, it’s Reid. I stop walking and hit “answer” to hear a crazy amount of static. “I can’t hear you,” I say, and then hear, “Taking off. Call you back. Not important.”

Fuck.

I shove my phone back in my pocket and start moving again because Abigail is fucking important. I’m back in the bar in thirty seconds, heading toward her table, and the minute I bring it into view, I curse. Abigail is gone. I cross the bar and exit to the street, looking left and right, but she’s nowhere. She’s really gone and I have no idea why, but it feels like I just lost someone I wasn’t supposed to lose. That woman wasn’t supposed to leave. I wasn’t supposed to let her go.

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A PERFECT LIE

A brand-new psychological thriller coming May 15, 2019!

They say that you are not a product of the environment that you’ve grown up in, that you create your own story, tell it your way. That you get to pick your own future. They lied. If you’re honest with yourself, you believed that lie, too, like I used to, because I wanted to, and even needed to believe that I had some semblance of control over my own self. The truth is that control is part of the lie. The ability to become a person of our own making is the perfect lie. I concede that it might appear that some people control their destiny, but I assure you, if you gave me fifteen minutes, I could pull apart that façade. We are born into a destiny that we never have the chance to escape. That’s why I must tell my story. For those of you out there like me who were told that you have choices, when you never had one single choice that was your own. For those of you out there who were, who are, judged for decisions you’ve made that were directed by your destiny, not by the façade of choices. The irony of the story within this story is how one person’s predisposed destiny can impact, influence, and even change the lives of those around him or her. How one destiny ties to another destiny.

I am Hailey Anne Monroe. I’m twenty-eight years old. An artist, who found her muse on the canvas because I wasn’t allowed to have friends or even keep a journal. And yes, if you haven’t guessed by now, I’m that Hailey Anne Monroe, daughter to Thomas Frank Monroe, the man who was a half-percentage point from becoming President of the United States. If you were able to ask him, he’d probably tell you that I was the half point. But you can’t ask him, and he can’t tell you. He’s dead. They’re all dead and now I can speak.

Chapter One OF

A PERFECT LIE

Hailey Anne Monroe

You already know that I’m one of those perfect lies we’ve discussed, a façade of choices that were never my own. But that one perfect lie is too simplistic to describe who, and what, I am. I am perhaps a dozen perfect lies, the creation of at least one of those lies beginning the day I was born. That’s when the clock started ticking. That’s when decisions started being made for me. That’s when every step that could be taken was to ensure I was “perfect.” My mother, a brilliant doctor, ensured I was one hundred percent healthy, in all ways a test, pin prick, and inspection could ensure. I was, of course, vaccinated on a strict schedule, because in my household we must be so squeaky clean that we cannot possibly give anything to anyone.

Meanwhile, my father, the consummate politician, began planning my college years while my diapers were still being changed. I would be an attorney. I would go to an Ivy League college. I would be a part of the elite. Therefore, I was with tutors before I could spell. I was in dance at five years old. Of course, there was also piano, and French, Spanish, and Chinese language classes. The one joy I found was in an art class, which my mother suggested when I was twelve. It became my obsession, my one salvation, my one escape. Outside of her. She was not like my father. She was my friend, not my dictator. She was the bridge between us. The one we both adored. She listened to me. She listened to him. She tried to find compromise between us. She gave me choices, within the limits I was allowed. She tried to make me happy. She did make me as happy as anyone who was a puppet to a political machine could be, but the bigger the machine, the more developed, the harder that became. And still she fought for me.