King Me (King Me Duet 1)

“I get that too. Just call her or text her more often. She feels every passing day she doesn’t hear from you as a step towards losing you. While you were enlisted, she worried something bad would happen. She gets you back and you disappear. And I get it. You’re a man used to your space. You don’t want to be under the foot of your mother. But think how you would feel if something bad happened to her and you hadn’t kept in touch.”

I rubbed at my temple where guilt furrowed my brow. “I do call. But I’ll text her more often. Is Grant around? All my calls go to voicemail,” I said, abruptly changing the subject.

“He’s wallowing.”

“She left?” I asked, referring to the woman I’d seen at his cabin.

“She did and if he didn’t already, he now knows what a broken heart feels like.”

“Grant in love,” I scoff. “He barely knew her.”

Though I wasn’t exactly sure of the timing. They certainly hadn’t been together for months on end.

“When the one walks through your door, you know. It slams into you when you least expect it.”

When my thoughts should have switched to Carrie, they didn’t. It was Natalie’s face I saw. The way she looked at me. The way she smiled. All her ways that made me want to mark her as mine. I pushed that away.

“You too have to decide who’s the one. It sounds like your relationship with your ex is more complicated than Mom thinks. Mom’s in love with you, which I’m sure you know. If she isn’t your one, you need to let her know,” I said.

“Liam—”

That was the first time I verbally acknowledged what was going on between my mom and him. Yet I wasn’t ready to take that conversation further. Especially when he had some thinking to do. “I have to go. Tell Mom I’ll call her in a few days.”

I ended the call.

Twenty-Five

Natalie

My words come sputtering out my mouth like a baby bird taking its first flight. “What are you doing here?”

The man grinned like I should be happy to see him. “It’s time, Natalia.”

No one called me that. Mom had officially changed my name to Natalie when we moved. As I child I didn’t really know, as she’d called me Natalie from the beginning. Natalia had been my father’s nod to his family.

“It’s Natalie,” I said stubbornly. I felt like my life as I knew it was ending even though he hadn’t yet told me what sword of his he wanted me to lie on.

“Your mother had no right to change it,” he declared.

“Yet she did. So let’s move on from that, and you just tell me what it is you want me to do for you.”

He chuckled. “Remember, my dearest.” There was no love in his use of that endearment. “You came to me. Now you must pay up.”

“I know the bargain I struck.”

He held a hand out toward a limo. It was so out of place in this neighborhood, and I couldn’t remember the last time I saw one. “Let’s take a ride and talk.”

“Just say what you have to say.” I held my ground.

“You can either take a ride or we can have this chat inside Ms. Allen’s house, the woman you’re renting from.”

His pronouncement chilled my bones. There was no way I was involving her. I marched toward the car like I could put out fire with the soles of my shoes. A man, dressed in black with a chauffeur hat on, jumped out of the car in time to open the back door for me.

I slid in, feeling petulant, having no one to blame for my predicament but myself. My father coolly got in like he did this every day and he probably did. It wasn’t until the divider went up and the car was underway that he spoke.

“You know it almost feels like the apocalypse happened here. I don’t think I’ve ever seen the city so dead even in the middle of the night.”

It was daylight, I wasn’t sure why he needed to share that detail. I wanted to get this conversation over. “Let’s not pretend we’ve ever had a father daughter relationship and get to your point.”

I should have been afraid from what I knew of the man that sat next to me. He ran the underworld with an iron fist or so I was told. He was so ruthless, the only thing the cops and the Feds got on him all those years ago had to do with tax evasion, which he quickly complied with after blaming it on the high-priced accounting firm he used.

“Give your mother a prize. She didn’t raise a pussy cat. You, Daughter, have bite.”

I rolled my eyes. “Time is precious and some of us have a job to go to.”