Storm season in North Carolina always took tourists by surprise.
It attacked suddenly, vibrant sun peeking out after the rain had cleared. I’d grown up with it, and still, I found it odd, like a quirk Mother Nature branded to remind us she held the power.
I glanced to the body on the floor, sprawled out in a right angle. Not dead. Unconscious, drunk, and snoring louder than a broken carburetor. And not just anybody. Emery Winthrop, an interesting but not entirely unwanted turn of events.
A few days ago, Fika had revealed that she knew where her dad was hiding, and as if Fate had decreed it, she’d landed on my lap. Literally. Facedown, her temple pressed against my thigh until she’d lolled off with a loud thud and an annoyed groan that might have made me wince if I cared about murderers and their accomplices.
Thunder growled so loudly outside, it shook the metal box. I planted my feet, cursing when something pricked at my heel. Shining my phone’s light on my foot, I pulled the long pin of Emery’s name tag out of my shoe, clasped it together, then tossed the tiny metal rectangle at the elevator doors.
The flashlight illuminated her skinny frame, bonier than I’d ever seen her. Her slit had risen and torn, leaving most of her leg bare to me. She’d grown taller in the past four years, and she laid sprawled across the elevator floor, taking up all the space.
My space.
My elevator.
My hotel.
A drunk and unconscious kid, the last thing I needed in a hotel swarming with politicians, a Presidential candidate, and Secret Service agents.
The name tag tugged at my mind, begging me to unravel how she had one—how she worked for my company.
She had Winthrop money, meaning she’d been a member of the Three Commas Club since birth. College degrees doubled as ornaments, jobs were merely a formality, and if she wanted, she could never work a day in her life and still live as luxuriously as a Saudi oil prince.
A loud snore jerked her thin frame until she rolled over, revealing her clutch in the same black fabric of her dress. She reeked of alcohol and poor decisions and looked like a victim of the storm.
Swiping at her hair, I checked her scalp. No blood or bumps, but she smelled like a brewery, and her head would pound when she woke up. My fingers caught in a tangle, taking three tries to pull it out.
The long locks could have doubled as a bird’s nest, and I swore, if this was the direction fashion trends were headed, I was hitching a ride on Elon Musk’s newest rocket to Mars.
Bye, bye, human race.
Adios to your pumpkin spice lattes, cookie butter ice cream, and charcoal toothpaste.
Good fucking riddance.
I shook Emery’s shoulders and snapped my fingers next to her ear. She sat up with a whine on her lips, shoved my hands aside with surprising strength, and muttered, “fuck off.” The scent of vodka swarmed my senses before she curled onto her side and fell back asleep.
Unbelievable.
I snatched up her clutch, unclasped it, and sifted through the contents. Several packets of oyster crackers scattered to the floor the second I opened the bag. I shook my head, noting she hadn’t changed a bit.
Emery used to walk around with candy and snacks shoved deep inside her pockets, mostly Snickers, a habit she’d picked up after Virginia neglected to give her lunch money too many times. Usually on accident, but sometimes on purpose to encourage her prepubescent daughter to lose a few pounds.
Pieces of work, the Winthrop family.
Flicking Emery’s wallet open, I flipped through her cards. An expired driver’s license sat on top of her Clifton University student I.D., reminding me how young she was.
The license read, “Emery Winthrop,” whereas the student I.D. read, “Emery Rhodes.” Amusing, but not surprising, given she was born and bred from liars.
The photos in her wallet told me nothing of Gideon’s location. A Polaroid of a field of stars with the word balter written in Sharpie under it. On the back, she’d drawn a small animal that resembled a tiger, but it had no stripes, and crayon wasn’t the best art medium for precision. She’d scrawled, of all things, “ride me” beneath it, and I swore, if Emery weren’t rich, her quirks would land her in an asylum.
The other Polaroid featured a Valentine’s Day card that compared love to shit. She had glued another picture to the back. Reed smiled at me, his arm around Emery’s shoulders while she held a tattered football.
I remembered when Ma had taken the photo. A row of red maple trees grew near the garden on the Winthrop estate. Reed had gotten his football stuck in one, and Emery climbed up the tree, limbs moving with no grace yet no hesitation, even when she fell to the ground in a bed of sanguine leaves and twisted her ankle.
Reed had screamed for Ma although I stood thirty feet away in the garden, tearing out weeds since Dad had popped his hip and couldn’t afford to get fired by Virginia. Ma came running, and Emery refused to see a doctor until Ma took a picture of her with the football. She wore a toothy smile on her face, looking nothing like Virginia despite the matching dyed hair, sharp bob, and single colored contact.
Shoving the photos into the trifold wallet insert, I pocketed the whole thing, keeping it as leverage. She’d want them back, I was sure. Two years ago, I’d wired a cool twelve million dollars (a small fortune for a home in North Carolina) to a shell company. In exchange, a discrete broker had transferred ownership of the Winthrop estate to me.
The purchase had set me back a pretty penny, and I loathed the idea of Gideon profiting from me, but I’d tried to track the payment to his location. That failed, and now I owned a mansion I refused to step foot in.
Point was, the real estate agent informed me I’d be buying the house as is, including everything in it. From the listing images, Emery’s room appeared untouched. She had taken nothing with her to college that I could see.
Her pictures of her and Reed still decorated the walls. Her photo albums remained on the shelves. The Polaroid camera she loved peeked out from beneath her bed. I’d pegged her as the sentimental type, and now I owned every memory of hers, including the ones in my pocket.
I shook the purse upside down until another cracker packet fell out. Ripping the seams with deft fingers, I fished around the hole, sliding my finger beneath the fabric until I was sure she had hidden nothing inside before discarding the clutch a foot from her snoring body.
Figuring Emery was passed out for the foreseeable future and the storm didn’t seem to let up, I loosened my tie, pulled out my phone, checked a few emails, and began crushing candy. Twenty minutes later, I’d eaten all of her crackers and paid my way through a couple dozen levels of the game.
A groan that could awaken a bear in hibernation was the first indicator she had woken. The second indicator came as she swiveled her head to take in her surroundings and realized the lone light originated from my phone—and I’d set it on the lowest brightness to hide my face.
To her credit, she didn’t gasp. She pawed at the back of her head and sat up. I watched as she blinked rapidly, unadjusted to the dark, and swiped at the mess of sweat, tears, and mascara.
She faced my direction, staring at me crush two more rows of candy. The words “cold,” “emotionless,” and “bastard” left her lips, a rapid mutter—in that order. I ignored her, letting her sweat it out a few more minutes.
“How long have we been in here?” No hesitation seeped into her voice.
I allowed myself to wonder if anything could shake her before remembering the night we’d accidentally slept together. Wide, innocent doe eyes that made me want to fuck her all over again.
Now I was hard as a rock, and despite the darkness, adjusting myself would bring attention to it. Plus, the Winthrops might have abandoned their morals, but I hadn’t. Getting hard at the thought of someone who’d been an adult all of two seconds was all sorts of fucked up.
“About two-and-a-half hours,” I responded, voice level, though it was closer to thirty minutes.
Amusement lined my lips as she jerked upwards and flung toward me, barely stopping herself from launching completely at me. I was quick to shut my phone off, so she couldn’t see me with the light. The darkness blanketed me, concealing my identity. Concealing our past.
Her heavy pants brushed her chest against my abs. I could only hear her. Feel her. So close, she had my jaw ticking and my pulse racing. Her energy mobbed me, chaotic like the storm. Unpredictable, despite fifteen years of knowing her.
She didn’t back away even though I heard one of her feet slide back like she wanted to but couldn’t bring herself to show weakness.
“Two and a half hours?!”
The vodka on her breath assaulted my senses, but she sounded more sober than I had given her credit for. That, or the situation had sobered her up quickly. Beneath the alcohol, a rich scent hit my nostrils.
Citrus.
Mango.
Vanilla.
Musk.
Almost masculine.
Something familiar.
The scent invaded my space.
She tried to get into my face, probably on her tiptoes to reach it. “I was knocked out for two-and-a-half hours, and you didn’t think to check for my pulse? To see if I was still breathing?”
“You were snoring, and you smell like you took a bath in vodka,” I offered.
“Unbelievable.” She muttered a few curses and stepped back, which did nothing.
I could still sense her.
Feel her.
Breathe her.
“For the record,” she added, “someone spilled their drink on me.”
I caught a quick movement of her hand and tsked twice. “I know you’re flipping me off.”
“It’s dark. How—” She stopped herself, but I had an answer.
Because I know you.
I kept it to myself, content in the knowledge that everything about this situation bothered her. She hadn’t looked at me once earlier, even as I was hyperaware of the long legs and generous cleavage—then disgusted with myself when I saw the name on her name tag.
She plummeted to the floor again, the sound of her snapping off her mask filling the air.
It’s cute that you think you’ve hidden your identity from me, sweetheart. I know your secret. Wait until you discover mine…
As if she could hear my thoughts, she pushed herself away from me, sliding across the marble until her head hit something loud. Probably the metal bar that wrapped around the elevator.
“Ugh.”
My eyes had long since adjusted to the dark, and I caught the outline of her hands reach behind her head and probe. The wince was obvious, her body curling inward before she took a deep breath and straightened.
I felt sorry for her for a split second before I buried my sympathy in a grave beside Dad.
Emery Winthrop secreted wealth from her pores. A trip to the doctor’s and a few bags of fluids to fight the hangover would do nothing to her wallet. Meanwhile, poor people—people who’d grown up like me, like my dad—had spent their lives without the luxury of doctors, refusing to escalate health concerns to situations that required money.
Not until it was too late.
