Page 61 of All That Glitters

He’s as gorgeous as ever. Then again, they say the devil was the most beautiful angel once.

“Shut your goddamn mouth,” Marcus snaps.

“Me? You’ve got fucking brass balls to be pissed at me when you’re the reason the Stones are six feet under.” To make matters worse, Parker starts to laugh, loudly, broadly.

Did my misery become his joke?

“Oh, Marcus. Does it torment you? Knowing what you know now? No.” Parker’s laughter dwindles off to nothing. “Not you. You’re stone cold at the heart of you, nothing but a brute who terrorizes others for his own ill-gotten gain.”

“Say it again, and I’ll break more than your nose this time,” Marcus replies.

The men continue to argue with each other, their voices lifting louder and louder until it’s impossible to miss even a syllable.

You were supposed be on the plane.

My parents died because of Marcus.

Because someone wanted to make him pay for whatever he’d done in the past, or whatever they thought they’d done. Except his life wasn’t the only one impacted—mine had been irrevocably changed.

I’ve spent all this time since the crash trying to get back to some kind of normal, even though it’s impossible to go backward. My old life is gone.

What did Marcus do that was so bad someone wanted him dead?

You don’t know him at all.

Apparently not. He’s always been closed lipped about his past, saying he chooses to focus on the future rather than get mired down in the muck he came from. He and Parker are cut from the same cloth. Creeps and liars.

I scrub my hands over my eyes until they burn, but the tears keep coming. What the hell am I supposed to do now? It’s not like I can go back to not knowing. My parent’s plane crash hadn’t been an accident.

On purpose.

Someone chose to send them shooting down, chose to let their lives end in fire and pain.

The knowledge starts to eat me up one bite at a time, hollowing out my insides until I’m an empty maw of suffering.

I clutch my stomach, but the pain refuses to ease. Had Mom and Dad known about Marcus and his checkered past and still chose to bring him on as their manager? As mine? I had to believe they wouldn’t have made him my guardian if they thought I’d be in any kind of real danger.

But Parker is here, and he clearly means business.

It’s too much.

Too much to know, too much to handle.

“Look at you. You barely blinked when you found out. How did you manage to stay off the plane that day, if you don’t mind me asking? Did you make up some excuse?” Parker asks.

“Stop it,” Marcus urges in a low voice.

“Or what?”

The image I have in my head is the two of them face to face, barely an inch to spare between them, both ready to throw hands. Both ready to attack the other.

“I really am curious to know how you managed. Maybe you had something better to do, or maybe you knew the Family hasn’t been happy with you since your departure.”

“I got out fair and square.”

“There’s no such thing as fair,” Parker snaps. “There is only payment for the rest of your miserable life, and yours was supposed to end. Does Empire have any idea your extracurricular activities caused her Mommy and Daddy to die? Think she'd still look at you the way she does when she finds out?”

My chest constricts until the band around my heart and ribs is too tight and I can’t breathe. Every inhalation is a struggle, and only the barest minimum air leaks out of me. Into me. I shift out of the crouch and a branch cracks. One of the goons shifts to stare in my direction, and I go still, waiting for him to turn back around.

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