Page 4 of Fool's Gold

She has to be somewhere.

Empire taking the fuck off and not giving me shit all notice about it is the last thing I want to deal with today. No fucking courtesy.

Why would she? a snide voice repeats in my head. I didn’t tell her the truth about the paperwork, and with the press having a field day with their latest salacious gossip, she has even less of a reason to be in my company than any given day.

Which doesn’t stop me from going on a mad hunt all over the goddamn city for her.

A woman like her can’t disappear off the map.

“She didn’t tell you where she was going?” I growl into the phone.

My assistant, Sherry, only laughs at me. “Marcus, the girl didn’t look ready to go anywhere. If she decided to leave the house, I say good on her! You cast a big shadow.”

Sherry promptly hangs up on me because she is absolutely no help—why do I pay her? And by the end of another hour of searching, I’ve got nothing. Not a hint. Empire Stone is off the radar.

Sweat dampens my skin, and my heart is about seconds away from having an attack just to fucking spite me. Wherever she went, there has got to be a trail behind her, and I’m too out of my head to find it.

Unless—

“Marcus, you ignorant fuck.”

Using my name sharpens the moment, and I slam my hand against the wheel in agitation, the pain further sharpening things for the briefest moment.

Another curse, and I pull out of traffic amid the displeased honks and middle fingers of several other drivers. I cut off a cab to grab a spot on the side of the street. I flash them all a finger of my own, throwing the car into park before rooting around for my cell.

There’s no valid excuse for me being this stupid. Why didn’t I remember?

When her parents died, I installed a tracking app on her phone. And no matter where she went, she’d have her phone with her. It’s practically surgically attached to her hand these days.

She’s addicted to the thing like some people are addicted to crack or meth.

With a few presses of the button, the screen comes to life with a small circle narrowing as the app does its job.

“Come the fuck on,” I mutter at the screen. Waiting, always waiting, for the software.

Finally, it pings a location I’m utterly familiar with and should have thought about before I drove all over Los Angeles like an asshole. I have just solidified my grand title as World’s Biggest Idiot.

Her father and I spent many happy weekends at the bungalow in Malibu. On the outskirts of what many, including Olivia, had dubbed the rich-bitch area, the small cottage-style house became a home away from home for us all.

There were drunken weekends and times when I’d traveled for work only to be too tired to make my way to the city and end up crashing there…happy memories.

Happy and morose.

Stressed and satiated.

The bungalow saw those milestones and more, heard our secrets and our fears and our hopes for the future uttered over a bonfire or a bottle of booze. Those walls carried stories from a time when family and relationships meant something to me. Of course Empire went there to get away from me.

Stashing the phone on the dash, I pull into traffic with a screech of tires and an unhealthy pressure on the accelerator.

Maybe she needs the space.

Those fucking internet alerts had to have gone off for her as well. I know because I set them myself, checking the parameters to go off whenever she or I were mentioned.

Too bad she’s not getting her space.

I’ll reel her back in no matter how far away she tries to go.

I’m a selfish bastard. The press is right to call me a lech and a pervert and insults I can’t dream up for myself.

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