Page 190 of Fallen Princess: Shadow Stalker

I nearly choke on my own saliva.

“Fuck, Catalina. That’s a lot of money!”

“So now you understand my desperation to work again?”

“Working again won’t solve the original problem. Where your money goes to is the real issue here.”

“So, will you help me?”

“Yes. Gather all your paperwork together, and tomorrow, I’ll speak with Frank, my accountant. His firm has an office in New York, so you’ll be able to discuss your financial matters with him.”

I observe her worried face and put my hand over her shaky arm.

“Frank will sort you out. You don’t have to worry anymore.”

“Thank you, Eden.” She sips on her coffee. “So when will we be returning to Terra Sands?”

It suddenly dawns on me that she got the wrong end of the stick I offered her.

“Umm. I’m sorry, but you misunderstood. Frank will help you with your finances. I will also instruct him to sort out your IRS issues on my bill. But you’re not returning to Terra Sands.”

Her face drops with that last statement.

“But—"

“Catalina,” I interrupt. “I need to start a new chapter in my life with my boyfriends and my career. I need this for myself. I’ve never had a family before, and the five of us want to be one. Unfortunately, there is no real need for your services. I made that clear back in New York.”

“I stayed with you all these years, and now you want to throw me away like disposable garbage.” Her frown deepens, etching lines of worry across her face, mirroring the heaviness in her voice.

“I certainly have not done that! I bought you a home, and now I’ve extended my gratitude to pay off your IRS troubles and give you accounting services for free! Considering everything, I think you’re doing extremely well with what I’ve offered you!”

“Those men have been with you for less than five minutes, and I’ve been with you for fourteen years and you call them family but mejust some staff.”

Maybe my mental exhaustion is the cause of my anger, but I can’t sit back and allow her to talk about my boyfriends like they mean nothing to me.

“You were never just some staff. Had you been, you would have had your ass in jail, not because of tax fraud but because you poisoned your employer with illicit drugs. So, I think we’re done here. This is the last help I can offer you. If you need more money, then I suggestyou sell the house and buy something smaller or go live with your sister, but the direct cash avenue to me just closed two minutes ago.”

I grab my cell phone from the table to leave, but Catalina grabs my forearm.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she says, looking frightful as her eyes tear up. “Everything is just overwhelming. One minute, I’m living with you at Terra Sands; the next, I’m not. Everything is happening so fast and, it's confusing.”

“Maybe,” I say, sitting back in the booth and staring at her as I consider her position in all this. “Maybe, and I’m sorry for that. But I have this second chance in my life, and I want to take it. My stalker is dead, so I don’t have to run anymore.”

She looks up at me, and her facial expression changes quite dramatically.

“I heard. I didn’t bring it up because I wasn’t sure you wanted to talk about it. But your record label did a publicity spin on it. How could you have allowed it, after what happened?”

“Because we agreed to it. Sure, I was traumatized by the kidnapping, but it's over, he’s dead, and he took ten years of my life that I’ll never get back, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to miss jumping on an opportunity to celebrate his death and use it as a stepping stone to jumpstart my career. Sure, I’ll need special counseling and therapy after what happened, but I’ll be fixed, and I’ll have my boyfriends to lean against when things get tough.”

“They won’t stick around. They never do.”

“You don’t know that,” I retort. “But these men. Catalina, they aren’t just ordinary musicians. These men will go to war to get back what’s theirs. I saw them jump out of a fucking helicopter to save my ass. Jagger, point blank, shot the bastard who was pointing his gun at me. And when the bastard wouldn’t fucking die, Asher punched the life out of him. And you want to know what I did? I clung onto my best friend, sheltered her eyes from the onslaught, and enjoyed watching every one of my men battle it out against my aggressors. Then we all climbed into a helicopter, washed up a bit, went to a stadium, and sang our hearts out to thousands of people who cheered for us.”

“I saw your concert.” She mumbles low. “So, are you officially dating these men? People will ask now about you and Jagger.”

“I don’t care what people think,” I explain, firmly set on my decision. “We agreed to never talk about the nature of our relationship. Maybe in our next performance, I’ll kiss Haze. But thetruth is, we’ll never talk about it because what the public needs to know is when we’re dropping the next single or concert dates. Everything else is not up for disclosure. And when I kiss my men in public, it’s because I can, not because I’m putting up a show. We control what we release to the public, and that will only consist of our music. Nothing else. What we do with our lives is undisclosed, and everyone can wonder. We have a press conference in two days, and that’s what we’re telling the world. Who we sleep with is nobody’s business.”

“The press will continue to pursue you.”

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