Page 5 of Empire of Ache & Ruin

My eyes fly open. The usual pounding headache kicks in, while my blood pumps furiously through me. The fear the boy felt in my dream quickly turns to rage. I guide the anger to fuel my thirst for revenge, then wait as my own mind settles and I can breathe again. The nightmare is always the same, the same burning library, the same agonizing screams, and Mom huddling over me as my human armor. I’ve had the same fucking nightmare for twenty years.

The sequence of events never changes. The end result never changes.

“Tristan, don’t be dead.” Gardenia’s round face and blonde hair crowd my line of sight.

“What the fuck happened?” I blink slowly to get the room back into focus.

“That bitch happened. That’s what.” The space between her brows furrows while she wipes tears off her face. “I told you to come upstairs to me. You’re lucky I decided to monitor the hallway outside your room too.”

“That’s enough, Gardenia.” The room sways a few rounds before I find the balance to push off the floor and rise to my feet.

Gardenia looks up at me with so much anger. She’s not mad at me. She hates that I let my guard down for some stranger. More than angry, I’m surprised. I’ve had my shields up for so long, I didn’t know I could lay them down. I did that tonight. I did it for a complete stranger in a slinky dress.

“What are you going to do to her?” she asks, blue eyes shooting daggers that I know are meant for the woman who drugged me.

“I haven’t decided yet.” I inhale deeply to ease the nausea and lingering side-effects. “I need you to find her first. Check the camera feeds, run a facial recognition program, hack the FBI, I don’t give a shit how you do it. Just find her.”

“Do you have a name?” she clears her throat.

I meet her gaze and let the shame of my moment of weakness wash over me. The enchanting little dove fooled me, stole from me, and left me for dead. I suppose I should be grateful she didn’t actually kill me.I don’t think I did enough.Her words ring in my head. She drugged me and didn’t even know what dosage to use. She’s nothing more than a petty thief.

“No, we didn’t get to that part.” I rub the jabbing pain in my temple.

I can’t blame the headache on the drugs though. This ache on the edge of my skull is with me most mornings. It’s a reminder of the past and the only future in front of me—making the senator pay.

“Of course you didn’t.” She scoffs. “You reek of her expensive perfume. Why are men like this? Is that really all it takes, a beautiful woman with her tits out.” She gestures to her chest with both palms out.

“Just find her.” I cup her cheek for a moment.

“I can’t.” She swallows, and her anger subsides a notch. “I had all my cameras trained on you and your friends. That was the plan. So no, I have no idea who she is because I didn’t get a good shot of her face. Just a partial that didn’t bring back any results.” She points at her laptop on the coffee table.

I glance down at the screen. The sight of the woman makes my chest tighten. She’s real. I pinch the bridge of my nose to make the feel of her go away. “How long was I out?”

“A couple of hours.” Gardenia averts my gaze. “I didn’t move you. You’re too heavy for me to lift. And also, you deserved to lie there on the floor like the asshole you are. I can’t believe you brought her to your room.” Her eyes water again.

“What did you do?” I’ve known Gardenia since she was four. Her concern for me can sometimes be overbearing, but this was something else. When she doesn’t answer, I cock my head to look at her. “I’m going to find out anyway. So just tell me.”

“I was worried about you. Okay?” She points at the screen as proof that she had reason to be. “I didn’t know what she was up to. Someone that looks like that can’t be a good person. And then I saw that guy enter your room. I got here as fast as I could, but they were gone by then. I thought you were dead.”

“And then?” I ask, taking the laptop to study the one partial image we have of our mystery woman. Her defined eyebrows and silky hair are easy to see on the pixelated image. She’s absolutely beautiful. Too bad. Because now she’s going to meet a different side of me. No one steals from me and gets away with it.

“I called your mom,” Gardenia blurts out.

“You called Mom?” Fuck. I blow out a breath. “Why? What can she possibly do from England? Now she’s going to be worried about every fucking thing we do.”

“I know. I just panicked. I thought she should know you were dying.” She bites her lower lip and reaches for my chest.

I scowl at her and she withdraws her hand before it touches me.

“Gardenia, I was obviously not dying.” I meet her gaze in time to catch her wince, which means Mom has already done the only thing she knows to do to protect me. “Jesus fuck. She called your father.”

“Yeah.” She slips her fingers inside my hand. “I’m so sorry. Um…I also called Rex. You know the one with the green eyes, dark hair.”

“That’s Santino.” I remove my suit jacket and toss it on the back of the sofa. “Why would you call him?”

“I was angry that they brought in a sex worker to kill you.”

I open my mouth to explain to her how crazy she sounds, but the knock on the door cuts me off. The thing is, she’s not wrong in thinking I’m a fucking idiot. I glance down at the screen again. Lust got the better of me. I didn’t even think to ask her name. I didn’t think at all. In that moment, all I wanted was to possess a woman I’ve never met before. And fuck me. I still do.

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