Page 3 of Protégé King

A few minutes later, the driver of my fancy limousine has yet to lower the glass between us, and the car halts next to a high-rise. I don’t know the building though I’ve most likely walked past it at some point. I might have grown up in Jersey where my parents tried to shelter me from the city, but my parents always had Manhattan offices. I was always here, then and now.

The car door opens and I exit. The same broody, grumpy guy who’d led me to the car motions me forward. You know how this goes. He opens the door and I enter the ritzy lobby with glossy floors and fancy lighting dangling from silver poles. He doesn’t talk. I don’t talk. He waves at security and then punches the elevator button. When the door opens, I step inside and he leans in and punches floor thirty. It’s high. Not that I’m afraid of heights, but I could get nervous about the drop going down if I let myself. It’s the whole, everything falls from the bottom, no matter how hard you pull up thing.

It’s a thing my father says. It means—well it means nothing good.

I glance at my watch to find it’s nearly six-thirty pm. Ooh, I’ve also done my ten thousand steps, thank you, New York City and the walk or die in the subway mentality. I’m not really sure what the late hour means for a studio office as far as busyness goes. I’d think most of the office staff would be gone by now. I’d speculate—translated as worry—about some weird casting couch thing, but I already have the job and the program manager is a little old lady. A tough little old lady, but not the casting couch type.

I think. Who knows these days.

The elevator dings and I draw in a breath. I step into the foyer and I glance left and right only to discover there is only one set of double wooden doors. After closer inspection, I realize there is also no bell. I attempt to knock, but it’s a solid door. No one is going to hear me. This is weird, I think, and there’s a warning bee buzzing about in my belly. This feels off. Am I at the wrong place?

I open the doors and step inside a lobby that smells of new leather and I sniff—spice. It smells like winter spice. I don’t really know why I know what winter spice smells like, but I do. It must be my mother’s obsession with all things holiday. The room is a lobby with a secretary’s desk and a seating area, which is decorated in, of course, leather couches and chairs, hence the leather scent. No one is at the desk.

“Hello?” I call out several times, but it’s crickets in return. My options include one door to the left of the desk or the one behind me I came in through. The bee in my belly is buzzing again, but I ignore it and walk toward the door.

It’s open and I step just inside the entryway.

There’s a man standing at the window and my heart begins a pitter patter in my chest. He’s tall, and dark, and familiar.

A rush of awareness floods me, a full body experience that might as well be me being swept into an icy ocean and pulled under. I can’t breathe. This isn’t happening. This isn’t him. I suck in a breath when I finally discover a bit of air, and he turns. God, he turns to face me. Then he’s all out there, we’re all out there, in a room, together, aware of each other. So. Very. Aware. His jaw is a perfect line, so very handsomely straight, his cheekbones a perfect angle, and the dimple in his chin just as adorable and sexy as I remember, but somehow brutal. Yes, a dimple can be brutal if on this man. And of course, his silk tie is a royal blue that matches his eyes perfectly. The coldest of all eyes, because they always feel warm when the heat in their depths is nothing but a lie.

Lies hurt.

Deception hurts.

He. Hurt. Me.

I blink and he’s around the desk standing on this side of his visitor’s chairs. I don’t even remember him moving. His eyes travel over me, intimate in a way he has no right to look at me. “Alana,” he says softly, and his voice is silk and seduction, but somehow all demand. So much demand.

And just that easily, he is the sun, burning me alive with anger and other things I will never admit. Because I didn’t know you could love and hate the same man as much as I do this one. I rotate to walk way, to leave him where he stands. I make it two steps when he says, “Do not walk away from me, Alana.” I halt because we both know I have no choice.

He owns me.

Chapter Two

Ellen Blue

Twenty-Four years Ago—age seven

“One hundred thousand? Are you insane? My client is not coming off that property a hundred thousand dollars. It’s prime real estate.”

“Oh, come on, Ellen. We both know the market is shit.”

“Prime real estate in New York City.”

“You’re good. I give you that, but I’m better. Call me when you’re ready to deal.”

I clench my fist and grimace. Eric Swenson is the real estate mogul straight from hell. I bet he’s the devil’s son. I start to punch in Richard’s number to tell him we might have to take a second mortgage if my luck keeps going this beautifully when I realize Alana and that new little boy next door are slippery and missing. They were just here. I twist around in the living room, making sure the kids are not behind me, but oh, no. No, they are not.

“Alana! Damion!” I call out and hurry toward the many rooms in the lower level of the apartment, repeating their names over and over. The problem with a monstrous home in a highly sought after zip code, I think as my heels click and clatter on the ridiculously expensive natural stone floor, aside from having to pay for it is finding what you have lost is impossible. But this was all Richard. We have to live the lifestyle to sell it, and become the real estate agents of the rich and famous. I roll my eyes as I start up the stairs. “Alana! Damion!”

By the time I’m at the top of the stairs, what felt like kids being kids is starting to feel ominous and freak me out. “Where are those kids?” I murmur, cutting right toward Alana’s bedroom and calling for them again. “Alana!” Damion!” Scanning the kitchen to no avail. “Kids! Where are you?”

I pass the kid’s library we had installed six months ago to create a love for books and learning in Alana, and double-step toward her bedroom. Once I’m inside the doorway, I halt, scanning the room, and the flutter in my chest is nothing in comparison to the sickening sensation in my belly. With a trembling hand, I reach for my phone, about to call Damion’s parents, praying they just slipped next door to his house, when I hear giggles from the inside of the closet.

It’s hard to explain to someone who isn’t a parent what it feels like to be angry and relieved in the same moment. I suspect it’s a bit like surviving a tidal wave. The water drags you under, suffocates you, and then you fight to survive, kicking and pumping your arms until the sweet thrill of air permeates your lungs. Shortly after, you swim as hard as you can to ensure your safety. The anger that follows a parent’s panic is much like that swim toward the shore. It feels necessary to ensure the survival of yourself and your child.

My feet pound a path to the closet and I whip open the door. The two kiddos sit there, eyeing me only to have my scowl transform their laughter into terror. It’s pretty easy to scare kids, and most of the time, us parents don’t want to do any such thing except when they scare us and we see their lives and our own flash before our eyes.

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