Cruel Hearts (King’s Crossing #2)

Chapter Six

CHAPTER SIX

Zane

I shouldn’t have seen Stella. I can’t rinse the taste of her out of my mouth, can’t quiet her sobs in my ears. My fingertips can still feel the silkiness of her skin, my lips can still feel the delicious pressure of hers.

I shove my hands into the pockets of my pants and lean my forehead against the cool glass of the window that looks over King’s Crossing. In what was once my father’s office, I hold the city in the palm of my hand, but it’s nothing. Nothing compared to what I had for the short time Stella belonged to me.

I still love her.

Someone knocks on the door, but I left it open, and Ash strides into my office uninvited, his hands fisted at his sides, his body shivering with rage. “I’m going to kill her. Where the fuck is she?”

I appreciate the anger on my behalf, but I wave him off. “Calm down. She’s nothing.”

“Did you forget how catatonic you were when she disappeared? How you couldn’t eat? Couldn’t sleep? She put you through so much pain—let me pay the bitch back.”

“I’ve already seen her. Let it be.”

This quiets him, and he approaches me, his eyes narrowing. “What did she have to say for herself?”

“Nothing. I asked her where she’s been, and she didn’t answer. Her friend had just been shot, Ash. I didn’t expect a rundown of the past five years.” He’s already pissed—there’s no point in telling him the first word out of her mouth was his name. It would only add fuel to the fire, and there wouldn’t be enough water in the world to put it out.

Ash nods and helps himself to a drink. He’s steady for someone who just flew halfway around the world. No jet lag, not a hair out of place, his suit’s immaculate.

“Do you know who’s hunting her down?” I ask, pouring more scotch into my glass. I’ve been drinking nonstop since seeing Stella. There’s nothing I can do to wipe her from my senses. Not even getting drunk.

He holds the scotch in his mouth for a moment and then swallows. “No.”

“It’s not Hal. He quit, said he doesn’t compete for jobs. Someone pushed her off a platform in the subway, and this morning, outside the building, someone shot at her and hit her friend instead. Who would want her dead, besides me?”

Ash shrugs. “I made a couple of phone calls and tried to cut through the red tape, but Cardello’s PR wouldn’t say anything about Stella. They admitted he and Stella had a falling out and that he was sorry to see her go. They invited her to stay in Italy, but she didn’t accept. That’s it. They repeated it for half an hour.”

I watch the city lights blink at my feet. What good is money, what good is power, if it doesn’t get you what you want? What you need? Who you love?

“She didn’t tell you anything? Give you anything?” He watches me closely.

She gave me her body, but that’s not Ash’s business. “No.”

“Where did you meet her?”

“At her apartment. She was covered in blood, and she showered and changed her clothes. We exchanged a few nasty words, and then she left. I don’t know where she went.”

“Then good riddance.”

“I’d like to know who’s after her.”

Ash scoffs and pours another drink. “Why? She’s a lying, cheating whore. She ran out on you, and she ran out on Zarah. Do you think she gives a shit what happened to your sister? She was lying on a yacht fucking her prince. She left you and Z high and dry. Fuck her, let her go.”

If it was that easy, I would have done it a long time ago. “You didn’t give up on Zarah.”

“She didn’t run off like a slut. Love only goes so far, Zane. When you love someone, you stand by their side through the hard times. One day Zarah will come back to us, and when she does, I’ll be waiting, down on my knees, hoping she still wants to marry me. I put that ring on her finger and promised I would take care of her, and I am.”

I blink against the burn behind my eyes. “You should move on. Her doctors say she’ll never come out of it.”

“I’m not giving up, and neither should you.”

Rubbing at my face, I say, “I wish I knew the truth about what happened that night.”

“You know the truth. You just don’t want to accept it. You’ve seen the pictures, and they don’t lie. You said Stella didn’t tell you where she’s been. That’s because she won’t admit she ran out on you. She was a twenty-year old girl who grew up without parents, without a penny to her name. She wanted more. She wanted Cardello’s crown, but she didn’t need the gold on her head. She already had your heart.”

I shake my head. Ash sounds like shit when he’s trying to be romantic. “I saw the way she lived. She was happy with what she had.”

I don’t know why I’m defending her. Maybe because in all these years I hadn’t seen her face to face. I hadn’t seen the desolation, the hopelessness. This morning at her apartment, I didn’t see a woman who’d been living the luxurious lifestyle of Italian royalty. I saw a lost woman, looking for something. Looking for me , trying to convince me to listen to her, and all I did was think with my cock and practically rape her.

What would my father think?

What would my mother say?

I’ve been an insensitive asshole.

I’ve become . . . Ash.

Well, Ash the businessman. He’d always had hard edges when it came to the personal, but over the years his love for Zarah has softened him.

I stare out the window. The darkness beckons me. Stella is out there somewhere. She might even be dead.

“Have you seen Zarah lately, Zane?” Ash asks.

“No.”

I don’t visit my sister as often as Ash does. She stares right through me. My nightmares have come back tenfold since Stella disappeared. I rarely sleep, but if I do, I dream about my mother, the water bloating her face, and then her features morph into Zarah’s. Her blank stare, like she doesn’t see me but knows all my dirty secrets.

“You should. You’ll feel better. She’s the only family you have left.” Ash pauses. “Besides me and my parents, of course.”

He adds the last smoothly, but they don’t bring me the comfort they once did.

I wish there were someone I could talk to, ask for advice, but there isn’t anyone.

I need to find a spine. Stella broke my heart chasing a title and a crown, and after seeing her, I shouldn’t feel anything more than resentment and hate. She betrayed my sister and me without looking back.

“I appreciate that,” I murmur.

“Let’s go out. You need to get laid. Call Nathalie.”

Nathalie’s the last thing I need. After Stella left, Ash hooked me up so I wouldn’t be alone all the time. She let me do whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted to do it to her. I’m ashamed to say that for the first year Stella was gone, I took my anger out on her. I offered to pay, but she said Ash had it covered. As the months slowly drifted into years, Nathalie turned more companion than whipping boy. Now we go to dinner. Talk. She’s still not Stella, but thanks to Ash, I don’t spend every night by myself.

I don’t want to think about Nathalie now. I can still taste Stella’s tears as I kissed them off her face.

I truly have turned into a monster. No. That’s not true.

I’ve always been one.

Shaking my head, I turn down Ash’s suggestion. “I need to get some sleep. Alone.”

He rubs his thumb over the rim of his glass. “I’m going to find Stella and make her pay for what she’s done. She won’t be that hard to find. I doubt she has anywhere to go.”

In annoyance, I drag in a breath. “Why can’t you forget about her?”

“Why can’t you?” he asks in return, his voice sharp.

“I was the one who used to be in love with her.”

“And now you’re not.” Ash finishes his drink. “Or did seeing her today...”

But please, Zane, don’t hurt me. Her desperate plea scratches at my heart.

“No. I just want to know why she came back.”

“Then I’ll find out. Leave it to me.”

I twist and turn in bed. Sweat drenches the sheets and fear shoots through my body. I clench the bedding, and my hands cramp painfully.

I’m dreaming about my mother. She’s underwater, and her hair swirls around her head, moving with the motion of the waves. Ragged tears in her flesh reveal bits of bone, and she reaches out a hand, skin dripping off her fingers.

Stella cowers behind her legs, and I try to dodge my mother to reach her. She stands firm, and Stella sobs, hiding. I feint to the left, then to the right, and my mother growls, “Leave her be.”

Her voice doesn’t hold the gentle tone she used when Zarah and I were children. She’s angry now, and she’s protecting Stella from me.

Suddenly, Zarah is there crouching near Stella, and they hug each other, crying.

My mother’s bony fingers dig into my cheeks, and I’m so close to her I can see the maggots where her eyes used to be.

“You are a fool,” she hisses. She raises her hand, maybe to slap me, but I jolt awake and fall out of bed. My temple clips the side of the night table, and pain bursts through my skull.

Desperately, I scramble, ripping the sheet from around my legs, and lurch into the bathroom. I empty my stomach into the toilet as sweat slithers down my back. I heave until there’s nothing left, and when I’m finished, I rest my forehead against the seat.

My world is crumbling around me, and I can’t stop it.

I wash my face, change into fresh pajamas, and go downstairs. Lucille is already in the kitchen, though it’s not quite seven. I’m grateful she didn’t quit, though alone, I don’t generate enough work to keep her busy. I don’t know how she spends her days, but whenever I’m conflicted like this, which is a lot of the time, her presence grounds me. Zarah isn’t my only family. Lucille is a constant in my life who will never leave.

She pours me a cup of coffee, and I sit at the island on the same barstool where Stella sat the night I met her. Maybe I should update the kitchen. Lucille could tell the interior decorator what she wants.

The TV hums low, and for once, I’m not featured. I haven’t done anything newsworthy except double my father’s net worth.

After Stella left and Zarah checked out, work was all I had. Nigel, like I brought him in to do, helped me steer Maddox Industries to the next level. Not in the way my father would have done it, but I didn’t care about anything or anyone.

But please, Zane, don’t hurt me.

I’ll never be able to outrun the sound of her sad, scared voice.

Did Stella make it through the night? Did Ash find her? I wonder what he did to her if he did. What he’s capable of makes my stomach churn, and I almost throw up again. I swallow down the bitter coffee and inhale deep breaths through my nose. “Lucille, why do you think Stella left?”

The older woman finishes washing her hands and turns to me while she dries them with a towel. “I can’t say.”

“Do you think she wanted the crown and fame like everyone said?”

Lucille drops the dishcloth and opens a drawer in the desk she uses to keep track of bills, supplies, and groceries. She pulls a photo from the bottom of a sheaf of statements and invoices, slides the picture across the marble counter, and gives me time to absorb what I’m looking at.

It’s a shot of us at the pumpkin patch. I’m wandering around, searching for the perfect pumpkin, and she’s laughing, pointing, trying to direct me without getting up off the hay bale. Looking at the photo, I can feel the sun on my back, smell the popcorn in the air, hear the children laughing and screaming. I imagine Stella’s kisses, her gentle embraces.

It had been a good day, that day.

“That was six months after your parents passed, God rest their souls, and it was the first time I’d seen you smile. Stella, she didn’t know about money or social class, about crowns and royalty. She brought you to a fall festival and bought you pellets to feed goats. You think that’s the type of woman who cares about being a princess?”

“Then why did she leave me?” I ask, my throat constricting, trying to hold back my anguish.

Lucille taps her finger under my chin, asking me to look at her. The housekeeper has been part of my family since I was born. I thought I didn’t have anyone to ask for advice, but I need to listen to Lucille. She loves me, and she knows things. Things she would never volunteer because it’s her job to be seen and not heard.

Tears fill her kind brown eyes. “Did you think maybe she had to?”

I push her hand away. “She had to run off with Cardello? You’ve seen the pictures, Lucille. The news reports. She ran off to Italy, and I never heard from her again.”

Lucille shakes her head, but I don’t know what she means by it. “Do you have any news about the plane crash?” she asks.

“No. The case is still open, but no one is working on it anymore. They stopped looking.”

When the FBI told me they were going to stop investigating, that had been a heavy blow. The other passengers were all dead ends, and without the plane’s black box, there wasn’t anything more they could do. The private investigator Clayton advised me to hire spent a lot of money and came up with less than what the FBI offered me. Five and a half years now. I’ll never know why my parents died.

“Why?” I ask, raising my mug to my lips. “What does my parents’ deaths have to do with Stella?”

Lucille shrugs and starts pulling ingredients out of the fridge to cook breakfast. “Probably nothing, but I find it strange your parents were killed in a crash that can’t be explained, and she disappears the night you announce you’re taking over your father’s company.”

I don’t see how there’s a connection. Stella may have been the instigator, making me realize I couldn’t grieve indefinitely, but she hadn’t been involved once I’d made the decision to take my father’s place.

Wait. Yes, she was. I promoted her.

Something niggles in the back of my mind. Stella was snooping in Richard Denton’s personal email.

Did she find something?

Denton was meeting Clayton behind my back. Did Denton do something to Stella to keep his secrets?

No.

There are still the pictures of Stella and Cardello in Italy. The gossip sites gleefully splashed around proof they’d been living together, almost like the rags were taunting me, trying to provoke me into lashing out. The photos showed them very much in love, and no one from Cardello’s camp denied the allegations he stole her from me.

There was no room for doubt.

Especially since I saw for myself how Cardello couldn’t take his eyes off her at the party.

Except, Stella didn’t know who Cardello was. How could he have persuaded her to leave with him after only a few minutes of conversation? His crown? I thrum my fingers on the counter. That feels flimsy now.

Did Denton pay Cardello to seduce her? Because she found something in his email? Denton was wealthy in his own right, but not to the point where he could have bribed Cardello to do what he wanted. Maybe Denton offered him something else, but God knows what. Cardello’s royalty. There’s nothing he can’t get for himself.

Did Denton pay her to go with him, to get her out of his way? No. I have more than he does. That wouldn’t make sense, and I don’t believe for a minute she wanted my money. In fact, she was turned off by it. Did Denton blackmail her? That sounds more plausible, but Stella had a clean record, or at least, I thought she had.

I look at the pumpkin patch photo again. I’m touched, though I’m confused as to why Lucille kept it.

I’d never fed a baby goat before.

Maybe Stella didn’t leave on her own. But then why did she and Cardello look so happy? For five long, hellish years, I had to tolerate seeing pictures of them in the media. Her baby bump.

I sigh. When I fucked her yesterday, I didn’t see one stretch mark on her beautiful body.

But please, Zane, don’t hurt me.

She hadn’t acted like a woman who had sex regularly, much less enjoyed it.

As was Stella’s way, she wanted to give me whatever I wanted, even if that was at her own sacrifice. I wanted to fuck her, so she let me.

Denton’s been out of the picture for years. Nigel did what I didn’t have the balls to do—cut Denton and Cramer loose. It wasn’t easy, or cheap. Buying them out cost me millions, but with Nigel’s help and a new mindset, I made that back, in spades. Denton could have dropped off the face of the earth for all I know, or at the time, cared. Cramer...I forgot about him when I heard he accepted a CEO position somewhere on the west coast. Seattle, I think.

Lucille slides a pan into the oven and pours me more coffee.

Maybe Denton found out Stella’s back in the city and he’s the one who’s hunting her down.

But what’s Denton hoping to keep hidden? Would it matter now? He hasn’t been associated with Maddox Industries for over four years.

After eating a cinnamon roll the size of my head and drinking a pot of coffee, I stumble up to my room. When I left the kitchen, Lucille looked at me out of the corners of her eyes, but she didn’t offer anything more.

She thought what she told me hadn’t sunk in, but it did.

Maybe Stella didn’t leave willingly. But if she didn’t, I have to figure out who made her go, and why.

My faith is still shaken, and I don’t trust her enough to find her and ask. I want to be sure she’s safe, though, and I call the private investigator Clayton recommended all those years ago. I have two assignments: find Stella Mayfair, and track down Richard Denton.