Feathers and Thorne Series Books 1 - 3: The Complete Collection

Chapter Six

Carter

I leave the house while Isabella is still asleep. It took some time for her to fall back asleep, but the news of our new house was good enough for her to relax. She went back to sleep in my arms, and I held her for as long as possible. Now it’s Ernesto and I fighting morning traffic, but there’s too much on my mind right now. He gives me a knowing look from the driver’s seat, watching as I meander through my thoughts in the seat beside him.

“What’s going on?” he asks at last. “Is this silence about the election loss?”

“No,” I say. “Well, not really. I will find a new way to handle Killian Hughes. There’s just something that happened after the election party. It has my mind in a frenzy.”

“What was it?”

“There was a woman, a journalist. She didn’t even ask me anything, but there was a look in her eyes. Something that told me that I’d seen her before. I don’t know, Ernesto. It’s odd, but I think I know her.”

He shrugs it off. “Okay, so what’s the issue? You know a woman in Manhattan. What else is new?”

I lean on the door, thinking about her dark hair and her curvy, short posture. “It’s weird, but I can’t shake this bad feeling now. Even Isabella noticed her.”

“Did she bring it up?”

“She did, but I didn’t know what to say. I can’t just say I think I know who she is. I can’t even recall her name, let alone who she was to me. It was just a feeling I got. Isabella asked who she was, but I didn’t say anything about it. I just dropped it. She wants to focus on her new project, and I just want her to get into some kind of new rhythm.”

He pulls the car against the sidewalk of my building, but I don’t move yet. I’m still perturbed over what I saw on the steps of the venue. Somehow, I know that woman. I just can’t pin down how or from when.

“You need to chill out more,” Ernesto groans. “You’re so stingy lately. Go get some work done. I’ll hang out in the city, check on the movers at the penthouse, and then come back and get you in a few hours.”

I nod at his plan of action. “Yeah, I guess that’s a good idea. I want to help her navigate the new house, make sure she’s happy with it.”

“And if she isn’t?”

“Then I’ll buy all of Manhattan and let her pick one that she does like.”

He chuckles with that response, and I duck out onto the pedestrian-filled sidewalk. I’m antsy to get back to work, to get into the running of operations on the ground floor again, but it’s weird not having Isabella by my side. She’s been with me through everything, good and bad, and I feel a strangle of knots in my heart that makes me feel like I should still be with her right now.

I push through my hesitations, walking into my office to see someone already sitting on my couch. I’m slightly peeved that security let this woman by, but given her appearance, they probably figured it was another fling for me to use and toss aside.

I toss my things on the desk and lean back against it. The woman from the gala is laid out on my couch with her feet propped up on the table nearby. She wears cheap heels and dark stockings that don’t go all the way up her thighs, exposing her tanned skin before her skirt attempts to take over the job of keeping her half-decent.

She matches it all with a top that exposes her deep cleavage, the sight of her bra almost showing, more desperate than attractive. She’s in a place of business dressed as if she works on the corner, but that’s hardly my concern right now.

Being this close to her, rather than the distance from where I saw her last night, I can finally trace her features and match them to my memory. Nothing huge calls out to me, but a small beauty mark above the side of her lips is familiar, one I know I’ve kissed in the past.

“Lilian?”

She sits up straight, pushing her chest out more obnoxiously than before. “Aww, I’m flattered, Carter. You acted like you saw a stranger last night.”

“I’m just confused about what you’re doing here,” I sigh, seeing where this is going already. “I haven’t seen you in years. What do you want now?”

“Oh, I should have mentioned it before,” she adds, pulling a notepad out of her large purse and matching it with a ballpoint pen. “I’m a journalist.”

“I’m not interested in giving you a story,” I snip, coming around my desk and falling into the chair. “You can let yourself out now.”

She gives a pathetic pout. “Don’t be silly, baby. I already have the story. In fact, I brought you a little sample.”

As much as I’d like to scold her for that attempt of endearment, I let it slide, watching as she takes a massive file out of her purse and tosses it onto the desk between us.

“Give it a read, Carter.”

Unimpressed already, I flip the file open, first finding a picture that makes my blood boil. The rest doesn’t get much better, either. There are easily two hundred photos in here, nearly all of them taken from a distance, though a few are up close and personal.

My jaw locks as I realize what this tramp is trying to do. “Why do you have all these?”

“I’ve been busy since you fucked me over, Carter,” she sings.

She takes a seat and kicks her heels up on the edge of my desk. I’m tempted to push them off, but my eyes fall back to the stack of photos. When those run dry, it’s a couple thick packets of handwritten notes that I read to myself. She continues chatting in the meantime.

“Now, if you keep digging through those pages, you’ll find the exact time and place of your indiscretions. Not only does it have to do with your salacious history with the women of this city but also your tendencies to be a bit on the rougher side of things.”

I push the file away when I’ve heard enough. “Whore.”

“I wouldn’t say that,” she replies. “I’m the one dangling proof that you’ve slept with almost every brunette in Manhattan, baby.”

Shaking my head, I try to appear unbothered. It doesn’t work. “So what? I’m a man. I like sex. What do you have here but a history of failed dates and meaningless flings?”

Her thin lips curl upright slyly. “It’s just a little bit of defamatory proof, Carter. I know you have a longstanding flavor of the week. What would she think if she saw all these details?”

My heart skips a beat. “She knows my past.”

“Does she really?” She takes the file, flicking it over to the middle so she can pull out a sheet and read from the notes. “He undressed me in his penthouse, threw my back onto the bed, and fucked me for hours on end. I got up in the morning, and he told me to be back that night, but when I came back, he already had a different woman in bed with him.”

I look elsewhere, trying to forget the pain of my past. I’m not proud of my behavior, but I can’t be held hostage by it because I met Isabella, and I love her. She’s the one I want to be around every night, and from the minute I claimed her as mine, I stopped finding relief elsewhere.

“There’s also this fun piece that says some woman was in this office, actually, on her knees while she was sucking your cock, Carter. This was after you first met Isabella Julis, right?”

My brows furrow, worried this witch can read my mind. “Excuse me?”

“What do you need the excuse for? This proves nothing, right, Carter? You said so yourself.”

“I hadn’t made my move on Isabella yet, so that moment isn’t important.”

“It’s very important. When she sees this, she will—”

“You’re fucking dead,” I breathe. “You try to show her a thing or come near her, and I’ll slit your throat.”

She hardly seems fazed by my threat. “Hey, that’s almost like how you used to grab my throat in bed, right?” She stands from her seat, hikes her skirt up even further, and stalks around to my side of the desk. I get ready to push her away, but she falls to her knees, licking her lips while she stares at me from the floor. “Remember when you had me suck your dick, Carter? I came over every day for three weeks. I was the first one that you had seen more than once.”

I lean forward, smiling back at her wickedly. “That doesn’t mean I enjoyed your company, Lilian. You were just cheaper than the hookers uptown.”

I can see my words wound her. It gives me hope that this ordeal will end soon enough. “I might have been cheap, but I was good to you. I did everything you asked, and I took that belt like it was my job, baby. And what did you do to me?”

I lean back, recalling our history from forever ago. “I don’t actually remember.”

She looks more insulted by that than anything else. “I came over to find you fucking my sister in your shower.”

It all comes flooding back to me, the memory of her sister bumping into me in passing, joking about how she’s heard about me from Lilian, and then practically begging to try some of my length for herself. I agreed to it, of course, because I wasn’t looking for feelings and emotions.

I was looking to heal the wound where Brooke’s legacy has scarred me for life.

“So, this is what, exactly? You’re going to hand my sex life to Isabella and then do what? She knows who I used to be. I’m hardly afraid of what you have in those files. I never cared about you or any of the others. But I care about her. That’s what matters.”

She inches forward on her knees, her eyes drifting over me stealthily. “Carter Blackthorne, you think I’m just going to show Isabella and leave it at that? How about I show the whole city… hell, the whole state? I can make this world a living hell for you both. She wouldn’t be able to walk down the sidewalk without everyone knowing that she’s the whore of the month.”

“She isn’t a whore,” I yell, speaking directly into her face. “She’s nothing like you.”

Her head tilts. “Well, if you say so. I can release these details online, and we can both watch and wait for how she reacts. Maybe there are some moments in those letters where you’ve done the same thing to her. I bet it would make her feel violated, don’t you think?”

“Fuck you.”

“Exactly,” she gasps. “That’s all I need to make this all go away.”

I push my chair back nearly a foot. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“Fuck me, Carter, and I’ll ditch the story. I will give you every copy and every photo down to the originals. I’ll give you everything you want, and all I need is for you to fuck me one more time.”

“Get the fuck out of here,” I say through my locked jaw. “If I see you again, it’s going to be very, very bad, Lilian.”

She leans forward, her skirt coming up more while she throws her ass into the air. I look away, the sight of her thong coming into view. She pushes her arms together, making her breasts look bigger than ever, and I can only move my focus along the far wall, uninterested in her attempts to bait me into trouble.

The door flies open, and I nearly jump out of my seat in a panic. For some reason, I expected Isabella, but instead, it’s Tristan holding a coffee cup. He gives me a concerned look before backing out of the office slowly. He disappears from the glass walls, and I walk to the other end of the office.

“Get out of here before I throw you out the window,” I warn.

She finally gives in, gathering her things before she saunters from my office. “I’ll be back, Carter Blackthorne. This isn’t over.”

When she’s gone, Tristan barges into the room. I don’t have the energy to face him right now, instead opting to lean my forehead on the bookshelf.

“I’ve pinned you for some pretty bad shit, boss, but I didn’t see you ever cheating on Isabella.”

“Did you see my dick out?” I snap.

He holds his hands up in surrender. “No, that’s fair. But that woman was—”

“She was blackmailing me, dammit.”

“With what, exactly? A blowjob?”

“She’s an old fling I scorned. She wants to do it again, no doubt to ruin things with Isabella. I didn’t partake, of course, but she’s going to write something online about it if I don’t.”

He gives me a blank stare. “So, what are you going to do?”

“The only thing there is to do, Tristan. I’m going to take her down… and not in the way she wants.”