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Chapter 17 : Not On Your Life
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Empire of Dominance Chapter 18 : What If?
Raven had been in the office a full two hours before Andre and Sharon arrived the next day.She waved at her coworkers as they stepped out of the elevator.“Morning!”“Morning,” Sharon said, a bit more slowly. “…How long have you been here?”“Not long,” Raven lied, smiling.“Weren’t you here early yesterday too…?”“Not that early.”Andre put her coffee on her desk in front of her, and Raven leaned forward as if to take it—but also to cover the content of the folder in front of her with her arm.“Hey, don’t take this the wrong way, honey,” said Andre gently. “But you look like a candle burning at both ends. The bags under your eyes would put a raccoon to shame.”Raven forced a laugh. “Yikes. Is there a right way to take that?”“We’re worried.” Sharon was blunt and warm at once, and Raven wondered what she’d done to deserve such a generous and open woman as her friend. “You’re working yourself too hard, Raven.”Privately, Raven agreed. Getting into the office so ear
Empire of Dominance Chapter 19 : Power Struggle
Raven was exactly where she was supposed to be at 10 pm: standing at Kade’s door. She hadn’t delivered her findings at the end of the work day, but not for the same reason she hadn’t been delivering them for the past few days. She wanted to do this in Kade’s space—in his home. She’d denied him Monday. She knew she couldn’t do so again. That was outside her power. But she could demonstrate her knowledge, her capability—as if that were somehow a counterbalance to her powerlessness in… other regards.Kade buzzed her in as usual, wordlessly. When she walked into the penthouse, there was a single, absurdly red long-stemmed rose lying alone on the countertop.Something settled in her stomach. She’d been entertaining the possibility—the terrible possibility—that she’d been wrong, and the roses hadn’t been sent by Kade at all but rather by the subject of her investigation as some kind of emotional sabotage. Nothing felt impossible just now. But the sight of the single rose settled an
Empire of Dominance Chapter 20 : Don't Disappoint Me
She went as ordered at 6pm, the diamonds burning a hole in her briefcase the way that the folder had. The bill on rideshares was getting absurd, but there was no way she was walking down the sidewalk, however short a distance, with this small fortune in her bag. Besides anything else, she’d probably just combust from anxiety. Or disbelief. Or anger.What was Kade doing? So much for “nothing romantic.” Where the hell did she stand with him now?She punched the call button on his private apartment entrance, feeling as if someone were shining an absurd, cartoonish spotlight on her: behold, a very confused quasi-fuck-buddy! Maybe!The door buzzed open, and she took yet another one of the longest elevator rides of her life.“Good. You’re on time.”Kade’s voice was obsidian-sharp as ever, but he sounded—different. In an instant, she saw why.He stood in front of her, adjusting the sleeves of an extremely stylish and extremely expensive tuxedo shirt.Raven stared at him in pure,
Empire of Dominance Chapter 21 : Burt Johnson
To Raven, it felt incredibly funny—and incredibly appropriate—that her first date with Kade was a farce.The limo pulled up in front of the massive colonnades of the city’s major fine arts museum. Raven focused in, trying not to think about Brandon and their promised date from whole days and lifetimes ago. This was too important to be distracted. Or bitter.Kade was stiffly upright on the bench beside her, elbow resting against the headrest beside him. His eyes were overbright and miles away in thought.“We’re here,” she said, gently trying to nudge him back to the present. “Any tips?”Kade leveled that cold gaze at her. Back in the moment. “Don’t flinch. These people can smell fear.”“So can I,” smiled Raven. “How’s my lipstick?”“Bloody.”“Perfect.”His hand slid along her leg, almost absently, as his fingers flexed against her thigh. Better than any pep talk.The limo door was opened from the outside, and Kade slid out ahead of her. He buttoned his tuxedo jacket wi
Empire of Dominance Chapter 22 : Signature Style
Raven must have blacked out for a second in a moment of flat, absolute shock.When she came back to herself, everyone was screaming. The world was a blast of noise and motion all at once. She was pinned and laid limp under the massive, dead weight of Burt Johnson’s corpse.He’d been about to tell her the truth. She’d been so close, and someone had killed him. Just like that. Brutal. Efficient.Someone was listening to every word.Which meant they’d heard her questioning him.So… why wasn’t she dead too?She couldn’t move. Someone was shouting orders over all the screaming. Shadows whirled overhead past the vacant pits of Burt Johnson’s empty eyes.Suddenly, his weight was yanked off of her in one gargantuan tug of force. Raven gasped in a breath—had she stopped breathing? Johnson’s blood was going rapidly cold on her skin. For a long second, that was the most real, tangible thing in the whole world.Then she was looking into Kade Sinclair’s dark, dark eyes. For a strang
Empire of Dominance Chapter 23 : Burn Them To the Ground
When Raven climbed back into Kade’s limo at the end of the night, she was in drab, mostly shapeless sweats the police forensics team had given her in exchange for the red dress, which was now evidence.She made one brief protest, entirely hopeless even as she said it, that her going back to Kade’s apartment now would look incredibly suspicious given that they weren’t supposed to have any kind of personal connection. But Kade didn’t even deign to answer. She understood why.Ever since he’d revealed how he knew the hitman’s signature, he hadn’t said a word. Maybe he didn’t trust his own voice. She didn’t know. But there was a dangerous destructible quality to him now in this vicious silence, that she didn’t know how to approach it or dare to break it.A hitman, she thought for the thousandth time. Like something out of a movie. Were there really hitmen in real life? Wandering around the city with sniper rifles?Obviously, yes. This simply wasn’t a world she knew.But Kade did.
Empire of Dominance Chapter 24 : Long Live the King
Kade’s POVKade was a quiet child: it came from being the only son of such a powerful man, or so he told himself later in life. After that powerful man was gone. After he was left alone in the aftermath, at the helm of the mammoth company that his father had left in his hands.But a side effect of being a quiet child was that Kade learned to listen very well. Voices and expressions became transparent to him, as if they were a language that he’d learned by heart. He, in turn, learned not to give anything away in that language, at least most of the time. He became a vault, all emotions locked below a layer of bedrock.He was the one son and heir of the Sinclair family, and that was the least that was expected of him.His father was a precise and pristine man, a man whose suits were always impeccable and whose voice carried gravity in whatever room he was in. He used that voice sparingly; Kade learned from him well.His mother was pure elegance, a woman who never laughed at the
Empire of Dominance Chapter 25 : Power
Raven’s POVRaven closed her laptop with an exhausted sigh. It was the third day of her confinement in the penthouse. The day was winding down, and she was crawling out of her skin.She had been working from “home”—home being coded for the guest room of Kade’s luxurious penthouse. There was a weighty desk in one of the suite’s side rooms, and she’d set up a private command center there, where Kade delivered her daily files from the office. Which he, of course, could still go to.This wasn’t the way she’d expected to be invited to spend longer than a single night in the luxury of Kade’s penthouse. But to be honest, she couldn’t complain about the amenities. It was the captivity she couldn’t stand.After Burt Johnson’s death, Kade had been managing fallout with steely calm. The news had been all over it: she’d been watching the news cycle return to it again and again over the last seventy-two hours. The murder had been showy, public, unabashed. They must have known the media w
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