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Chapter 20 : Don't Disappoint Me
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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
Empire of Dominance Chapter 26 : MInd Games
Day five in the penthouse rolled to a close like a long, exhausted breath. Raven paced restlessly from room to room. She’d gotten in the habit of leaving the big living room flatscreen TV on, just to have another voice in the apartment throughout the day. She felt pathetic, with daytime infomercials, news programs, and weather reports as her only company.She started humming to herself, more out of nervous frustration than anything else. Kade still wasn’t back yet. It was getting on past six o’clock.There would likely be another grand dinner tonight delivered from one of the city’s best restaurants. Likely another evening of incredible luxury. She’d trade it all to feel the wind on her face. Just for a few minutes.But there was very, very little chance of that. Kade had stopped allowing even his private chef into the apartment. Instead of waning with the passing days, his paranoia only seemed to be mounting—though she doubted anyone but her could sense it as such. To everyon
Empire of Dominance Chapter 27 : Findings
After she heard Kade leave the apartment the next morning, Raven pulled her laptop and all her files from her windowless back office to the living room, where the expansive open concept space made her feel less like she was in a box. She wanted badly to be able to open the curtains and look out over the city, but she knew what Kade would think of that. She sat cross-legged in front of the low super-modern coffee table, opened her laptop, turned on the TV at low volume, and got to work.To her surprise, there was a small ping when her computer booted up. An email? Nobody ever used her work email, except for the automatic messages about lunch catering deliveries and company-wide announcements. All her work was done in the office and face-to-face.She triple checked her VPNs before going to her inbox.It was from Kade. Between their official company accounts.“What the hell?” she murmured aloud. The subject line read: “Regarding your performance.”She clicked it open and r
Empire of Dominance Chapter 28 : Sitting Across from a Hitman
The word “hitman” hovered at the front of her mind as she opened the file Kade had delivered to her.The police report was thorough. It would have been convincing if she didn’t know what she knew.She felt explosive with restlessness. She tried not to count the days she’d been in this apartment, staring at the inside of the curtain. Day after day after day after day.This was the only place she could put her restlessness, her energy. Her desperation.Again and again, Hector Lyonell’s name stood out to her against the yellowed paper of the report. These were Hector Lyonell’s words, his description of the scene, his impression and conclusions. Typed up and printed and shoved in a file.It was surreal to know what was behind those simple, cut-and-dried reporting. She would believe it—and that terrified her. These people were so good at moving in the shadows while moving in plain sight. Even as an ordinary citizen, she could have filed a Freedom of Information Act request for
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