Page 16 of The Queen (Masterpiece Duet 2)
And he isn’t sleeping or eating. He looks like a tornado hit him.
For a while I stayed there, too, hoping we’d find her on campus or in the Emerald. Only when it became clear that she wasn’t anywhere did I have to leave. And I felt a pull toward Tanglewood, as if the answers would be here.
Is it a coincidence that my father and Avery went missing so close together? They really have nothing in common, except for me. In that way they’re parts of the same puzzle. Variables in the same equation. I have to solve this. That’s the only way to bring them back. It’s the only way to find them both. The only way to make sure I don’t disappear as well.
Chapter Ten
Presidents run for office. Dictators steal it. Kings are born, and that’s why it’s the perfect way to describe Damon Scott. He commands any room he enters. He owns the very ground he walks on. And he wears that invisible crown with both pride and resignation, because it’s a bittersweet birthright.
Jonathan Scott ruled the west side of Tanglewood through terror. Everyone knew not to cross him, even a six-year-old girl in elementary school. One with an uncommonly good mind for mathematics. He would have taken me from my sad trailer-park life. He would have turned me into… what? A monster? A whore?
I never found out because Damon sacrificed himself for me.
Does that excuse him for turning into a monster?
For turning into a whore?
He leads me up the stairs to the room I know is his bedroom. The room where he once cradled me in his arms after his father attacked me. Are there more half-naked people in that large bed? Are they dancing and having sex like the ones downstairs?
The closed wooden door doesn’t provide any hints to what’s inside.
Damon turns the latch. The silence is almost tangible, a wild relief after the chaos below. I suck in a deep breath from even the nearness to it—to calm and quiet.
He nods his head, a small gesture of chivalry at odds with the party downstairs.
I step into the room, dragging my little suitcase behind me. It suddenly feels unbearably intimate—the secondhand luggage with my clothes inside. My panties and my little bottles of shampoo that I took out in the airport security line. All of that in Damon Scott’s bedroom, as if I plan to stay with him. As if we’re lovers.
“The chances of being found reduce at an exponential rate every day in the case of missing persons.”
My words ring in the air, testament to my lack of social graces. Other women can swing their hips and smile in that seductive way. Other women are downstairs.
Damon leans against the wall, looking unmoved by my words. “What makes you think she’s missing?”
I blink. “Because she’s gone. She’s not in her apartment. Not on campus.”
“I mean, what makes you think she left against her will? Were there signs of a struggle? A note written in blood? What makes you think she didn’t leave on her own?”
I’m standing near the door, unable to move closer. Unable to leave. “Why would she do that?”
“Why wouldn’t she?” he counters, as casual as if we’re debating whether it will rain today. The clouds are heavy. They might pass through. “Maybe everything wasn’t perfect with Gabriel Miller.”
Goose bumps rise on my skin, because everything wasn’t perfect. She was worried about Gabriel, worried and too afraid to tell him. I can’t help but think one of these days he’s going to go away and not come back. Instead she was the one who went away.
“Why wouldn’t Gabriel tell you about her?”
“You’d have to ask him.”
“I’m asking you. I thought you were friends.” Gabriel had been here, in the Den, the day that Damon brought my wet and shivering body here. The day he’d brought me back to life.
Damon unfolds himself from the wall, standing taller than he did even five minutes ago. This man commands more than a room. He could move an army. And he approaches me like I’m his enemy. “Darling,” he says softly. “I let you leave this city. I let you leave me.”
His desire is electric, a live current through my whole body, from my core spreading out to my fingertips. “You had nothing to do with it.”
He ignores that. “And now here you are with your Bambi eyes, acting like you didn’t just walk into the dark fucking forest. What am I supposed to do with you?”
I swallow. “You could help me find Avery.”
A small smile. “I thought you wanted me to find your father.”
“Can’t we do both?”
“Maybe. Maybe not. What if you could only pick one, baby genius? What’s the calculation you use to weigh a human life? Did they teach you that in college?”
There’s lead in my stomach, a heavy weight full of worry and guilt. And a terrible fear that I’m somehow the cause of this. “It’s been seven days. That’s how long Avery’s been gone.”
