Black Collar Queen (Black Collar Syndicate Book 2) (11 page)

She stands behind the
glass, ignoring the buzzing phone in her bag, and the concerned security guard
behind her, watching until Seth's car is swallowed by the gleaming taillights
of the city.
 

Chapter 14
.
New York City. November 1
^st
 

Rama
Is Watching Her
, his dark eyes patiently curious. She didn’t tell him where she
wanted to go—just that she needed him to meet her. That had been enough to
bring him from Bamboo and his own syndicate concerns to her side. She’s been
fluctuating—pushing him away and pulling him close, needy and distant. It’s maddening,
but he’s being patient—trying to understand the princess. She’s been through so
much change in the past year, and she is still so young.

He arrived alone, in
low-slung jeans, and a black cable-knit sweater, hands in his pockets and his
hair in his eyes. Dressed down, without his security detail, Rama is easy to
lose in the city—an attractive young professional.
 

Emma tugs nervously at
her sleeves. She’s in a pale blue sweater with wide sleeves, black skinny
jeans, and low boots. She looks impossibly young, with her blue eyes wide and
strawberry curls blowing in the wind. Innocent.
 

“Emma,” Rama murmurs as
she turns them down another street. She glances at him, sidelong. The Asian
prince hasn’t pressed for answers but they can both feel the tension, the
questions, hanging between them. She gives him a quick smile and pulls a small
set of keys out as she climbs the stairs to a large, stately brownstone. Rama
stares for a long moment as she unlocks the front door and pushes it open.
 

Then he climbs the steps
to the impressive private home, and follows her inside.
 

It smells wrong. The air
is musty and stagnant with the heavy scent of wet ash clinging to
everything—like no one has been here in months. Since that dinner party that
changed everything and her mother vanished completely. Emma certainly hasn’t
been back to her childhood home. She assigned a security detail to watch it,
and kept her distance.

“What are we doing,
mali
?” Rama asks, and his voice grounds
her as memories threaten.
 

“I need to get into
Mother’s safe,” she says.
 

Rama makes a soft noise
of surprise, but he doesn’t say anything to stop her as she pushes past him and
up the stairs. She ignores the living room and the dusty bar with its memories
of drinking alone, and her cousins. Instead, she angles for the bedroom
upstairs.
 

Beth’s room is as
untouched as the rest of the house. It makes her skin crawl. There is the
undeniable stamp of her mother on everything, and despite the fury she feels,
there is a small part of her that whispers that she is doing something wrong,
invading Beth’s space. She silences it and moves to the large, framed picture
of Isaac hanging over the bed.
 

“Who is that?” Rama
asks, curious as he stands behind her.
 

Emma shrugs and says,
voice flat, “My brother.”
 

She turns away before
she can see his expression—she doesn’t want to see the knowledge of who Isaac
was, what he meant to the syndicate, in Rama’s dark eyes, doesn’t want this
piece of her life to be already handed to him by Caleb.
 

On the rare days when
missing Caleb doesn’t make it hard to breathe, she wonders if she doesn’t hate
him a little, because Rama loved him first.
 

She climbs onto the bed
and swirls the dials of the safe with quick ease, until the tumblers slip free
and the door opens.
 

It’s been cleaned out.
No matter what the house looks like—how neglected and abandoned it appears—Beth
has been back since that night. All of the cash and papers, her fake
passport—everything is gone.
 

“Shit,” she murmurs,
falling back on her heels in defeat. She steps off the bed, and Rama catches
her hand, steadying her as the heel of one boot twists. She offers him a
distracted smile as she retracts her hand and heads for the bedroom door. “I
want to try her office.”
 

“Emma? The
picture?”
 

She hesitates in the
doorway, and looks back, at Isaac dethroned, even in this pathetically small
way. “Leave it,” she says and turns away.
 

Emma can feel Rama’s
surprise rippling along her skin as he follows her downstairs. She doesn’t want
to face it, or the quiet censure in his eyes.
 

There is something
deeply vulnerable about returning to a place where you were forgotten and
unhappy.
 

She shoves the thought
aside, and steps into the office. It is pathetically easy to jimmy the file
cabinets open. She isn’t surprised to find them empty. Beth was never good at
keeping things from her daughter, but she wasn’t so stupid that she would leave
incriminating evidence behind.
 
She would
burn everything before she bolted to whatever hole she was hiding in. Emma
mutters a soft curse, and picks up the phone on her mother’s desk. Without much
hope, she hits redial.
 

The phone rings three
times before a cool female voice answers. The voice is vaguely familiar, and
sharply impatient. It tickles at her memory, but she hangs up without saying
anything and stares into empty space. Where the fuck is she hiding?

“What is it?” Rama asks,
quietly.

Emma lets out a
hysterical laugh. There is so much to say, and she needs to talk to Seth— but
what comes out of her mouth is a broken noise. “She hates me.”
 

“She hates Seth. You are
merely a casualty in that war,” Rama says, soft and soothing.
 

“You’re wrong. Mother
loved
Isaac. She didn’t have time to
love anyone else—not me, and not Daddy. She hated me, for not being Isaac. For
living when he died. For being something other than a Morgan. She would see me
dead before she saw me working with Seth. And now…” She laughs again, and there
is a bitter edge to it that makes Rama flinch. “She’s gone, and we have no
fucking clue where she is or what she’ll do. She could expose us, Rama. And
until we find her, we can’t stop that.”

Rama stares at her, at
the panic in her eyes. She’s shaking and pulling away from him. “I need to go
see Seth,” she murmurs.
 

“I’m here, Emma. Talk to
me.”
 

She stares at him, and
he’s stunned to see tears standing in her eyes.
 

“She hated me,” Emma
says again, so softly he almost doesn’t hear it.
 

He reaches for her, but
Emma pulls back and kneels down, fumbling at the floor to reveal a hidden
cubby. She pulls out the small safe hidden there and unlocks it. She can feel
his surprise and she offers a bitter smile. “Mother could never bother to keep
her combinations and passwords safe from me. I wasn’t a threat in her eyes,
even when she actually bothered to see me.”
 

She flips open the lid,
and lets out a little sigh. There are still papers with the Morgan letterhead,
personal documents, Beth’s marriage license. Emma flips though it quickly, but
it’s a cursory search. There is nothing in a few letters between Mikie and Beth
that can hurt them now.
 
A picture is
paper clipped to Isaac’s birth certificate, and Emma pries it loose, looking at

it.
 

It’s old. A man holding
a baby asleep on his shoulder. There is no note or label, just a worn edge that
tells Emma how often Beth must have held this.
 

“Why does my mother have
a picture of Remi holding Isaac as a baby?” she asks softly. Rama makes a soft
noise, and she shoves the thought aside, flipping through the rest of it. There
is nothing about her father. Nothing sentimental at all, aside from that one
picture.
 

From the contents of
this box, it would be easy to believe Beth had only one child. And that thought
stabs at her, painfully. She blinks back the tears, and shoves everything in
her purse, grabbing the keys Beth kept in the top drawer of the desk. Then she
turns. “Let’s go,” she says abruptly.
 

Rama moves quickly,
startling her as he cages Emma in his arms, her back to the wall of the office.
She makes a startled noise, and then goes still. There’s something different
about him as he stands over her. Almost predatory, but so gentle it makes her
breath catch. His head comes down and he brushes his lips against her. Once.
Twice. Again, until she’s dropped her bag and is clutching a handful of his
sweater, pulling him closer.
 

“She was an idiot,
mali
,” he whispers into her ear, and she
makes a noise, a sob that he ignores as he deepens the kiss. Wordlessly telling
her that she is loved. Until she finally stops shaking and her breathing is
short and choppy for an altogether different reason. Then he gentles the kiss
and pulls back. Smiles at her. “Come on. Let’s get the fuck out of here, huh?”

She laughs, a startled
noise and rubs her nose quickly. He looks away as she grabs her bag and wipes
her face, putting herself back together.
 

As they leave the
brownstone, he has to wonder about the stupidity of a woman lucky enough to
have Emma, and bitter enough to overlook that brilliant gift.
 

Chapter 15.
Morgan Enterprises, New York City. November 5
^th
  

Vera
Holds Her Head High
as she cuts her way through the lobby of the Morgan headquarters.
She can feel eyes all over her, but she doesn't make contact unless they come
directly in her path. When they do, she just smiles and nods, so demure for the
dark lips. She made sure to pick a dress that was conservative, but that
wrapped her curves like it was made for only her. She lets her hips switch as
she approaches the elevator. She's been here before, when it was still Gabriel
Morgan behind that big redwood desk, so sexy in his suit. She lets those
memories play for just a flash, until the doors open before her, and she steps
inside.

The elevator is not
crowded, and so the ride doesn't take long. Her nerves try to rise. Is she
making an incredibly stupid move? Or is she making one that is on par with his
flinging her into the public eye, all the while knowing she would never deny
him? She takes a steadying breath, and runs her fingers through her long, dark
red hair. Too late to matter now.

When the doors open she
strolls into the office as though she comes here all the time, like they will
recognize her face and usher her through. The receptionist looks startled when
Vera approaches her. Vera smiles down at her as the receptionist stutters
through a greeting.

“I need to see Seth.”

“I—I'm sorry, ma'am, do
you have an appointment?”

“I don't.”

“Well, uh, Mr. Morgan
only sees people by appointment. I . . . can schedule you one.”

The receptionist stares
wide-eyed, fidgets, and rolls back a couple feet in her chair. Vera shifts her
smile to one of pity. She says, “Why don't you just let him know I'm here.”

“He stepped out.”

This voice comes from
over Vera's left shoulder. Vera turns to find Emma Morgan, with her arms
crossed as she leans against the doorframe of her office. Her expression is
carefully blank as she watches Vera.

Vera's expression
flatlines to match Emma's. She says, sweetly, “I can come back.”

Emma smiles, almost
predatory. She straightens and beckons Vera to her office, completely at ease
here. Not the forced confidence Vera’s clinging to—but smooth assurance that
she is untouchable.
 

“Nonsense,” says Emma,
all false warmth and smiles. “Anything Seth can do for you, I can, too.” She
hesitates and lifts one eyebrow, a silent challenge.
 

Vera smirks, but she
swallows the reply that wants to be said. This is her first confrontation alone
with this Morgan, the youngest and protected daughter. Emma stares at her with
cool confidence. The Morgan daughter is ten years younger than Vera is. And
she's the seasoned reporter. But she still doesn’t want to tangle with the
young queen.
 
She says, “I appreciate
that, but this isn't a business call. I'll just try some other time.”

Now Emma lets a smile
play, but its dry amusement. Her tone is a little firmer when she says,
“Please, join me for a moment; we haven't properly met. Unless, of course, you
don't have time.”

A challenge, carefully
placed. The recognition hits Vera too quickly for her to process, and so her
eyebrows rise and her smile widens. Emma's balance of personality between Caleb
and Seth is remarkable. She wants to remind the young queen that she knows the
Morgans fairly well, but she doesn't.

“Of course,” she hears
herself say. “Obviously, I have a few minutes.” Then she is walking to the office
opposite of the one she had hoped to be in.
 

“Would you like a drink
or anything?” Emma asks as she closes her door.

The “anything” is left
hanging out in the open. As a reporter, Vera is not akin to accepting gifts
from anyone, and the reporter is most useful to her presently, so she says,
“No, thank you.”

Emma is forced to take
the next move, so she sits in her chair, that of a co-chairman, with all the
calm of protocol. She sips her vodka cranberry, and her expression reminds Vera
of a poker player, without the sunglasses. Vera's smile is relaxed, practiced,
and so the two of them balance the very professional air with which they have
decided to regard each other.

Emma's gaze never wavers
as she says, “I know what you are to my cousin, and that is none of my
business, but I need to make sure that you understand things. Every decision
made is partially mine. You are under protection at his insistence, but you
might respect the third-eye view in this situation. The business you have with
him is also mine.”

Vera's lips spread like
a humid night. She crosses her legs, dress shifting as it would have for Seth,
and she leans forward. Her long lashes shadow the heat in her gaze. She says,
“I don't work for Seth. I do not work for you. Anything that is between Seth
and me has nothing to do with you.”

Emma tenses a
fraction—one so small that if Vera had not known Caleb, Seth, and their father,
she would have missed it. Emma forces the tension down, and says, “Loyalty is a
rather more vague term in our world than you're used to, and I assure you
everything is connected. Our business is not limited to this office. Just keep
in mind that I am not wowed by your pussy.”

Vera laughs. She can't
help it. In her years of reporting, she'd be hard-pressed to find any source
who had ever put it so simply. And so simply, it puts her off guard. She leans
forward so that her moderate cleavage begs someone to want more. She reaches
across the desk with measured speed, but Emma doesn't move, doesn’t react aside
from a flare of anger in her gaze when Vera brushes her knuckles softly against
her cheek, and says, “Trust me, I've already thought about that.”

Then Vera lets her smirk
melt into a one-sided beast, so reminiscent of Seth. She stands, taking her
shoulder bag with her gracefully, and she says, “It was so nice to meet you,”
as she lets herself out of the office.

For a long moment, after
Vera closes the door, she just stares. She can feel the attention of the two
receptionists, but she ignores them. On the list of fucks she gives, those two
broads don't even register.
 

Squaring off with Emma
may not have been the smartest thing she's ever done, but it sure was fun. Like
the time she strolled her rookie ass into Gabriel Morgan's office for an
interview, and ended up bent over his desk. She laughs to herself as she turns
toward the elevator.