Empire of Desire by Rina Kent

“You weren’t answering or returning my calls, so I had to come and see for myself.”

Nate doesn’t pick up his mom’s calls? Now that I think about it, he rarely appears in public with his parents anymore, even though he’s their only child now.

“When Susan told me you got married, I thought it was to that other one. What was her name again? Right, Aspen. Even though she has no origins, she at least has made a name for herself and I could work on her. I could make an image for her. But you married this…this…little girl? Kingsley’s daughter? What were you thinking?”

I nearly swallow down all my milkshake and I don’t bother with a straw either, but it doesn’t quench the fire spreading in my throat. All her words make me burn. The fact that she was fine with him marrying Aspen. That Aspen is the right choice for him. That I’m a little girl.

God, I hate that and my age, and I think I hate Debra, too.

And—oh, Susan. I fucking despise her. Of course, she’d go tattle to Debra because she didn’t get what she wanted.

“It’s to protect the firm and King’s assets,” Nate says in that disturbed calm, the one that seems to be at the edge.

“It’s still registered, Nathaniel. People will find out and I’ll have to take care of the rumors and speculations. Do you know what they’ll say about you? They’ll say you wanted a kid, that you were attracted to her when she was underage and growing up before your eyes. They’ll call you a deviant, a pedophile, and a damn predator!”

I flinch with each of her words. I flinch so violently that I spill some of my milkshake onto the counter and I’m clinking my nails. Hard. Fast.

Oh my God. She’s right. That’s what the press will say. They’ll tear either me or Nate apart. They’ll say I seduced him or he preyed on me.

And they’ll definitely go for the latter because he’s Nathaniel Weaver. The prince of the Weaver empire and a senator’s son. So they’ll want to bring him down and will try every trick under the sun to do it.

Every ugly trick.

The press loves his family. They stalk them. They write articles about them all the time.

Sebastian brought his girlfriend of Japanese descent to an event one time and they went nuts about the couple. They even wrote disgusting articles alleging that he’s with her for publicity because having an Asian girlfriend makes him look good.

But anyone who’s seen them in private knows how much Sebastian worships that woman. He loves her with a passion that could be sensed in the air and tasted with the subtle yet possessive ways he touches her.

They’re one of the most badass couples on earth and no one would convince me otherwise. Definitely not the rotten media who spew lies for their own benefits.

Anyway, the Weavers are in the limelight all the time. And the press wouldn’t hesitate to bring Nate and his family down. His parents will have to disown him to keep their image intact and—

“She’s twenty years old and not an underage kid. Stop looking at her or treating her as a clueless child, and you know what? Fuck the press.”

A breath I didn’t know I was holding whooshes out of me. It’s so long that I feel the burn in my lungs and the ashes of the fire settling at the base of my throat.

I stare back at Nate because I’m thankful. He didn’t need to say those words, but he did, and now, I can finally breathe.

“Nathaniel!” Debra clutches her pearls. “This is serious. I will not allow you to endanger how far your father and I have come.”

“I’m also serious, Mom. If you see it as a problem, prevent it beforehand or afterward with your media play. Otherwise, I don’t give a fuck. Gwyneth is old enough to make her own decisions and neither you nor anyone else has a say in it.”

Debra twists her lips.

Me, however? I want to hug him, but I can’t, because he’s an asshole and I can’t have feelings for him.

Because even though he’s standing up for me, he’s doing it in a way a guardian would. In a way where I’m just under his care.

Where I depend on him.

“I don’t approve of this, and neither does Brian,” Debra announces. “You need to divorce her.”

“With all due respect, I couldn’t give a fuck about what either of you think.”

“Nathaniel! How dare you speak to me in that tone?”

I sense it then, the hardening of his walls. They’re turning into pure metal with each second and I want to stand and check on him, make sure he’s okay, but his demeanor stops me. This Nate is kind of scary, and it’s not the type of fear I’d jump straight toward. This type is darker and causes my spine to jerk into a line.

“Leave, Mom,” he grinds out through his teeth. “And don’t come back here again.”

“I’m not moving until you promise to do the right thing.”

“The right thing? What’s that, Mom? Is it throwing me at the staff to raise me? Or maybe it’s trying every trick under the sun to get rid of me when you were pregnant with me. You even took the very drugs you look down your nose on, right? But I was stubborn and insolent enough to come to life. So you decided neglect was the next thing you’d use to kill me. Nick was already there, so my presence wasn’t needed, but I lived and he fucking died and that’s not the right thing. It should’ve been the other way around. I should’ve been in that crash. Isn’t that what you told Dad back then? Why did Nicholas die? Why not Nathaniel? Why did it have to be Nicholas?”