Empire of Hate (Empire #3) by Rina Kent

Anyway, Nicole is now avoiding everyone, walking in the background, almost as if she’s floating on air.

She’s the type who makes her presence known anywhere she goes.

Fucking anywhere.

She’s hot and the worst part is that she knows it.

She dresses for it in her designer clothes and bags and heels.

Not only that, but she flings it all over social media, too. As if she’s a model looking for representation.

Though it’s beneath her. As she says in her snobbish fucking tone.

After all, she’s an aristocrat who only knows how to look down her haughty nose at people. Unlike Astrid, who never embraced that side of her bloodline.

Nicole, however, breathes that life. The prim and proper side of it. The arrogance that comes with it. The extravagance that coats it like honey. And she has the looks that go with it.

She’s a bombshell with legs that go for miles and hair so blonde, it’s more blinding than the sun and just as burning. Her body is slender, with curves that are made for grabbing onto while I fuck her senseless.

I pause, internally shaking my head.

Did I just think about fucking Nicole? What in the bloody hell was that all about?

These ominous bloody thoughts should stay in my subconscious where I can’t even reach them, let alone entertain them.

My attention, though hazy and a bit blurry, returns to the present when Nicole slips into a secluded room on the ground floor. Soon after, Chris throws a quick look around, then follows her in.

So he’s the one she dressed up like a sin waiting to happen for. He’s the one she’s been taking those shots for.

I wish it was like ten years ago and it was about her weird fixation on peaches.

I wish I hadn’t already painted a picture in my head about what’s going on inside.

But I did.

And all I can see in the midst of my now red vision is Chris removing Nicole’s fuck-me dress and heels and pounding into her until she’s biting her lips and screaming.

That’s fucked up. My thoughts. The accuracy of the image. The rage that’s covering my vision.

The fact that I don’t want anyone to see or hear Nicole while she’s in the throes of pleasure.

I should find Astrid and leave. I’m in no mood to party or fuck or anything.

But that’s not what I do.

My legs are leading me straight to the room and I can’t stop them.

Or maybe I don’t want to.

I jam the knob open and I don’t know why my heart squeezes. Like that first time when I was thirteen and saw Dad kissing a woman that wasn’t Mother, teenage style, while smearing her face with all types of food.

Or the time Zach was screaming at Mother for letting Dad get away with it and she admitted that she had to pretend she didn’t know because her family didn’t want her back and she had nowhere to go.

Oh, and he’ll take us away from her.

I never hated the world more than at that moment.

Never wished I could gut-punch Dad and shove him in the nearest dumpster.

Not only for hurting Mother but for also turning her into someone so absorbed in her pain that she failed to see me or my brother anymore.

So in a way, we lost both parents.

It’s the same feeling of betrayal now—as if someone I gave a piece of me to is burning it alive.

Which is fucking ridiculous. Nicole and I are nothing.

If anything, I hate how much of a bitch she’s become. I hate her band of mean girls, who think being vicious is the new trend.

And yet, I can’t chase away the bitter taste from the back of my throat.

Nicole is lying on the bed and Chris is hovering over her, his hand on his belt.

“Mind if I watch?” I’m taken aback by the slur in my voice.

Chris’s attention slides to me, but Nicole doesn’t even stir.

No idea why that makes me rage like a bitter fucker on pills.

“Get out, Sterling,” Chris bites out. “Why are you ruining my fun?”

I lazily walk to a chair that’s opposite the bed and that’s when I get a glimpse of Nicole’s face.

Her eyes are closed. Is she pretending to be asleep after she heard my voice?

Something doesn’t feel right.

Instead of sitting down, I stride to Chris, who’s now standing to his full height by the side of the bed. The tension in his shoulders resembles a bodybuilder on crack. He probably is, considering his unnaturally bloodshot eyes and the twitch in his fingers.

Why would she even choose this…this crackhead cunt who has more drugs in his system than an eighties’ rock star?

Not that I have a say in who the fuck she chooses, but it’s the weird buzzing in my ears coupled with the hotness in my chest that’s acting now.

“Shouldn’t she be awake for the fun to happen?”

“She likes being woken up with dick, what’s in it for you?”

My teeth grind together and the unbearable heat burns up a notch. “So it’s a habit of yours to wake her up with dick?”

He jerks his chin with a nod.

“Funny, because I don’t remember you being her boyfriend.”

“She’s my side bitch. Are you done questioning your senior?”

“No, not yet.” The fact that he called her a side bitch makes me ball my hands into fists.

Nicole isn’t the type who’d settle for being anyone’s side anything.