Page 19 of King of Envy

The investigation into the fire.

The goddamn burger I’d ordered from room service earlier.

None of it worked.

In the quiet hours between midnight and dawn, my worst impulses took precedence, and I couldn’t do a damn thing about it.

I turned my head, my eyes so attuned to the dark I could easily make out the curve of Ayana’s shoulder and the gentle swell of her hips beneath the comforter.

She slept so close to the edge she was practically falling off it—a reminder that I wasn’t, and never would be, her fiancé. I was a placeholder on this trip. If Jordan were here, they’d probably be cuddled together like fucking sea otters.

They weren’t moving in together until after the wedding, but I assumed they spent most of their nights in his house.

This was a normal occurrence for him. He wouldn’t blink an eye at going to bed with her every night and waking up next to her every morning.

The thought ground through my head. The darkness closed in to the point where I almost choked on it.

Thankfully, my phone lit up with a silent notification right at that moment and dragged me out of my spiral.

Sean.

I forced a breath through my nose and opened his email, impatient for a distraction. The man slept as few hours as I did, which worked well for our relationship.

His message contained a single sentence.

The files you asked for are attached.

Satisfaction eroded some of my gnawing envy. This was why I paid him enough money to finance a West Village brownstone and his son’s private school tuition. He did his job, and he did it well.

I opened the encrypted documents and scanned the contents. One was a full dossier on Hank Carson. The other was a similar report on his agency, Beaumont Model Management. It was named after its founder and owner, Emmanuelle Beaumont. Ayana had been signed with them her entire modeling career.

After her call with her agent, I’d asked Sean to send me everything he could find on Hank and Beaumont. At first glance, everything looked normal, but my gut told me there was something off about the agency.

I hadn’t paid much attention to them before, but Ayana’s anxiety over Hank’s call had been a red flag. So was their clean record, now that I was looking at it. Besides the usual complaints of overwork and delayed payments, their profile was almosttooclean.

For an agency that’d been around for two decades, there should be some sort of scandal or rumors of impropriety. This was fashion; the industry was a breeding ground for abusers.

Either Emmanuelle was a saint and Girl Scout rolled into one, or she had a damn good team covering her tracks.

That being said, the dossiers were only the start. There were financial records to sift through, clients to track down, and a complicated web of relationships and favors to untangle.

I’d do that myself. I wanted Sean focused on finding the arson suspect, and anything Ayana-related was mine. No one else touched it.

I exited out of the files and was putting my phone back on the nightstand when she stirred.

I froze.

She mumbled something—maybe I was hearing things, but I could’ve sworn she saidpeanut butter—and rolled over to her other side. The movement brought her within inches of me.

I stiffened. Before I could place some much-needed distance between us, she draped her leg over mine and sighed.

Her bare skin burned through my sweatpants like they weren’t there. My body’s reaction was so visceral, so instantaneous, that I jolted away without thinking. My shoulder slammed against the nightstand and sent a shock of pain down my arm.

Ayana startled awake. “What happened?” She sat up, a thread of panic running through her drowsy voice. “Is everything okay?”

I turned on the lights and tossed the covers off. My pulse hammered in my veins.Everything’s fine.

My feet hit the floor. I grabbed my key card and phone again and stalked toward the door.

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