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PROLOGUE
ALEXANDER
My shoes crunchthe damp concrete.
The blazing morning sun blares down on my forehead, making my throbbing eye just a little more painful. My ribs hurt when I breathe, and I’m almost certain I’ve got a goose egg on the back of my head.
You’re so pathetic, Alexander.
The voice in my head is my father’s. He’ll be sure to give me an earful about this later when he sees me. Maybe even knock me around some more so I learn to “never embarrass the family like this” again. My eyes leak, the throbbing turns to burning.
The tears stream down my face. I wipe them off my cheeks before they fall to the pavement. Our neighborhood is quiet, as usual. Everyone is either away at work or school. Like I should be. My steps slow beneath a tree that hangs over the sidewalk.
I take refuge in its shade, steadying my heart with a deep breath.
The worst part about getting beat up by my fucking cousin during break isn’t even the pain—I’m used to feeling like this. It’s theembarrassment. I’m twelve, a fucking made man and I couldn’t even punch him in the face before he had me on the ground.
A teacher had to break us apart, but by then the damage was already done. Liam had already busted my lip and socked me in the eye, and I hadn’t even been able to draw blood.
You’re an embarrassment to the Duke name.
My father reminds me of that as often as he can. Maybe he’s right. Maybe I’m not cut out for this. Maybe I’m more like Mum. I look more like her, too.
The thought of her gets my feet moving again.
When I skived school after the fight, she was the only thing on my mind. My father’s going to curse me out over this fight. Graham will want to teach me how to get better punches in. But my mum, she won’t try to fix me.
She’ll just listen.
She’ll understand.
She’ll hug me and remind me that my whole life isn’t defined by a single moment. She’ll dress my lip and make me some Horlicks to chase away the coldness that’s settled in my stomach. My feet start to move faster.
I want to get home as quickly as possible.
I veer off the pavement, taking the shortcut through the playground close to the back of our house. It’s too early for me to be back from school, and the last thing I need is one of my father’s men grassing me up when they see me in the main house.
It’s nearly midday anyway, so I know where Mum will be.
The community we live in is filled with homes like ours—historic three-story brownstone manors set behind brick-and-iron fences. Perfectly manicured trees and hedges line their perimeters. I’ve always found it a little ironic, how perfect everything looks from the outside.
As if these homes weren’t all built with blood money.
Our backyard looks out onto the Trust Grounds—eleven acres of green space with a playground, lake and tennis court. A choice Mum made for us, so she could see us playing from her favorite spot on the estate—her greenhouse.
I break into a jog as the huge structure comes into view, a painful smile curling my lips. It has double-height ceilings, and the surface of the nearby pool refracts off the silvery metal frame, glimmering in the early morning sun. Through the frosted glass panes I can make out the rows and rows of flowers and shrubs she’s got inside.
Mum’s love of flowers is unmatched.
She usually takes her tea there and spends her mornings reading books with shirtless men on the cover until it’s time for lunch—the books are her escape, she always tells me. Between the books and her flowers, she hardly ever has to see my father.
We both try to avoid him as much as possible.
When I was younger, I thought everyone’s parents were like mine. I thought it was normal to have bruises from his rage, for your mum to cry more than she laughed. Now that I’m old enough, I know that it’s unnatural.
I know that it’s wrong and I fucking hate my father for it.
Mum doesn’t want us to hate him, though. I think somehow, she loves him—even after everything he’s done to her, to us. It gets me upset sometimes, but even so I understand her. Father is one of the most powerful men in the UK.
