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But Henry Cross was still Jonathan’s brother. And even a man as dangerous, connected, and powerful as my uncle can still feel grief.
My eyes drop to the watch again before I lift my head a little and turn to peer through the rain, looking for someone else that I was hoping would be here. Someone I wish was here by my side right now above anyone else, even Jonathan. Someone I didn’t ask to be here because, well, who knows why.
Ah, yes. Because I’m the “emotionally stunted son raised alone by an emotionally stunted father”, as she likes to tell me with that sly grin of hers that sends me reeling and takes the wind out of my lungs. Because I know it comes from a place of humor, and love.
And love.
A love that was…one thing, and is now, as of two weeks ago, very much another.
Despite the rain and the fog, and Mrs. Dubois crying quietly beneath her black veil, and the body of my father lying before me ready to be put into the ground, I smile. It’s not because I’m a psychopath. It’s because when Celeste dances into my head, I become helpless. When I even imagine that smile, it’s the only physical motion I’m capable of making, like my heart is too full to do anything but grin.
But she’s not here.
I know deep down that’s probably a good thing. If Mr. Margaux, the powerful and connected Frenchman who employed my father for the last sixteen years, isn’t here for Henry’s burial, his daughter being here might raise…questions.
Those questions might escalate if she were standing next to me, holding my hand. Which she would be, if she were here.
Questions along the lines of “why is Jean Margaux’s youngest daughter wrapped in the arms of her father’s chauffeur’s son?” The boy with nothing to offer but grease-stained hands and a dangerous last name. The pauper with his hands on the gilded elite French princess.
There wouldn’t just be questions. Answers would be demanded.
Celeste and I had always been close, to a point. Friends, to a certain degree, raised basically under the same roof—her a resident, and me the son of the help. But I think both of us always knew the truth, or knew it since we were old enough to realize what it meant:
Celeste Margaux and I were only ever “friends” because calling it more or pushing it any further would be dangerous. Because of her father. Because of the family my father came from, even if he spent the last sixteen years pretending otherwise.
And then two months ago, a week after her eighteenth birthday and two after my twentieth, we stopped being “friends”.
A single kiss more than decade in the making burned that façade to the ground, finally letting us both see what had always really been there underneath. And after that single kiss, there was no going back.
My blood hums against the chill in the air as my mind replays all the stolen moments over the last fourteen days. Gasped kisses in the pantry of the huge Margaux estate while Mrs. Dubois is busy in the kitchen. Celeste’s teeth biting down on my neck, trying not to scream as my fingers down the front of her panties drive her over the edge behind the garage.
Her body feverishly grinding to mine, our skin slick against skin, our mouths devouring each other in the gardens before dawn.
The smile plays across my lips once again as I lift my eyes to scan the road by the cemetery. She’s not here. My smile fades, but I nod to myself.
She can’t be here. We both know that would raise too many questions.
“You know you can’t let her be a part of your decision, Adrian.”
I tense and slowly turn to glance back at my uncle. My father, when hedidbring up his brother, always framed him as a savage criminal. A bloodthirsty, reckless force of chaos rampaging across Britain.
The man who stares back at me, the man I’ve come to know again over the last two terrible days, is anything but reckless or chaotic. Dangerous, of course. But one doesn’t become—much less stay—the head of the Cross organization by being reckless. My uncle is a coldly calculating, highly intelligent man.
And now he wants me to sit at his side and learn the ways of the empire that bears my name. My father kept me from that world. But I know it’s in my blood. Iknowthat’s where my destiny lies.
So therein lies the dilemma: stay here in Ascot, and step into my father’s shoes working for Jean Margaux. Be a chauffeur and personal mechanic to the ill-tempered, coldly dismissive French businessman. Or step into the shoes I was born to step into, and learn how to sit at the head of the Cross family table one day, after the mantle passes from Jonathan to me.
That should be an abundantly easy choice to make. Stay in the house of a man I dislike as his servant, or seek the throne of power, wealth, and limitless possibilities at my uncle’s side? But of course, it’s not an easy choice to make at all.
Not when all my mouth ever wants to taste is Celeste’s lips.
“Adrian—”
“I know,” I growl quietly.
Jonathan nods slowly. I can see in his eyes that he understands what’s going through my head. Not just sees it, but gets it, too. I never told him about Celeste, but he guessed all on his own and spoke to me about it last night at the pub when he gave me the watch.
There’s a possible middle ground here, though. Since my father and I left Manchester, the Cross Family seat of operations has moved to London. And Celeste has every intention of attending Kings College, also in London, beginning with the fall term.
