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His cold—yet furious — eyes snap to mine and he lurches forward. “What did you say to me?” he snarls with a menacing tone.
My heart hammers against my ribcage, terror freezes me on the spot as I await his heinous punishment for speaking like that to him. He slaps me across the face and I bite back a yelp, swallowing down the pain—it’s nothing compared to the agony gutting my heart.
My fingers curl around the spade in my hand, longing to use it against this brute. But fear pins me down and I remain motionless. I still can’t fight him and it’s pathetic.
“Keep digging,” he barks, staring me down as if he’s challenging me to fight him.
But as usual, trepidation wins over courage and I reluctantly obey, pushing the shovel into the earth.
My body aches with every thrust, but it helps drown out some of the excruciating pain of loss that I can’t ever imagine shaking. It distracts me from the devastation threatening to tear me into pieces, as this world is hardly worth living in, if Aiden is no longer in it.
2
ISIAH
Present day…
Idraw in a deep breath, trying to steady my nerves as I stand on the outskirts of Dumbarton Oaks Park, which I’ve not stepped foot in for so many years.
The crisp fall air wraps me in its icy embrace, making me shiver as I pull my coat tighter around me. London has been my home ever since the night that changed my life forever fifteen years ago.
There may not be a marker on my brother’s grave, but I know exactly where it is, at the foot of the ancient giant oak in the center. It almost feels like his grave pulls to me as I make my way through the trees as if I’d been there yesterday, navigating to the unmarked grave effortlessly.
The moment I come to the spot, I stop in front of it and swallow the bile rising in my throat. A deep sense of grief clasps at my chest and yet I can’t find even one tear to shed. It’s my father’s fault that I can’t cry anymore.
I drop to my knees in front of the spot and set both hands down on the ground where I know my brother’s remains are six feet below. After all, I dug the hole. Wildflowers cover the earth above his grave, but he deserved a stone to mark the spot. He deserved so much more than what our monster of a father offered him.
“Aiden, I’m sorry it took me so long to visit.” I stare up at the clear sky, wondering how to find the words to express the pain I feel over his loss.
In the fifteen years since Dad dragged me from my home and forced us to start over again, I’ve avoided dealing with the grief that left a deep hole inside me. Mainly because it was what our dad expected of me, which in turn has turned the dark pit of grief into a well of rage and pent-up anger that threatens to tear through me at any moment.
The night Aiden died, I lost half of myself. Our dad acted as if nothing had happened, entirely unaffected by the death of one of his children. To him, we were nothing more than heirs to an empire and he only needed one of us. In fact, I’d go so far as to say he was relieved that the predicament of picking a successor was no longer an issue. Even though we’d both agreed that when it came to it, we would have ruled together. We did everything together.
The bastard poured every waking moment into rebuilding what he lost here in Washington and, to my disgust, he succeeded under our new name, Darcy. I changed my first name to Isiah, an alternate spelling of my middle name, Isaiah. My father said it would be best to drop all ties to our past, but I wished to keep that name since it was one I shared with Aiden. We both had the same middle name, Isaiah, after our grandfather, who we never met.
He forgot about Aiden and scolded me if I ever brought up his name in conversation, so I suppressed those emotions, but not any longer. All the years he insisted we could never again step foot on American soil, let alone return to my brother’s resting place, felt like a lifetime, but I waited patiently.
My father died two weeks ago. I can’t say that I grieved at all. The relief I felt when I got the news that he’d been shot dead in the street by a rival was unprecedented. Even so, I had to avenge him to show strength, and I murdered the man who killed him, even though I felt like I should have been paying him a fucking reward.
Father was a monster with no soul and I’m happy he’s gone. It means I can finally fulfill my sole purpose in this world, destroy the people who tore Aiden away from me.
As the sole heir of the Darcy empire, I’ve become quite the eligible bachelor and the youngest unmarried leader of any organization on either side of the pond. However, people perceive my age as a weakness, which is foolish.
The family responsible for my brother’s death have unwittingly invited me to a party to meet their unmarried daughter, Bella. A perfect chance to exact my revenge and wreak havoc on the bastards that stole him from me.
“I’ll do right by you, Aiden. If it’s the last thing I do.” I place the single white rose on the unmarked grave, knowing Aiden deserved so much better. “You deserved to be treated with more respect.”
My father ingrained in me so deeply the notion that men in our family don’t cry. I literally can’t cry. No matter how much something hurts, no tears come. The monster has created a beast in his image, only I’m going to tear apart the family that tore me apart. An eye for an eye.
“I’m here to seek revenge on the people who did this to you.” I lay my hand over the ground, wishing he could talk back to me. “I’ll visit you more often now I’m back.” The pain sears my lungs and makes it difficult to breathe. The tears won’t come.
I stand and turn away, feeling the pain of his loss as if it were only yesterday. Each step I take away hurts, but I know I need to get to work. I have a family to ruin, the way they ruined us.
I will not rest until I’ve brought utter devastation to every member of the Benedetto family. The way they forced devastation on me.
3
BELLA
