Callous Prince

by Becker Gray

  “Visible?”

  “Graciella wasn’t just an associate of Boris’s, she was his mistress. He thought he’d have one last liaison with her before he betrayed her to us, and that’s when I arrested them. I tipped off the press as well, so that it was as much of a spectacle as I could make it. And it worked—both Boris and Graciella had their sins aired out for the world to see. If they ever get out of prison, there will be no more victims left for them, no more slipping away into the shadows.”

  “Dad, that’s not visible. That’s lurid.”

  A heavy noise of agreement. “I hadn’t factored in the human cost, I suppose. With Boris’s wife being a princess, it attracted for more, um, intense speculation than I could have foreseen. It embarrassed Lennox’s mother, the entire royal family, and dragged their good name through the mud. It must have been quite devastating for the children.”

  I thought back to that letter I’d found. The one that talked about Vater.

  None of this still explained who Nicholas was or why Lennox had been writing to him.

  But it did explain something else.

  “So this is why Lennox hates you,” I said in a dull voice. This is why Lennox hates me because of you. “Not merely the arrest, but the humiliation you caused doing it.”

  My father sighed. “I recognize that his children probably see me like a monster. I was the one who encouraged Boris to make the deal because I wanted de Marco too. I arranged the public arrest, and I embarrassed their mother. Embarrassed them.”

  Embarrassed them.

  I got it now. I understood why it was more than his dad being a criminal and my dad being a cop.

  It was because of my father that their mother was humiliated. That everyone in the world—including an eighth-grade Sloane—knew what their father had done and whom he’d been fucking while he did it.

  With my mother gone, and Dad working ninety-nine percent of the time, it was sometimes easier for me to stay for summer sessions at boarding school, but I remembered seeing the coverage even in my school dorm. It had dominated the news media for months. It was sordid.

  People had lost their entire life savings. And maybe the investors could be written off as greedy, but what made it worse was that their workers, their staff, all the innocent people around them . . . they’d lost everything too. And to cause that much pain while you were gallivanting around the Med with a gorgeous woman who wasn’t your delicate, princess wife . . .

  No wonder the media ate it up.

  No wonder Lennox was so scarred by it.

  Why did you think I was greedy? Because of my father?

  “So you had me looking into Lennox because what, you think he’s doing the same thing his dad did?”

  “No, nothing like that. But there are suspicious deposits and withdrawals in his accounts. And we couldn’t touch his trust because the grandparents are the trustees. Their parents, of course, have put money into it, but their trusts were off limits. All we can do is monitor their banking activity. It’s always been my theory that Lincoln-Ward wasn’t entirely honest. All his money isn’t gone. My guess is he’s squirreled some away. Once he serves the reduced sentence of fifteen years, he would need something to come back and live on. I theorized that he’s found a way to access it and that it’s going through his son’s trust to launder it. Make it clean money so when he gets out of jail, Lennox can give him the cash. Then he can start over.”

  My stomach roiled. “Dad, I’m not sure—”

  “Look,” he interrupted me. “I know he’s your classmate, possibly your friend, but it’s entirely plausible. I mean, you know it’s possible. You’re too smart not to see that. That’s why you agreed to investigate.”

  Jesus Christ. I had agreed to investigate. But I still hadn’t given Dad everything. And I didn’t know how to walk that back now because Lennox was right. I had believed exactly what my father told me. Without any question. I was just like him.

  But worst of all, any hope that I would once again be that fairy princess I was the night of the gala—or be seen as beautiful by anyone—died. That dream turned to ash in my palms.

  Because now that I understood . . . now that I knew why Lennox hated my father, why Lennox was so angry . . . I knew there was no way we could ever be together.

  Because beyond anything else, Lennox Lincoln-Ward was proud. Haughty.

  An arrest he could have eventually forgiven—but a public disgrace? Deep and visible shame?

  He could never forget that, never forgive it. And if he found out that I’d been looking through his things, helping my father ensure his could never, ever reclaim any scrap of wealth or dignity . . .

  I shivered with misery.

  If he found out . . . it would be all over then.

  14

  Lennox

  I returned to campus the next morning with a hungover Aurora. After I settled her in her room, I made sure she drank enough water and took enough aspirin for her to feel better after a long nap, and then I went back to my room. I’d just toed off my Oxfords when a big fist pounded on my door.

  “It’s unlocked, you pillock,” I yelled as it swung open to reveal the broad shoulders of Keaton Constantine.

  “I know you didn’t forget about the Hellfire meeting tonight,” he said, as I threw myself back on my bed with a groan.

  I covered my face with a pillow. “Fuck.”

  “Yeah,” he said in sympathy.

  “They want us in dinner dress?”

  “You know they do.”

  I swore again, dropping the pillow to the side and blinking up at my ceiling. I was wrecked from last night. I felt like I was walking through a knee-high marsh, every step exhausting and bitter.

  My brain was still whirling, and it refused to give me peace.

  “Fine,” I mumbled. “I’ll get ready.”

  Keaton made a noise of assent, like he’d had no doubt all along, and then he left to go get ready himself.

  The Hellfire Club was founded in 1871 to do what most clubs back then were meant to do—forge alliances and consolidate power. The first Hellfire Club members at Pembroke were the sons of robber barons and senators, and through the friendships they forged at school, and through the equally connected peers they invited in, they went on to find their own wealth and power too. And so on and so forth, each previous generation of Hellfire members nurturing the next—opening doors, making introductions—until that generation could help too. It was a web of green paper and cigar smoke stretching back a century and a half, and it was an invitation that would have been foolish to refuse.

  Yes, I was a prince, but my father was also a disgraced, imprisoned billionaire. I didn’t have the luxury of rejecting a foothold like this, even if it came tied with incredibly annoying strings. Like the occasional dinner in the city. Like being examined by Hellfire alumni like we were livestock at a meat market.

  And while it was undoubtedly annoying, I’d grown up around this kind of secretive, self-important pomp and circumstance. I knew how to play their game better than they did. It had been invented by my forefathers, after all.

  The cars came for us at noon, and we ducked dutifully inside—Keaton hustling me into a car with him and Owen before I could get within fifteen feet of Phineas.

  Or fucking Rhys.

  November wind buffeted us in our tuxedos and dress coats before we could escape into the warmth of the car. I welcomed the wintry chill. The cold reminded me that I was still alive, even though I felt like I was dead inside.

  What the hell was wrong with me?

  You know what’s wrong with you.

  Sloane. Fucking Sloane.

  I flung myself back into the leather seat and closed my eyes before Keaton and Owen could try to talk to me. I was in no mood for chitchat, not after last night. Not after all the ways the night had gone all fucked up.

  First, Rhys had had his goddamn hands all over Sloane.

  Second of all, she looked like she was into it.

  Third of al
l, she’d looked like something out of an ethereal dream, all that vibrant blue-green gossamer. The bodice of her dress, the deep vee. Her lips stained pink, and plump, and glistening, and so god damn soft. And why for fuck’s sake had she tasted so good?

  Her eyes, everything about her had been amplified. Enhanced. She looked like a fairy. All of her sparkled. All of her shimmered. All of her shined. And despite her slender frame, that dress had shoved her tits under her chin somehow, giving her enough cleavage to make my stupid mouth water.

  And then all I could think about was Rhys putting his hands on her. And I’d snapped.

  Way to go, Neanderthal.

  I had literally picked her up over my shoulder and dragged her out of there.

  Let’s not forget the crazy shit in the garden.

  Motherfucker. I’d been about to stick my dick inside her. Okay technically had stuck my dick inside her . . . just the tip though. That didn’t count, did it? I couldn’t lie. That’s where we’d been going. We’d been about to shag in the garden. I could still feel her sweet tightness around the tip of my dick.

  Just the tip, motherfucker. Like a moron.

  I knew better. Hell, I’d never had sex without a condom. Ever. I wasn’t that dumb. There were a few lessons my mother had imparted quite well on me. Like don’t knock anyone up. Don’t be an idiot. Do not leave illegitimate children to be accounted for later.

  But still, with Sloane, I was ready and more than damn willing to slide home . . . bare. To feel her heat, to have her velvet slickness mold around me and make me her bitch.

  I’d been riding on the edge of dangerous arousal. But then Aurora had come in. Drunk and sobbing and distraught. How in the world had I been able to pull back?

  You were a saint, that’s what it is.

  But then everything had changed, and I had fucking relearned who Sloane really was. My destruction . . . wrapped in a tight-arsed package that was difficult to ignore. She was so casual about it all when her father had ruined my family’s life.

  I’m some sort of revenge plan?

  She’d been angry, furious, pushing and shoving me until somehow we ended up on those soft cushions with me between her legs.

  I’d have to hurt you for a thousand years to make up for all the things you’ve done to me, she’d hissed—but what about me? What about all the things her family had done to me?

  How can you even want her?

  Well, that was a problem with my cock. Motherfucker didn’t listen. It was all his fault.

  Even as I tried to nap my way down to Manhattan, the damn thing twitched in my pants. He was thinking about how soft she was. How damn near perfect she felt. My brain conjured up that feeling of her slick wet heat and sent a buzz up my spine that nearly snapped my head clean off. Right from the base of my spine straight to the top of my neck. It was such a jolt that I thought I was going to die. And die in heaven, no less.

  But then that high had all come crashing down.

  Goddamn Sloane.

  The drive ended up being uneventful and boring. Owen tapped through emails on his iPad—his family ran Montgomery Media, a group focused mostly on magazines and apps, and his parents treated him like a baby COO—and Keaton watched rugby footage on his phone with a scowl on his all-American face. I was grateful for the silence though, because I couldn’t handle all the feelings vibrating up my spine, and I was terrified that if I opened my mouth to make polite conversation, something ugly and vulnerable would come tumbling out.

  Like my fury at Rhys. My extra fury at Phin for making Aurora cry.

  My fury at Sloane.

  My hunger for Sloane.

  The strange dagger of pain between my ribs whenever I thought of the look Sloane gave me last night before she left. As if I’d been the arsehole.

  Had I been?

  My mind circled back to Phin and how much I’d like to smash his teeth in for hurting my twin. Yes, that was a safe anger, a safe feeling. Much safer than thinking about Sloane.

  I let the anger fill me all through the drive there, pooling in my gut like oil ready to burn. I’d find Phin at the dinner and then throw him out the window, right onto Fifth goddamn Avenue.

  “Thank fuck,” Keaton groaned, stretching his giant body as the car rolled to a stop in front of a narrow but ornately trimmed mansion squashed between two equally ornate apartment buildings. Gas lamps flickered on sconces outside the wide, old door, and the huge windows glowed with the kind of light that only came from rooms paneled in wood and upholstered in leather and velvet. A stone lion guarded either side of the stairs leading up to the black-lacquered door, their claws anchored in flames and their mouths parted in toothy snarls.

  It looked every inch a nineteenth century industrialist’s house, opulence built on the backs of the poor, and for over one hundred years, it had been a den of old money and even older sins.

  Hellfire House.

  Keaton got out first, and Owen followed, not looking up from his iPad as he did. Owen had grown up among the moneyed bustle of Manhattan, and so he was as unimpressed by Gilded Age mansions as I was by castles back home.

  Keaton himself only gave the building a brief, appraising glance. I knew he was only a member because it was expected of him and not because he wanted to follow in his brother Winston’s footsteps and become a captain of industry or whatever it was Winston Constantine did with his time. In fact, I’d bet my family’s private Austrian ski chalet that the moment Keaton graduated from Pembroke, he’d be gone from this world altogether. Off playing rugby and fucking his girlfriend. Not clinking port glasses and comparing big game hunting trips.

  We were greeted at the door by staff who took our coats and escorted us to the drawing room, where a large fire crackled in a stone fireplace and servers circulated with aperitifs. A few older Hellfire alumni were in here, but most were still cloistered somewhere else, probably attempting to seal a few more corrupt deals before dinner officially began.

  Keaton turned to face me as we were walking inside. “Don’t do anything stupid tonight. Even my Constantine hands might be tied if you attack a Yates.”

  “I’ll do whatever the fuck I want,” I muttered.

  “Whatever happened with Aurora last summer broke him, man.”

  “So that gives him the right to make her cry?” I demanded, but I didn’t waste any more breath on Keaton, because we were in the room now and I could see him.

  Phin.

  Fucking Phin, just sitting by the fireplace with a lazy smile and his hair all over the place. Drink in fucking hand, like he didn’t have a care in the world aside from drinking and finding his next lay.

  “You fucking wanker,” I seethed, striding over to him and yanking him to his feet by the lapels of his tuxedo jacket. I was aware of the interested stares of the other men in the room, and just as aware when they went back to their conversations, as if used to pre-dinner drinks erupting into violence. “I should kill you right now for what you did to my sister.”

  Phin’s smile faded, but he didn’t shove me off him, he didn’t try to wrestle free. He only glared at me over the collar of his jacket. “You know, no one ever asks what Aurora did to me,” he said. “And I’ll have you know that last night, she was the one to stop things between us. She was the one to walk away, not me. Yes, I found someone else after, but only because she made it clear she was done with me.”

  “I don’t believe you,” I said.

  “Well, believe this—do you really think Aurora would have let me live if I’d promised her something and then ended up inside someone else?”

  I loosened my grip.

  “She walked away first,” Phin continued. “If she hadn’t, she would have shoved me into a meat grinder, and you know it.”

  I let go of his tuxedo. He was right. Aurora had been devastated last night, but if Phineas had truly screwed her over, she would have killed him first. Then cried about it.

  “And it’s not my fault I had to take care of the blue balls your sister gave me,
” Phin muttered, and I grabbed his lapels again.

  “If you talk about my sister one more time, I will throw you into this fire and not think twice. I fucking mean it.”

  “Boys,” Owen said in a bored, cold tone, coming up to us and leaning against the side of the fireplace. “Can we not with the murdering before dinner? I haven’t eaten yet, and bailing one of you out of jail is certain to put me off my appetite.”

  I let go. Reluctantly.

  Rhys sauntered over to our little scene, clapping slowly. As if Phin and I had just put on a show for him.

  I leveled a look at him. “You don’t want to start with me, Rhys. Not after the shit you pulled this weekend.”

  “Oh, is that right? It was nice to see you finally get off your ass, by the way.”

  I blinked at him. “If you know what’s good for you, mate, you’ll shut it.”

  Rhys chuckled. “No need to get touchy with me. I did you a goddamn favor.”

  I scowled at him. “What the hell do you mean?”

  “Well, I knew you weren’t ever going to fucking do anything about Sloane unless you were pushed. And now I’ve pushed you. You’re welcome.”

  I glowered at him, taking a step in his direction. But Owen was quick and inserted himself between us. “Not worth it. Dinner, remember?”

  Phineas’s chuckle was low, as if he lived to see what was going to go down. He also probably wouldn’t mind seeing my face beaten and bloodied after I just threatened to hurl him into the fire. Tosser.

  Keaton merely rolled his eyes. “You two have done this already. Let it go.”