Total pages in book: 86
Estimated words: 80919 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 405(@200wpm)___ 324(@250wpm)___ 270(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 80919 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 405(@200wpm)___ 324(@250wpm)___ 270(@300wpm)
She swallowed, then nodded almost imperceptibly. “The wedding is off.”
Marksen ground out, “Now see here—”
She whipped her head to face him. “I said it’s off!”
I slapped Marksen on the back. “I’ll let you two talk. Excuse me for a moment…”
I pushed him aside and ascended the altar steps to where Amelia stood watching the proceedings curiously, as if she were observing a dramatic play and not her own life. Once again, I had this passionate urge to shake her out of her calm complacency.
I snaked my hand around her waist and pulled her against me.
Before Amelia could fight me off, I wrapped my other hand around her neck and leaned down to claim her mouth.
Her lips were soft and sweet, and she tasted of spearmint and honey tea. Where I’d expected her to smell of some cloying, rose-scented perfume, she carried instead the fresh trace of lemongrass shampoo in her hair. Whereas everything about her mother and her world was fake, preening, and pretentious, holding her, tasting her, felt clean and innocent.
The wedding guests erupted in shocked gasps and exclamations.
Amelia looked up at me. “Why are you doing this?”
“Because I love you,” I replied loudly.
“I’ve never even met you.”
I ran the backs of my knuckles over the smoothness of her cheek. My smile was for the benefit of the wedding guests. “Don’t spoil the moment for our audience. Your mother will explain everything later. Now be a good girl and smile...or I’ll be forced to kiss you again.”
She obliged with a smile. Through clenched teeth, she hissed, “I hate you.”
CHAPTER 2
LUCIAN
Ileaned back in the soft leather chair at my club and savored the taste of victory.
Like all the Manwarring men who came before me, I too had always held myself to certain superstitions and traditions.
When your family built its fortune on scandalous secrets, bald-faced lies, and ruthless tenacity, you understood the importance of ritual.
It could center you, focus you, and appease the spirits. Even if you didn’t believe in that kind of thing, you knew better than to take unnecessary risks.
Did I believe the fair folk would turn against me if I didn’t celebrate every victory like my father and his father did? No. I had no illusions that my Irish ancestors looked down at me from Heaven, or probably up at me from Hell, and thought less of me. I was living the life I knew they would envy.
My ancestors ran Dublin.
They lied, cheated, swindled, and racketeered their way out of the dirt.
Then when one stole and extorted a not-so-small fortune, he moved here just after Prohibition ended. He pretended he was from the English aristocracy. No relation to those Manwarrings who were infamous crooks.
Then he took his modest fortune and showed these United States the glory that was good whisky.
The drink of gentlemen, refined and made in aged barrels, not some backwater bathtub gin that wasn’t worth the gut rot and three-day hangover. He became an importer of fine liquors and sold an “elite” whisky that was just bottom-of-the-barrel Irish trash. Eventually, he used that to fund the first distillery.
If those bastards could see me here now, sitting among and being seen as above most of the wealthiest families in New York, having just defeated my enemy and then stolen his bride for my own just to add insult to injury, I liked to think they’d be proud.
Like them, I took what I wanted. It was what I was owed.
Anything that I wanted, it was my right to take.
If another man wasn’t strong enough to keep what was his, then why shouldn’t it be mine?
Marksen had stood in front of that altar, and that pretty little girl, and watched, speechless, as I stole her with the entire world watching.
Really, I did that poor girl a favor.
With my victory secure, it was in my ancestors’ honor that I still sat beside the roaring fire in my favorite red-leather-upholstered club chair at The Empire Club. While drinking from a bottle of the oldest reserve whisky my family distilled, I toasted to the Manwarring empire.
As I did for each of my many wins.
For a little extra luck, I always made sure I tipped the waitress who brought me the drink. She would receive an outrageous half the value of the bottle—more if I decided to allow her to be generous with her other gifts.
I drank the good spirits to honor the dead ones.
After every victory, every foe defeated, I honored them with the celebration ritual.
The first time I sat here was with my father, when I celebrated graduating from the London School of Business. Not only because I’d studied hard—that was expected of me—but I’d put some snarky little fifteenth from the throne pissant on his ass for saying something about my sister Olivia. Then I’d discredited him, had him arrested for embezzlement, bought his family’s holding, and had his entire line shunned.