And every little part of him, the broken bits, the whole bits—every breath which reminded him of cigarettes at midnight—every time his mother looked at him with a vague, muted disappointment—every time he saw blue eyes in the street or in a bar or the Gwynns Academy alumni newsletter—every morning when he didn’t wake up in that shitty flat with Cathal and the parakeets upstairs and the old record player and the LPs which skipped—

Every single cell in his body longed, desperately.

Silently.

He was thirty-seven.

He wanted to burn the world down.

Chapter One

The first time Jack Gardner met Theodore Beaumont, he was staring at a rack of blue blazers, knowing that his mother could never afford them, and doubting every decision which had led him here, to Gwynns Academy, the most exclusive—and expensive—preparatory school in Baltimore.

All Jack had ever worn were hand-me-downs, clothing used by others, and the crisp lines of the Gwynns uniforms were foreign to him, nearly strange. The stitching was impeccable, the cloth a deep navy blue, and the school’s crest was in gold and red embroidery, and he had never had anything so fine, so costly, so clean. Starched white shirts and pleated trousers and striped gold ties were the other elements of his soon-to-be school’s uniform, and he wondered if this—this outfit, this costume, this mask—could ever hide the little boy who’d never really had enough to eat.

The school shop bustled with other students and their perfect families—ice-blonde mothers with pearls, and fathers with platinum tie tacks, and kids who looked like their copies, utterly at ease, expectant of nothing other than this, the chore, the way the world was, spending money without a thought. Jack was already out of place—school hadn’t even started yet.

He caught a glimpse of himself in the full-length mirror and wanted to look away, but he couldn’t. He saw his skinny frame, knobby knees covered by too-large shorts, a collarbone as thin and delicate as a bird’s wing exposed by the stretched-out neck of his black T-shirt. His hair was thick and messy, impossible to tame. The only feature which might have been attractive were his blue eyes, piercing. He tried not to worry so much about how he looked. That wasn’t why he was here.