The hair on the back of her neck rose as déjà vu tortured her. Her eyes filling with tears, she touched his flowing script. The last time a man had left her a note like this, it’d been her father.

Soon, we’ll be free of Caron. Then you’ll never have to fear again. Two days, my precious and I’ll return. Have your sister packed and ready.

Her father had died on his way back for them.

She winced in pain as a bitter lump tightened her stomach. Please, please don’t let history repeat itself.

2

“Are you out of your mind? I would slap sense into you, but you’d most likely punch me back and that would… really hurt. ’Cause the gods know, you pack one nasty left hook that you always lead with. Might even kill me. At the very least, it would wrinkle, and stain my clothes with blood, which is worse than death, if you ask me. Still, are you out of your mind?”

Darling sighed at Maris’s angry tirade as they stood in the governor’s office of the Winter Palace—the main political seat Darling’s family had used to rule their empire for the least two hundred years. This room was one of the few electronic dead spots of the palace where they couldn’t be overheard or monitored in any way.

Richly appointed and decorated with dark blues, golds, and maroons, the study was intended to overwhelm and impress visitors with the ostentatious wealth of the Cruel family—to make others feel inferior and small in comparison.

It worked on all but the stoutest egos.

His uncle also used this room to plot the deaths and downfalls of his enemies, as well as his own allies and friends.

And it was in this very room, where there was no surveillance whatsoever, that Darling’s uncle had murdered his own brother…

Darling’s father.

Something Darling couldn’t prove so he didn’t dare breathe a word of it to anyone, not even Maris. But he knew the truth from his uncle’s own lips. It’d come out as a drunken boast one night eleven years ago when his uncle had been particularly brutal with him after he’d escaped and run away from the mental institution his uncle had confined him in. The royal guards had found him in hiding and brought him back to this very room—beating him almost every step of the journey home.

His face stinging from his uncle’s fists, Darling had shoved Arturo away from him. “You’re not my father, you worthless bastard. And you’re not a governor in full right, Lord Grand Counsel.” He’d sneered the title he knew his uncle despised as it reminded Arturo of his lesser rank and position. “You’ll never be one. But I will be governor one day, and I don’t have to listen to you.”

His uncle had slammed his head into the desk that stood on their right and used his hair to pin him to it before he’d leaned over Darling to snarl in Darling’s ear with his drunken breath. “You better wise up, you little smart-mouthed faggot. I own you and I can make your life, and your family’s lives, utter hell. If you don’t do what I say, when I say it, I’ll kill you just like I did your spineless father. You should have seen the shock on the pathetic bastard’s face when I cut his throat.”