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Title Page

Dedication

For Devieka and Isha, for all the love, the laughs, and the pride. (And for Yokos, of course.) Your atya cannot wait to see you take the world by storm.

Chapter One

Vansh Raje wasn’t hypocritical enough to see his life as anything but charmed. Handsome: Vogue had declared him the most gorgeous of his siblings, and even he wouldn’t argue populist opinions about beauty with Vogue. Smart: Not book-brilliant like his siblings, but cleverer than all of them put together, as his grandmother always assured everyone, and who would argue with a grandmother about the intelligence of her grandchildren? Rich: that, of course, was the most tangible of labels, so no reinforcements of proof were necessary.

Add to that a loving—fine, make that doting—family, and a contagiously sunny disposition that was his greatest asset, and Vansh had made it halfway into his twenties without ever facing anything to throw him off his admittedly spectacular game.

“Well, don’t you look all pleased with yourself, Baby Prince,” Naina Kohli said. She had known Vansh his whole life and had the only voice on earth that had this particular impact on him. A potent combination of reprimand and amusement that made Vansh want to wipe his face like a toddler caught eating dirt, while also making him feel like no one else ate dirt quite as impressively as he did.

“And don’t you look resplendent, Knightlina,” he said, raising his glass of celebratory bubbly at her.

A flash of anger slipped past her guarded brown eyes. She hated her given name—enough to have legally changed it at eighteen. Vansh was the only person on earth who got away with using it anymore. And he only used it when that tone of hers made the otherwise nonexistent orneriness bubble up inside him. Then she smiled and did a quick half turn showcasing her charcoal-gray silk pantsuit.

“Not bad for the spurned ex, ha?” she offered.

“Not at all bad for the spurned fake ex,” he countered.

She shrugged as though she cared not a bit for anything, least of all that distinction. They drank to that, and took in the night sky reflected in the pool on Vansh’s parents’ estate. Naina had chanced upon him here after Vansh had made his way to the private alcove behind the pool house to get away from the thousand-odd guests celebrating his brother’s historic election win.

Yash, Vansh’s oldest sibling, had just won California’s gubernatorial race in one of the closest elections in recent history, also known as a bloodbath. Or that’s how it had felt in that last week of campaigning when Yash’s opponent had dropped the gloves and every modicum of decency and gone after Yash as a liar, a cheat, and when nothing else worked, as a foreign-funded, idol-worshipping philanderer.