CHAPTER 1
Damian
“OBVIOUSLY, YOU ALREADY know this wasn’t me, Mum.” I tossed the newspaper I was holding on a nearby table as I met my mother’s concerned gaze.
Dammit! I’d gotten to her country estate in Surrey as soon as I’d seen the tabloids in London, but apparently, I hadn’t been quick enough. My mother had her own copy of the fresh-off-the-presses scandal sheet right next to her elbow, and I was willing to bet she had read the entire article.
Possibly more than once.
I got her silent answer when she raised a brow, and pinned me with that all-knowing, parental stare that I’d hated since childhood.
Isabella Lancaster was pushing sixty-three years old, but she was still beautiful. Her dark hair had gone gray rather gracefully, and her dark-brown eyes were still as sharp as they’d been years ago.
She knew all…
Saw all…
And maybe I was an idiot to think that I could get to Surrey from London before she found out what was all over the tabloids this afternoon. Mum tolerated the gossipy, upper-class crowd much better than I did, so was it really surprising that she’d already gotten the news?
“You can’t keep covering for him, Damian.” Her voice was firm, but I could recognize the underlying distress.
I shrugged. “What do you want me to do? Dylan isn’t in a good place right now.”
Truthfully, my younger-by-fifteen-minutes identical twin brother hadn’t been in his right mind for the last two years. Not that I really blamed him for that, considering all that he’d been through.
“It’s been two years now, Damian. How long are you planning on taking the blame for Dylan’s…misadventures?”
I shook my head as I began to pace back and forth across the large sitting room. I wouldn’t exactly classify my twin brother’s behavior as “misadventures.” He wasn’t some teenage party boy getting himself into a little trouble. Dylan was thirty-three years old, and well on a path to self-destruction. He didn’t give a damn about anyone or anything.
“I don’t care what people think of me,” I told her defensively.
Okay, maybe that wasn’t quite true. Dylan’s latest indiscretion to be caught on camera was him bare-ass naked, surrounded by several women who were equally nude, and probably just as drunk as he was when that picture had been taken.
This time, I wasn’t all that keen on letting people think I was ignorant enough to let that get caught on camera.
I was the reserved Lancaster brother, and I liked it that way. I wanted my competitors and my allies to take me seriously in the business world.
I had no idea how a reporter had actually gained entrance to Dylan’s drunken orgy, but it wasn’t surprising since my brother did very little to avoid bad press these days.
I stopped and picked up the paper.
Could it really be as bad as I remember? I only got a quick glimpse of the picture in London.
I grimaced as I looked at the image on the front page, and the cringe-worthy headline above it:
SORRY, LADIES! ONE WOMAN WILL NEVER BE ENOUGH FOR BILLIONAIRE DAMIAN LANCASTER!
Shit! It was as bad as I remembered.
I guess that I should be grateful that they’d blurred some of the explicit details on the nude bodies. I hadn’t seen my brother naked since we were children, and I could have very well done without seeing his bare ass for the rest of my life.
Disgusted, I tossed the paper aside again without scanning the text. The last thing I wanted was to read a play-by-play of my sibling’s sex life. No, thank you!
“You should care.” Mum’s voice was calmer now. “Everyone assumes it was you. That’s your name above that photo. Dylan won’t correct them. And Lord knows you won’t, either, out of your misguided desire to protect your brother. It’s going to be difficult for anyone to take you seriously after this. Do you really want to be sitting in a business meeting, trying to make a deal, knowing every executive in the room is dying to ask for the details about that orgy?”
Thank you, Mum, I thought. I’d never really considered that possible outcome, but no doubt I would in the future. Every single time I have a business meeting from now on.
While I didn’t really care what people thought about me personally, I did give a damn about Lancaster International, and all of our subsidiaries. At one time, Dylan had cared about our company interests, too.
I rubbed a frustrated hand over the tension in my neck, very well aware that the headache that was starting to plague me was going to get worse. Much worse. “I’m headed to the States,” I said. “I’ll talk to Dylan when I get there.” As usual, my twin had fled across the pond to avoid any media attention after doing something incredibly stupid.
Leaving me to take the blame, and do the cleanup.
So far, I’d done a pretty damn good job of burying most of Dylan’s erratic behavior.
Like…the time he’d jumped up on a table in a popular nightclub with a microphone in hand, and tried to convince everyone that our current prime minister was trying to make England a communist country.
Or like…the time he’d gone to a poker game, and accused a well-respected championship poker player of cheating.
When Dylan got thoroughly pissed, there was no telling what would happen, or where his mind would go.
Luckily, most of my twin’s drunken romps had never even hit the gossip columns. If there was one thing people liked more than a scandal, it was money, so I’d been able to pay to keep most of the incidents out of the press.
Really, there were only a few such incidents that I’d had to claim as mine.
Luckily, the prime minister and I rarely traveled in the same circles.
Regrettably, my twin had taken bad publicity to a whole different level this time, and for the first time since Dylan had started all of his lunatic behavior, I had no idea what to do about it.
Mum frowned at me as she insisted, “You need to do more than talk this time, Damian. You have to refuse to keep taking the blame and cleaning up after him.”
“I can’t,” I said. “You know I made a promise to Dylan, and I swore I wouldn’t break my word. I said that I’d give him time away from Lancaster, and everything involved with our corporation, including the press, so he could get his head together after what happened. I have no choice but to let people think his actions are mine, or to make sure they get completely buried.”
The image of my twin pleading with me two years ago for time away from everything still haunted me. Dylan had been completely broken, and I hadn’t hesitated to give him my vow that he’d have the space and solitude he craved.
I’d done everything possible to wipe Dylan’s existence off the internet by hiring a highly skilled company who specialized in that type of thing. They’d even taken his name and photos off the corporation website so he could have his privacy. Anything that had come up in the last two years had been deleted as well. Granted, I’d taken the blame for a couple of things, but those articles had disappeared like they’d never happened.
Honestly, it felt eerily similar to that old Sandra Bullock movie, The Net, when her whole identity had been erased, like she’d never existed.
Okay, maybe it wasn’t that bad. It was only his online fingerprint that had disappeared, and I still had a few business articles on there. I’d kept such a low profile that I’d never had much more than that in the news in the first place.