Prologue
Ward
“Don’t worry. We’ll celebrate tomorrow when Carys can be here. Really, I’d rather celebrate when we’re all together.” I shrug nonchalantly.
“Ward, sweetheart…”
“Mom, it’s really okay. I don’t mind. It’s not Carrie’s fault she got stuck working late. Justice waits for no man, woman, or dinner.” Flashing my mother a quick grin, I’m mentally doing a fist pump. I wonder how long it will take for me to be able to escape this conversation so I can text the guys that I’m free tonight after all.
“But your birthday is today, Ward.” The anguish in my mother’s eyes is almost enough for me to buckle under.
I lean down and kiss her cheek before teasing her. “Then you won’t mind ordering me a beer at dinner tomorrow?”
She smacks me on the arm. “You’re turning seventeen, not twenty-one.”
“It’s not like I haven’t had a drink before, Mom,” I remind her.
“Here at the house. Not in public. And I’d better not hear about anything about school, or your father and I will be having a serious conversation about letting you go back to boarding school with your friends instead of staying here to go locally. As it was, I had serious reservations about letting you go away. It’s too soon to lose my baby.” Her eyes—the same aqua color as my sister’s—mist over.
I wrap an arm around her shoulders and pull her close. Tiny and blonde, Mom and Carys share the same coloring, whereas I know if I pull out my dad’s old school yearbook, we’d pass for twins. “I love you, Mom.”
“I love you too, sweetheart.” She wraps her dainty arms around my waist and gives me a quick squeeze. When she goes to move away, I hold her in place because even though I love prep school and the way I live it up when I’m off on my own, there are moments when I miss her, Dad, and home so badly there’s an ache that just won’t go away.
The breath I release ruffles the top of her hair. I’m about to capitulate and go to dinner with her and Dad without my sister when my phone buzzes. Again.
Shit.
Mom arcs back a bit. “Your friends know you’re in town?”
I can feel the heat chasing up my neck. “When I heard Carrie was working late, I figured we weren’t going out tonight. I sent them a message.”
We stand there for a few moments, not saying anything. Finally, her lips begin to twitch. A smile tugs at my mouth. Her shoulders start to shake. My chest heaves up and down, trying to hold in my own laughter. Finally, we both give in. Mom rests her forehead on my chest as she giggles uncontrollably. “Were you trying to calculate the amount of time it would take for dessert?”
“Crap. I’d only factored on appetizers, salads, and entrees.”
She slaps me on the stomach. “Ward, language,” she chastises.
“Yes, ma’am.” But I’m grinning.
“Tomorrow night. No plans before or after. I want a family evening.” She stresses the word. “I never get to see either of my children anymore. Tonight, go celebrate with your friends.”
I drop my arms just a bit and lift her off her feet, spinning my mother in a circle around our large living room on Seventy-Fourth Street before dropping her to her feet with a thud. “Thanks, Mom.”
I sprint off to my room, texting along the way, never giving another thought as to what my parents would be doing that night.
When I arrive home that night, there are policemen loitering in the lobby of our building. Uh-oh. Maybe I shouldn’t have had that last beer. I use the dongle on my key chain to open the elevator when I’m whirled around.
“Ward Burke?” one of the officers asks.
“Um, yeah?” Shit. Mom and Dad are going to lose their minds that I’m being busted by the cops for underage drinking. I back up a step, hoping he doesn’t smell the beer on my breath. I fumble in my pocket for another piece of gum.
His fingers clamp down on my shoulder. “There are some people upstairs looking for you. We’d better head straight there.”
“I’m not late for curfew,” I protest as he ushers me into the elevator.
His face is completely blank as he presses the button for our floor, but he doesn’t let me go. He presses the button next to his shoulder and murmurs, “I have him.”
“Let me go.” I struggle.
He seems startled that I’m fighting him. “Kid, trust me, this is for your own…”
Ding.
The elevator doors open, and I sprint out into the corridor of dark blue leading right to my front door. My closed front door. “What the hell is going on here?” I bellow.
Whether it’s the presence of alcohol in my system or my own fear, I turn to the nearest cop and demand, “Tell me what the hell’s going on?”
His face is stoic, but through my buzz, I see a flicker in his eyes.
It’s sympathy.
I start running and yelling. “Mom? Dad? Carrie?”
Suddenly the front door flies open as I get closer, and I spy my older sister surrounded by more police officers and my godfather. A denial is ripped from me without a single person saying a word. “No!”
Carrie jumps up from her chair and races toward me. She slams up against me to catch me as I fall. Her tiny body can’t hold my much taller size, and we both go down to the floor as I repeat over and over, “Mom? Dad?”
“Ward, I have something I have to tell you…” she starts.
“No! They were just going out to dinner.”
“There was an accident,” she tries again.
My head swivels around to my godfather—my father’s best friend and my sister’s boss. As a federal judge, his stress level is normally high, but he looks like he’s aged about twenty years. “Hayden?” My voice breaks on my plea.
He crosses the room and joins the circle. “I’m here for whatever you need, kids.”
“I need you to bring them back.” And that’s when I break down and cry. I feel Carrie’s tears against my shoulder. My hand comes up to clutch her to me.
“I wish I could for both your sakes. But I’ll be here to help you.”
Three weeks later, we’re prisoners in our own home. I sneer, a grown man’s reaction to a little boy’s terror. Ever since the assets behind our parents’ wills have been made public because paperwork had to be filed, we’ve been tormented by nothing but the popping of flashbulbs any time we try to step from our building. According to my godfather, “Any SOB can pay for a copy of your parents’ probate file since it has to be recorded with the state.”
It makes things that much worse. Carys’s and my faces have been splashed on the front of every trashy news site. There’s paparazzi camped out waiting to get pictures of two of the youngest multimillionaires in the United States.
“What the hell are we supposed to do with this?” I shouted at the lawyers’ office.
“Calm down, Ward,” Hayden tried to soothe me.
“Why? My parents were worth—I’m sorry. What was the amount again?” I ask the probate attorney, whose name I’ve forgotten seconds after I shook his hand.