Page 1

CHAPTER ONE
MADDOX
––––––––
The phoenix, while mythical, builds a nest before it dies and sets itself on fire. Then rises from the ashes, symbolizing hope, life, and good over evil.
I’m neither immortal nor fucking mythical.
I gave up believing in a savior well before my balls dropped, and nothing in my thirty-one years has changed my mind.
In fact, I’m about to become the very thing I once hated.
A monster.
Like my father.
Nature or nurture? It’s an age-old question.
One I have zero need to answer because I won’t be spawning any devils from my DNA.
I toss back the scotch in the bottom of my crystal glass and take in the mega-million-dollar view from my luxury Manhattan penthouse. Raindrops hit the floor-to-ceiling windows and slide down the glass, distracting me from the world beyond. It feels macabre standing here in the dark, but it suits my mood.
I don’t know if I’m even capable of true joy.
My mind flicks back to my years at Phillips Academy—a boarding school for rich kids. Or should I say rich, unwanted kids. A place that likely saved what was left of my life.
Or rather, soul.
It’s where I met my “brothers”: Parker, Zayne, Travis, and Killian. We saved one another.
If you can call it that.
We might all be rich as fuck, but underneath our confidence, power, and—when alone—our ridiculous banter, lies five splintered souls.
It’s how we connected and it’s what bonds us.
That and the fight club we started when we were fifteen. It caused an underground movement that attracted the rich, the poor, and the broken—all needing to smash the fuck out of someone to feel alive.
To feel power.
To take back what was taken.
Never works, of course, but it feels fucking great to bleed and ache instead of feeling numb.
Or to try to house the fury inside.
So, the Alliance Fight Club was formed.
Don’t go mistaking us for some kind of Robin Hoods. We weren’t saving anyone. We just wanted to fight. Because back then we couldn’t fight our fathers—the men who caused irrevocable harm to each and every one of us.
“Remember the code,” Parker said after the first night of the Alliance Club fights in the dark streets behind Phillips Academy. “Strength in silence: revenge is a patient man’s game. We act in the shadows and never reveal our hand too soon.”
We haven’t.
We each graduated and have built empires, making us powerful and influential.
I had a helping hand, not from my father, but because my mother died while I was at Phillips. Whether she died of natural causes is still something I wonder about, but she stood by and let my father do what he did, so my cold, shattered heart simplyhardened when I was told, and I focused on the multi-six-figure inheritance she left me.