Page 70

THIRTY-TWO

Emma

WHEN CURRAN mentionedthe Kensington house, I hadn’t given it much thought. Not beyond Kensington being a place in London where rich people lived. It never occurred to me that he’d been talking aboutKensington Palace Gardens.

Billionaire Row. A place so exclusive that it wasn’t available on Google Street View because of security concerns.

I only knew what most people born in London and raised on trashy tabloid stories knew about it. The mansions abutting Kensington Palace had mostly been foreign consulates during the twentieth century. But with the rise of a new class of super-rich individuals emerging in the past couple of decades, properties on the secretive and highly secure stretch of road had begun to find their way into private hands.

At least, they did if those private hands were willing to fork over upwards of a hundred million quid for a fixer upper.

The flight from Athens to London had been uneventful, thank god. It wasn’t the first time I’d been on a private jet, but itwasthe first time I’d been on one outside of some kind of very exclusive modeling gig. It was also the first time I’d ridden in a motorcade of ominous black SUVs—assuming, of course, that three vehicles constituted a motorcade.

“Bulletproof, reinforced undercarriage, run-flat tires,” Onyx said wryly, rapping bruised knuckles against a tinted window. “It guzzles petrol like an alcoholic in a beer garden, though.”

I should’ve felt like an imposter as we rolled down the M4. Instead, I felt safer than I’d ever expected to feel in London.

That feeling didn’t diminish when the lead vehicle pulled up to a line of bollards at the end ofKensington Palace fucking Gardens,and a grim-faced security guard walked over to check ID. He nodded to someone else in the guard house, and the bollards retracted smoothly into the pavement. We drove past, and I craned around to watch them rise once more from the road behind us, blocking it off from traffic.

Elijah leaned over to whisper, “I feel like I’m missing some cultural significance here. Is this place as big a deal as I think it is?”

“Probably b-bigger,” I muttered.

Onyx, riding shotgun with the black suited and capped driver up front, snorted. “Pretty wild, huh? Funniest part is, a lot of these mansions are total wrecks inside. Too expensive to keep up.”

The nameless driver chuckled. “The secret is to not let anybody close enough to look at them properly. Nice gardens, though.”

It was true. The rigorously manicured gardens with their topiary and abundant profusion of flowers laid out in geometric patterns wereverynice. Like, ‘public botanical garden’ levels of nice.

Elijah seemed caught between bewilderment and amusement. “Don’t tell me you’re hauling us to some drafty, hundred-year-old hovel that happens to have really good landscaping.”

Onyx made a half-and-half gesture with one hand. “The renovations on the main living areas are pretty much finished.The rest of it... well. If you like to watch urban exploration videos online, you’re in luck. Let’s just say that the Russians left it in a bit of a state.”

“The Russians?” Elijah echoed blankly.

“The boss got a deal on it, apparently,” Onyx replied. “The place used to be the Russian Consulate, back in the eighties. If you’re in the market, I hear the Nepalese contingent down the street have been trying to ditch theirs on the down-low. I can get you in touch with an estate agent.”

“No thanks,” Elijah said. “I’m good. Besides, my sub-lease in New York isn’t up for another seven months.”

My stomach twisted a little at the reminder of the real world waiting for us outside of this bizarre, self-enclosed universe of money.

“Just as well,” Onyx said philosophically. “The utility bills on these old hulks are outrageous.”

The outside of the former Russian Consulate was very...white. While not the largest mansion I’d ever seen, it was probably the most expensive based on location alone. The gardens were as perfectly manicured as all the others we’d passed, and the entire property was enclosed in six-foot wrought iron fence overgrown with carefully tended hedges.

Tommy Huntwell would not be sending any of his goons to storm Billionaire Row; that much was obvious. We were safe here.