Page 1 of A Knight’s Revenge: The Complete Series

PROLOGUE

I stood tall in front of my bathroom mirror, practicing my posture and fidgeting with my shiny blue tie. I was no stranger to wearing a suit, but this one—my favorite in dark gray—was almost too small for me since I’d finally had a growth spurt.

I was now almost as tall as my father, and I hoped I’d soon shoot past him so that he couldn’t look down at me anymore when he spoke to me.

The boy in my reflection stared back at me, his big green eyes solemn and his nervousness about whatever tonight was about clear on his face. I needed to get myself under control so that Father would see how serious I was about my role in this Family.

I needed him to see how ready I was to take on more responsibility and learn what it meant to be the Spencer Heir.

Father had announced at breakfast this morning that I was to join him tonight for a full formal meeting of the Families—my first time attending rather than being sent off to “play” with the other Heirs while our parents conducted Family business.

Father hadn’t looked up from his phone even once when he’d given me my marching orders over his usual black coffee and toast, and he hadn’t elaborated.

I was to be ready at ten o’clock sharp, and we’d be leaving Spencer Tower.

All I could manage was to mumble, “Yes, sir,” after swallowing the mouthful of eggs I’d been chewing when he’d addressed me out of nowhere. I knew better than to ask questions. If he’d wanted me to know more, he’d have told me more.

A sharp knock sounded at my bathroom door.

“Bennett! We’re leaving.”

I tightened my tie one last time, thankful that I’d decided to be ready fifteen minutes early just in case. “Coming!” I called.

Opening the door with a quick tug, I stepped into the dim hallway of our penthouse to find that my father had already disappeared and was probably waiting for me downstairs, impatient as always.

I crept down the hall on quiet feet so as not to disturb my mother, even though I doubted a herd of bison could wake her if she’d already taken her pills.

I hurried down several flights of stairs and into the large open foyer of our penthouse, and I found my father waiting in front of the elevator doors, his cold brown eyes scrutinizing my every step as I approached him.

“Stand up straight,” he barked before pushing the button to call the elevator. “Spencers do not slouch or cower in front of anyone .”

I made a show of attempting to stand up straighter than I already was, my nerves making me rigid as a board. “Yes, sir.”

“Good. Follow along, and do not speak unless spoken to for the rest of the evening. Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

After the tense ride down the sixty-five floors of Spencer Tower, we piled into Father’s usual sleek black town car idling at the curb and driven by Rick, the only man allowed to drive him anywhere.

The car moved slowly through the streets of the City, which were quiet this time of night on a Monday, and I immediately recognized the route toward Hargraves Tower—a quick four blocks north of our tower, headed away from the riverfront.

Rick dropped us at the front entrance, and I dutifully followed Father into the elevator. We exited on the twenty-fourth floor, finding ourselves in what looked like an unused office space—newly remodeled and waiting for the next Hargraves company to make its home there, I guessed.

Father ushered me into a large conference room containing nothing but plain beige carpet and several people all dressed for business and standing around the room .

I spotted my best friends, Zach and Noah, right away. I hurried over to where they were leaning up against the bare wall on the far side of the conference room. They had their suits on too, and neither of them looked thrilled to be here.

“Hey,” I whispered as I took up my post next to Zach. “Do you guys know what this is about? Father told me nothing.”

“Nope,” Zach replied, popping the “p.” “Mom sent Ramon to drag me away from my PS4, like, half an hour ago. He shoved me into this stupid monkey suit, and now I’m here, apparently doing real Heir shit.

” He yanked on his red tie and ran his hand through his wild black hair, which, apparently, his mother’s bodyguard had not forced him to comb.

“Shh,” I hissed, elbowing him in the ribs. “Don’t let them hear you bitching. This is a big deal. They’re finally going to start treating us like the Heirs if we’re getting to attend a formal Family meeting.”

“I don’t know anything either,” Noah added from Zach’s other side with a quiet sigh. He had his light gray suit on, which still fit him like a glove since he was the last of us to hit a growth spurt.

Well, besides Jolie, but she was a year younger than we were and a girl—so she was supposed to be tiny.

Noah went on. “Dad sat me down earlier and just said that tonight I need to show that I am strong and committed to the Families. That tonight was important.” He shoved his round wire-framed glasses higher on his nose with his finger before tossing the stray strands of his shaggy blond hair out of his face—classic Noah fidgets.

My nerves spiked at his words, but I was determined to prove that I had what it took to be the Spencer Heir, whatever happened tonight. I cast a wary look around the room, but I found nothing that would give me any sort of clue as to what the hell was going on.

My father stood in the center of the room, his features as cold and calculating as they usually were.

He wore one of his expensive bespoke suits, and I wondered if he was wearing his guns under his jacket.

His brown hair—the same chocolate shade as mine—was only just starting to turn gray at the temples.

He’d celebrated his fortieth birthday a few months ago, and I remembered it well because the four of us had snuck downstairs and stolen two bottles of champagne from his fancy party before getting stupid drunk up in my media room.

We’d passed out in a pile of sleeping bags and woken up the next morning feeling like total shit.

Father spoke in hushed tones to Zach’s mom, Andrea Ferrero, who listened to him with a scary smile plastered to her Botoxed and heavily made-up face.

She wore a sharp pantsuit in blood red, and her spiky black high heels probably cost as much as my mom’s car.

She was a viper, and all of us were afraid of her, except for Zach, of course, because he was her beloved son.

Noah’s dad, Peter, stood next to them, and he appeared to be half listening to whatever my father was saying to Andrea while also keeping a sharp eye on the door.

He was the only one of the three of them who looked even a little bit uneasy, though he still managed to stand tall and proud, just like the others.

He had ash-blond hair, just a bit different than Noah’s golden blond, and his slim-fitting dark blue suit accentuated his skinny frame.

He was the least scary of the three of them that were here—choosing mostly to parent Noah politely from a distance rather than exerting the oppressive control Zach and I were used to from our own parents.

“Where’s Jolie and her dad?” Noah murmured as the three of us continued to stand there awkwardly. “I guess we’re just waiting for them before the meeting starts?”

“If they tried to put her in a dress for this, she probably punched someone,” Zach replied, chuckling.

That image had me smiling despite the heavy feeling of the room.

As our best friend and the fourth and final Heir, Jolie spent way too much time with the three of us guys, so she was the least girly girl I knew.

I hoped she got here soon—I always felt the most at ease when the four of us were together, and I knew the other two felt the same.

Jolie also had the luxury of parents who treated her like a normal kid instead of an unfeeling robot destined to rule an empire, so her dad may have actually told her what the purpose of this whole thing was. She might be able to tell us something when she finally got here.

Suddenly, the door to the conference room banged open, and three Enforcers wearing the Ferrero Family serpent crest on their black tactical uniforms marched into the room.

A shrill female voice cried, “Get your hands off my daughter, you pigs! ”

I smothered a gasp when I registered that the Enforcers were dragging three people in with them, and they tossed them onto the floor at our parents’ feet before retreating to stand at attention against the nearest wall, their guns now aimed straight at our prisoners .

“Oh my God.” Noah’s hushed cry was barely audible, and I felt Zach go rigid beside me.

I sucked in a few more harsh breaths and willed myself to remain still because underneath it all, I was panicking .

The struggling, bleeding, bound people now on their knees at James Spencer’s, Andrea Ferrero’s, and Peter Hargraves’ feet were Jeffrey and Kerstin Knight.

The small, unmoving body lying in a heap next to her father, dark red blood staining her white-blonde hair, was Jolie. I could tell she was wearing her favorite Fall Out Boy T-shirt and red polka-dot shorts—the same pajamas she’d worn to so many of our sleepovers in the last year.

They’d taken her from her bed and bashed her freaking head in!

I stared at her, fear like I’d never known seizing my entire body, and I willed her to breathe, move, show some signs of life, but I couldn’t see anything behind her curtain of bloody white hair.

“What the hell is the meaning of this, James?” Mr. Knight spat at my father as he struggled against the zip-ties binding his hands in front of him and his feet behind him. “Are you out of your goddamn mind?”

“Fuck you, Andrea,” Kerstin growled at Zach’s mom through gritted teeth, her own white-blonde hair matted with blood. “Call off your dogs before I stab you to death with those god-awful shoes.”

Andrea just cackled. “Bring it on, bitch. I’m just glad I don’t have to pretend to like you over brunch anymore.”

“Enough!” Father barked like he was bringing this meeting to some kind of order. “That is entirely enough out of you both. I think you know why you’ve been brought here before us in this manner.”

“I know nothing of the sort,” Jeffrey bit out. “There is no reason that exists on this earth that would justify what you’ve done to my family.”

My father just plowed on like he hadn’t heard Mr. Knight at all.

“Everyone in this room understands how the Families work. How we coexist together and how we retain the immeasurable power that we have in this City. It is why we have ingrained it into our code that a betrayal of any of the Families by another is to be dealt with by the harshest of punishments.”

A betrayal? What the hell?

“Indeed,” Andrea continued. “You two thought you could hide what you were up to from the rest of us. Unfortunately, you thought wrong.”

“What in God’s name are you talking about?” Jeffrey roared. He tried to reach for Jolie’s still form, but Father pulled his gun from under his suit jacket and aimed it straight at Mr. Knight’s head, and he froze.

“You really don’t know, old friend?” Father asked, his voice dripping with disdain as he cocked his handgun. He leaned in, whispering words that I could only just make out from where I stood paralyzed against the wall. “You were going to bury us.”

Something must have clicked for Mr. Knight, because the wild outrage and confusion dropped from his face.

Instead, a look of cold, bitter fury came over him, and it was as if he’d figured out exactly what was going on after all.

“You’ll burn in hell for this, you despicable fucking sociopaths,” he seethed.

“You first,” Father said simply, and then he pulled the trigger.

“No!” Kerstin screamed as her husband’s head snapped to the side when the bullet hit him squarely in the temple, and he crumpled to the floor.

“Shit, shit, shit,” Zach cursed quietly next to me, his body trembling against mine where our shoulders brushed.

“Oh my God, oh my God ,” Noah moaned again, the pain and fear clear in his shaky whisper.

“You know the code, Kerstin,” Andrea purred. “It’s over, honey.”

Kerstin tore her tear-filled eyes away from where her husband lay, the dark blood seeping from his head into the ugly carpet around him. “Fuck you, you evil bitch. Fuck every single one of you.”

Suddenly, she lunged for Father’s gun, throwing herself in between him and Jolie. He was knocked off balance for a second by her flailing hands, but it only took that one second for Andrea to pull her tiny revolver from her snakeskin purse and fire a shot into Kerstin’s head.

She fell, instantly dead, her body splayed in front of where Jolie still lay completely still.

Was my father going to shoot Jolie too? I sucked in more panicked breaths, desperately trying not to make a sound .

Noah’s dad turned to us, a solemn look on his face like he was disappointed by the evening’s events.

“You did well, boys,” he said to us. “I know this was very hard to watch. Lord knows it was hard for me to hear that Jeffrey—one of my closest and oldest friends—had been so disloyal to us all. But it was important for you three to be here tonight to understand what it means for us to be the Families. We rule together , or we don’t rule at all.

Any deviation is wiped from the board. Understood? ”

“Yes, sir,” we all managed to croak in unison.

He gave us a bright smile, and it looked just like Noah’s smile, except Noah could never smile at a time like this.

“Yes, excellent work, you three,” Andrea cooed at us. “I know you’ll make me so proud, Zachary.”

He nodded, forcing out a smile for his mom.

“This is the beginning of your real education, boys,” Father added, casting his cold gaze over the three of us.

“You’ll learn what it truly takes to be an Heir and one day control your Family’s empire.

We expect you to be ready.” Then he turned to the Ferrero Enforcers, who hadn’t moved a single muscle except to lower their weapons now that this horror show was ending.

“Get rid of them,” he barked, waving a dismissive hand at the Knights before turning away to confer with Peter and Andrea.

Zach, Noah, and I watched as the Enforcers dragged the dead bodies of Mr. and Mrs. Knight from the room.

The last one hefted Jolie over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, her head dangling and her pale face turned toward where we stood like statues, and then he marched obediently behind the others toward the exit.

The last thing I saw before they disappeared was the fluttering open of Jolie’s eyes, her striking aquamarine stare meeting mine for a fraction of a second and boring straight into my soul , before her lids fell shut again as she vanished out the door and out of our lives forever.