Page 154 of Morally Black Betrothal

People are as territorial as any wild animal. It’s why, when we’re wronged, so many can’t use logic—they act on their instincts to protect what’s theirs at all costs. We think it’s a virtue, but it’s not. It’s just desperation.

I’d always had the ability to step outside that basest of natures. My brothers and even my father all tended to be creatures of passion in one way or another. Owen was fueled by competition with me. Ronan by guilt. Shea by pleasure. My father, his pride. Their emotions were their weaknesses, and I’d never wanted to be exploited like that by anyone.

And so, what made people call me The Black Prince—my black, unfeeling heart—was the most evolved thing about me. While my family ran on emotion, I functioned on one thing: cold, pure logic.

Until now.

As I stood on the sixteenth floor of The Huntington Group’s latest development, a high-rise at the northwest corner of Southie, violence filled my soul, the sort that I hadn’t known since I had lived in this very neighborhood.

I looked over the place that had birthed me in the days before Blackguard Holding was little more than a betting room in the back of an Irish pub. The shitty row house that had once housed Dad’s original bookie operation now held a cafe that sold seven-dollar lattes. Closer to the harbor was the building that had replaced the even shittier house where I’d been born, where Ronan, Owen, and I had all grown up for the early years of our lives. Even when Blackguard was turning into something more than a gambling hall, even when we had the money to leave the old neighborhood, Niall, the cheap bastard, kept his family in the neighborhood he knew.

Every spare cent he had went back into growing Blackguard. There wasn’t a lot for us until later, when the old man realized he needed to train up the next generation to take his place one day.

Or maybe that was the point.

The others didn’t remember it so well, but I did. The peeling paint. The brown water. The gunshots around the corner.

I was four the first time Dad let me hold a gun.

Five when he taught me to throw a punch.

Six when he started pitting me against Owen in the backyard.

We did that even when we were home from boarding school, until Niall realized he couldn’t nab a supermodel for a third wife while still living in a Southie dump. That was when he started buying up the rest of the neighborhood instead of living in it.

But we still came back.

All of us still came back.

Maybe that was why even standing in the half-finished high-rise erected by The Huntington Group, right here on the edge of my family’s territory, I was filled with rage.

Boston was the place, but this area had always been my birthright more than the rest of it.

Or maybe it was because these fuckers had just taken something—really someone—that I also considered mine.

I didn’t know this little girl. But Simone did and loved her.

That made her someone I needed to protect.

Footsteps sounded on the concrete subfloors, echoing through the skeletons of the apartments-to-be.

“I hear congratulations are in order.”

I remained where I was, content for the moment to examine Ezra Huntington’s reflection in the windows.

He didn’t look like a criminal, but in my experience, most criminals rarely did. Neither did he look like the son of another massive investor on the East Coast. Instead of a suit, he wore the stale uniform of countless students/baristas/struggling artists in Boston: Carhartt pants, a shearling-lined denim jacket, not-quite-distressed-enough construction boots, and a beanie atop a face with two inches of patchy beard coming in.

He looked like he should be working on his laptop at one of those coffeehouses, not conducting a ransom up here with me.

I could hear Ronan cracking at least five jokes within the first thirty seconds of seeing him.How’s that latte art coming, asshole?he’d ask. Or maybe:Careful. Don’t want to trip and get dust on those brand-new booties.

“You’re late,” I said.

“I’m right on time.”

I glanced at my watch as I turned from the window. “It’s 7:04. You’re fuckin’ late, or are you going to lie about that too, Huntington?”

To his credit, he didn’t cower, despite the fact that I was at least six inches taller than him. Or by the fact that in my barely concealed rage, the South Boston was starting to come out in my speech too.