Page 55 of Sinful Desires (Sinful #4)

Chapter

Forty-One

“It is not flesh and blood, but heart which makes us fathers and sons.”

― Friedrich von Schiller

Théo

23 years old

Fourteen years ago

“Happy birthday, Théo!”

The crowd roared as fireworks ripped through the sky in bursts of red, gold, and silver, flashing across the waves and slamming light against the stone walls of the chateau like the place was about to catch fire.

Music pounded so hard the floor shook. My heartbeat was in the bass.

I blew out twenty-three candles with someone’s lipstick smeared on my cheek.

The boys from my team popped bottles and sprayed everyone, champagne raining down while shirts soaked through and girls squealed with laughter.

Everything was drenched. Everyone was drunk.

And I felt fucking untouchable.

The terrace stank of smoke, sweat, and spilled liquor.

People were dancing, fighting, fucking. Some were pressed against the stone walls, others collapsed on the steps with their dresses hiked up and their eyes rolled back.

There were joints in every fucking hand.

Pills passed from tongue to tongue. Coke lines across the bar, wiped clean by a wrist or cleavage.

I was laughing, soaking wet, fingers sticky with sugar and salt. I was high on the chaos, drunk on the noise, and I wanted it to never fucking stop.

This was my night. I owned it.

An arm slung around my shoulders. Antoine LeMant, grinning like a devil.

“Fuck, this might be the party of the century, LeRoy.”

I took the lit cigar from his hand, dragged in deeply, and passed it back. Smoke burned through my lungs like gasoline.

Someone rolled in barrels of invisible neon paint and suddenly everyone had their hands in, smearing glowing shapes on bare chests, thighs, faces, tongues. The Black Eyed Peas’ “I Gotta Feeling” exploded through the speakers.

“If my parents find out we’re here, I’m dead,” I muttered, grabbing a champagne bottle off a tray and drinking straight from the neck. “They think we’re quietly docked on the yacht.”

Antoine laughed so hard he nearly fell over.

Someone behind us screamed. Someone else cannonballed into the sea, fully clothed.

“What’s the point of owning a fucking castle island if you don’t use it to get blackout and commit minor crimes?”

I shrugged. “That’s what I’ve been saying.”

He groaned, grabbing a bottle from a passing tray. “Mine are pissing me off. They want me to start training for the LeMant board takeover, but I told them I needed a fucking gap year. You know what they said?”

“Let me guess. Duty calls ?”

“Duty fucking calls,” he muttered, swigging.

The LeMants owned half the goddamn silver in France and the United Kingdom. Cutlery, chandeliers, champagne trays, you name it. They’d built an empire on spoons and family politics. Now they expected their son to step in and keep the porcelain train running.

Royalty, but shinier.

I exhaled through my nose, watching the neon glow slide across the waves.

“Mine too,” I muttered. “Supposed to start my internship next week. Learn how to take the reins . Carry the torch. Uphold the legacy. All that bullshit.”

We didn’t want any of it. But that was what we had been born for, right?

To inherit the rot and smile while it swallowed us whole.

“I’d say fuck them all and let’s party like crazy tonight!” Antoine shouted, voice already half gone.

And we fucking did.

Hard .

Until the night bled out. Until the drugs hit so hard we couldn’t remember our own names. Until alcohol had melted the weight of youth and bloodlines and expectation into nothing but noise.

The music pounded through bone, sweat coated every inch of skin, and nothing else mattered.

By 3 a.m., it was a warzone of privilege.

Bodies tangled in the grass, on marble floors, in half-flooded bathrooms.

And then, sirens. Flashlights. The distant chug of an engine.

Coastal police pulled up in a navy boat, floodlights tearing through the dark. Dozens of officers stormed the property, shouting over the music, forcing everyone out like they were animals.

Girls scrambled for their tops. Someone puked into the roses.

The whole fucking illusion snapped in half.

“Welcome to the party, officers,” I said, shirt unbuttoned, skin slick with sweat and neon paint, some girl’s glowing handprint smeared across my chest.

I raised a champagne bottle. “May I offer you a drink? Or are we skipping straight to the handcuffs?”

One of them stepped forward, jaw clenched tightly beneath his salt-and-pepper beard.

“Everyone off the property. Now . The owners of the surrounding islands filed official complaints. Noise, trespassing, suspected drug activity?—”

He didn’t even get to finish. Because in the corner of my eye, I saw them coming.

My parents.

Storming down the path, faces red, fury simmering behind tight jaws and designer collars. My mother in stilettos, swatting cops away like gnats. My father behind her, slow and silent, the kind of silence that broke ribs.

Putain .

Worse than cops.

My mother’s voice was ice. “You’re an embarrassment, Théo.”

I grinned, swaying. “ Bonsoir, Maman .”

My father’s teeth barely moved. “Inside. Now.”

They made their way to the entrance, opened the door, and vanished as the last stragglers stumbled over the bridge. Their legs were jelly from booze and pills, clutching at officers like toddlers. One girl lost a heel. Another dropped a joint and started crying.

The police boat revved and peeled off.

And just like that, the party died. Cold as a grave.

I grabbed the closest bottle of vodka, took a swig, and let it fall into the grass as I stumbled forward, my head splitting with the start of a headache.

Chandeliers lit the hall, shadows bleeding across wood and red Persian carpets.

I found them in the living room.

My mother sat on one of the antique sofas designed to mimic Versailles, legs crossed, judgment thick in her silence.

My father stood with his back to me, facing the towering portraits of the LeRoy dynasty. Centuries of ghosts stared down from the walls, every one of them wearing the same grey eyes I saw in the mirror.

My mother was the first to speak.

“We gave you this island because we believed you might understand what it meant. Clearly, we were mistaken. It is not a playground, Théo. It is a legacy. And you’ve dragged it through filth.”

There it fucking was. That word again.

Legacy .

My father didn’t even look at me. He turned to the window, hands folded behind his back, watching the ocean.

My mother stood, smoothing her dress like my disgrace was something she could simply press flat.

“You had diplomats’ children here, Théo.

Saudi heirs. The son of the Minister of Justice.

The Belgian Crown Prince’s niece. The grandson of a UN Secretary-General.

The De Vallois twins. A Rothschild nephew, for God’s sake.

And now there are photos of them half naked on our docks, covered in neon paint, grinding on each other like animals. ”

She looked at me like I was something rotting on silk.

Not hatred. Worse.

Disappointment sharp enough to bleed.

And it gutted me, because it wasn’t the look she usually gave me. Not the quiet pride. Not the way her eyes always softened when they landed on me.

This was different. This was cold.

Her eyes were sad now. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”

My father turned then, slowly. His eyes were grey, like mine, but nothing warm in them.

Only shame.

“You are a spoiled little brat ,” he said, calm and lethal.

“I suppose this is what we get for coddling you. For mistaking softness for strength. We gave you everything. Freedom. Comfort. Love. A name that opens doors. And you turned it into a fucking joke. All we asked was that you grasp the weight of your privilege. But even that was beneath you.”

I let out a low, dark laugh and leaned my shoulder against the wall, too drunk to pretend I gave a shit.

“Guess you should’ve tried harder, then.”

My mother flinched. My father didn’t blink.

“You gave me everything , right? I’m just using it how I want. Don’t get all moral now.”

The words came out poisoned, slurred from too much vodka, but somewhere in my wrecked mind, I knew they were fucking right.

The truth was already burning holes in my throat.

Any other fucked-up kid raised through coldness, beatings, and shame would’ve killed to be in my place.

They’d never raised their voices. Had never once made me feel unloved.

They were everything I couldn’t be, and I ruined them anyway .

The kind of parents who stayed present when they could’ve vanished into their privilege. But they weren’t. They were the blueprint of success. Not just the empire-building, handshaking kind.

They were good people. Steady. Better than the world they ruled. And that’s what made it worse.

Because deep down, I knew I didn’t deserve them.

And maybe that’s why I spiraled harder with every year.

Because it was easier to drown than to admit I was the fucking failure in a family of saints. And every time they’d opened the door for me again, arms warm and hearts wide, I hated myself a little more for walking through it.

The return of the prodigal son who didn’t deserve mercy .

Not even a little.

“You’re drunk and high, mon c?ur . You don’t mean that. Please, let us help you,” my mother said as she stepped closer, her hand brushing my cheek. Tears swelled in her eyes. “We hate to see you like this, Théo.”

I jerked back with a twisted laugh, tossing my head away from her touch like it burned.

“Like what? Free? That’s who I am, Maman .”

The stars in my vision flared as I laughed again, too loudly, too long, the kind of laugh that cracks in the middle. The room tilted, colors bleeding at the edges, furniture warping like a dream on fire.

I threw my arms out wide, spinning once on unsteady feet, eyes glassy and wild.

“That’s who I fucking am,” I shouted, slapping my bare chest with a force that echoed in the chandelier. The sound ricocheted in my skull, ringing louder than reason.