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EMORY

To: Emory Hunter

From: Aiden Prince

Subject: Shipment of whiskey

I seem to be missing a truckload of whiskey. I know you have it. I want it back.

To: Aiden Prince

From: Emory Hunter

Subject: MY whiskey

Dear Mr. Prince,

It seems your manners were lost along with the whiskey. It isn’t very good. Beg me and I’ll give it back.

Yours sincerely,

Emory Hunter

To: Aiden Prince

From: Emory Hunter

Subject: Our land

Dear Mr. Prince,

You still have not responded to the demand we made last month regarding the land. I understand the deadline to respond is tomorrow. Please advise.

Yours sincerely,

Emory Hunter

To: Emory Hunter

From: Aiden Prince

Subject: MY land

Evil queen,

Have you tried begging?

Yours if you ask nicely,

Aiden Prince

Saturday, Memorial Day Weekend

A iden Prince is looking for a wife. The rumor has taken on legs of its own in the hours since the announcement was made. A passing guest is talking about it with her friend as Leo and I slip through the back hallway of the Prince mansion. If anyone asks, we’re looking for a bathroom.

Leo drains a glass of champagne and gives me an innocent look when I scowl at him.

“We’re not here for that,” I hiss.

“No, you’re not here for that. I’ve never been to a Prince party. And I intend to have fun.”

I roll my eyes. “Until they find out you’re a Hunter and you get thrown out on your ass.”

“They won’t find out.” He tosses the champagne glass into a potted plant. “I’m not notorious. Not like some of us.”

“Fine. But don’t forget—”

“Yeah, yeah. Give Aiden the note. Have him meet you in the garden. I remember.” My cousin waves his hand in the air and pokes his head around the corner. “Ooh. They have an orchestra. And a champagne fountain.”

“Don’t be seduced by it, Leo. They hate us.

” I lean against the wall and watch couples mingle.

I don’t dare enter the ballroom. I don’t technically have an invitation, but that’s never stopped me.

There will be stares. Whispers will follow in my wake.

I don’t have time for that tonight. I need to speak to Aiden, and I need the property our families have been feuding over for my entire life.

That property is my ticket to the top.

“Didn’t think he’d reemerge,” my cousin says idly from his spot on the wall. He’s dark-haired, tan, and lean. Somehow, he got a tux, though I’m not sure I want to ask how, and he showed up for me, because of course he did. He always does.

“Aiden?” I scan the ballroom, looking for that head of chestnut hair. He hasn’t been seen in a year, but I’d still recognize those shiny, silky-looking strands anywhere. “Of course he did. He’s the Heir.”

My cousin snorts at the nickname. The Prince family has always called their oldest child the Heir and Aiden has always embodied it.

He followed the path his parents set out for him without question.

Straight A’s in high school, a double major in college in philosophy and classics, then the youngest JD/MBA to ever graduate from Harvard.

Sailing, lacrosse, fencing, squash, and a minor in dating all the girls his parents picked for him.

But his true strength is in competing with me.

Salutatorian to my valedictorian in high school, president of the debate club while I was vice president, better at liberal arts while I was better at math and science.

Until he won. Definitively. His star has risen and mine has only fallen in the years since college.

Fucker.

The ballroom is buzzing with the news. The Heir is choosing a wife.

Every calculating person in this room hopes their families will merge in a contract marriage for the ages.

Of the old money families in Hart’s Hill who call themselves Houses, Aiden’s is the oldest. The richest. The most illustrious.

They have the biggest estate and the most power.

They’re at the highest echelon of high society.

Marrying rich is one thing, but marrying a Prince? It’s like marrying royalty.

Aiden’s grandfather appears grimly satisfied and calculating as he surveys the ballroom, presumably searching for the perfect match for his spawn.

Prince Charming himself is nowhere to be seen, but like death and taxes, I’m sure he’s on his way.

I scan the room again, but I don’t really need to look. My body knows when Aiden is in the same room, like magnets that repel instead of attract.

I know everything about Aiden, and with every fact I’ve gleaned over the years, I’ve liked him less.

He’s uptight. Cold. Shiny hair, perfect shoulders, and a zero-proof personality.

He looks down on people who aren’t like him, which means he hates me just as much as I hate him.

He’d happily grind Hunter Gaming Inc. into dust and then sprinkle that dust on his morning coffee.

“You think he’ll say yes?”

I flick my gaze over to Leo. “He has to. Failure is not an option.”

“I don’t like it, Em.” My cousin’s sharply handsome face is creased in a frown.

“You don’t have to like it. You just have to help me.”

“What if he makes you do something terrible?”

I give Leo a skeptical look. Something terrible is practically the Hunter calling card. “He’s not that creative.”

“He’s going to make you beg,” Leo says darkly.

“Then I’ll beg,” I say firmly, even though the thought of begging him makes me want to gouge out an eye. Preferably Aiden’s. “I will do literally anything for that land.”

“Your dad won’t like this.”

I take a quick, sharp breath. “Dad understands business. The feud is hurting us. We need the disputed land. He’ll get over it once he sees how much more money we can make.

” The more realistic voice inside me says that might not happen.

Dad and Uncle Enzo might tear up any deal I make with Aiden.

They’ll embarrass me. Which means anything I can get Aiden to agree to needs to be ironclad.

Leo returns my skeptical look from before. “They like feuding with the Princes. They like being notorious. My mom actually told me last week that she prefers it this way.”

“They sound like kids who’ve been told they can’t have something, and their response is I didn’t want it anyway. ” I raise my brows. Leo grimaces. “You know I’m right.”

Leo is saved from responding by a tangible hush that settles over the room. Heads turn, guests angle toward the door, debutantes are shoved forward. My eyes follow without my permission. I know who I’m going to see before I see him.

Aiden .

He’s flanked by his siblings as he enters the ballroom, like heaven’s generals. I know their names and faces nearly as well as I know those of my own family.

Tristan Prince. The second son. Lighter hair, lighter eyes, more angular features. He’s the nice one, if any of them could be deemed nice. He’s Aiden’s right hand by all accounts, which makes him enemy number two.

Whittaker Prince. Dark hair and lake-blue bedroom eyes. He’s a Premier League soccer player, and the rumors about him exceed even the whispers about my family. Asshole. Troublemaker. Superstar. His brother’s coming-of-age ball must be reason enough for him to fly across the Atlantic.

Sienna Prince. Whittaker’s twin and the only girl. She’s the wild one, and she’s dressed like it tonight. Her dress is a pink so vibrant it hurts to look at. Her hair is bright blond with black tips, like it was dipped in tar.

Don’t look. Don’t fucking look. But my gaze is dragged unwillingly to Aiden as guests begin to crowd around. They’re paying fealty. It’s disgusting.

Looking is, of course, a mistake.

I try to look at Aiden Prince as little as possible, because he makes my insides burn.

He looks like the Greek and Roman statues they made us study in the one art class I took in college—like an emperor or a conqueror.

Aquiline nose, stark brows, fine cheekbones, a blunt jaw.

The sculptor who made him paid special attention to his mouth and wavy chestnut hair.

Both are too much. Too full, too soft, too enticing.

Aiden’s face is expressionless as he scans the room, and I shrink farther into the shadows. He’s going to see me. We might be rivals, but we’ve always orbited each other like a planet and its moon. I’m the planet, of course.

“Go,” I hiss to Leo.

“Right now?”

“Yes, right now. I need to disappear before he sees me and calls security.” He’s done it before. Once, when I snuck into his dormitory in college and stole a bottle of whiskey. He’d booby-trapped his desk, like a real psycho, and he called security on me.

“All right. I’m going.” Leo slugs the rest of his champagne and peers around the corner for another caterer with a tray.

“Stay focused,” I hiss.

He saunters forward, all devil-may-care and grinning while he grabs a new glass of champagne.

I roll my eyes at his back. I’m going to have to carry him home later. The champagne goes straight to his head.

I wait to make sure the hallway is clear, and then I walk quickly and quietly through the shadows.

I pass alcoves with statues, oil paintings, and locked doors.

My fingers itch to unlock them and pry into Aiden’s secrets.

It’s been at least a hundred years since a Hunter was permitted in this house.

A laugh goes up from the ballroom and I quicken my pace.

This hallway is endless and clearly not meant for guests.

We came in through the garden, then through double doors into a formal dining room before we turned right.

I reach an open door and poke my head in.

It’s a sitting room. Maybe we turned left? Shit.

Voices echo off the walls behind me. Probably catering staff.

But still my pulse hurries, urging me to flee.

There’s a key in an ornate wooden door. I grasp it and turn.

The heavy gilt of the metal key is roughened with—I peer—rubies.

What the hell? I pocket the key and push the door open.

I need to be outside, where I’m not caged by walls.

If he catches me, he’ll kill me. Or lock me in his dungeon.

Does he have a dungeon? Probably not. He’s way too upstanding to have a dungeon.

If they hadn’t taken everything from us a century ago, we’d be on top by now.

Ruthlessness beats goodness every single time.

“Little thief.” His voice rolls down the hallway, deep and luxurious through some trick of the architecture, raising goose bumps on my skin.

I take one quick step.

“Stay where you are.”

Well, shit.