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AIDEN

Sienna

So can we add her to the group chat?

Aiden

I need the group chat to remain a wife-free space

Whit

What’s happening?

Sienna

She’s driving Aiden crazy and it’s so fun to watch

Aiden

Thank you for your support

Sienna

You’re welcome ????

I think I’m on her side

Chicks before dicks

Aiden

I’m selling your car while you’re in class this week

E mory Hunter isn’t who I thought she was. Well, not entirely.

She really thought I cheated. She didn’t lie.

She didn’t bribe the mayor.

But she let me believe she did, and that thought lodges like a splinter in my brain. I stumble downstairs on Wednesday morning, well before she should be awake. I peer around the corner into the kitchen, as if she’s going to leap out and what ? Grind herself against me again?

Who am I kidding?

I know damn well she’s not in the kitchen because my body is attuned to every sound she makes from the adjoining bedroom. I should fill the connecting bathroom with concrete. I’d happily use the outdoor shower if it meant I never had to hear her stepping under the spray of the water.

Every creak of the house in the night made me wonder if it was her moving through the halls. My half-asleep brain wondered briefly if she was coming to smother me with a pillow.

I’m tired, and the beginning of a migraine pulses behind my left eye. I need coffee. Enough to drown in. Then I’m going down to the dock. Routine will save me. Routine will keep me sane while I try to survive the whirlwind that is Emory Hunter.

I stop short at the animal in my kitchen.

It’s sitting next to the counter, a pink tongue lolling out of its mouth, or what I assume is a mouth because the animal doesn’t have a distinct head. Or eyes. It’s just a mess of gray and white fur and blobby paws.

Something that may be a tail wags, and then a little yip issues from its mouth.

I circle to the other side of the island, where my coffee machine blinks cheerfully at me. Reliable, this machine. It delivers me a perfect cup of coffee every day at five a.m.

The animal follows me.

“Dog. Not-dog. Whatever you are. Stay to your side of the room.”

The maybe-dog-maybe-not-dog lets out another happy little sound.

I narrow my eyes. “Let’s get one thing straight, you and me.

I do not do dogs. I don’t like animal hair.

I’ve never dreamed of scooping up poop with my bare hands and shoving it into little green bags.

You may have tricked her into taking care of you, but I assure you, this”—I gesture between us—“is not going to happen.”

The maybe-dog wags its tail and tilts its head. It looks happy. Do dogs have tails that long? I have no idea. I wasn’t allowed to have pets as a child.

I shake my head and pour myself a tumbler of coffee. “No sense of self-preservation. I’m the enemy, not-dog. You should be preparing for battle, not wagging your tail. You have a lot to learn about living in this house.”

The animal is an assault on my peace and quiet, just like Emory’s existence is an assault on my way of life.

I take a gulp of scalding coffee to forget the feel of her under me in the gym.

I furtively jerked off last night, in the cold shower I took to forget about her.

Much good it did me. I muffled my shout with my teeth around my wrist, hoping the pain would pull me back from the brink of madness.

It didn’t work. Just like it didn’t work when I was eighteen.

The not-dog follows me to the door, where I shove my feet into the same leather boots I wear every morning and shrug on the jacket I’ve had for seven years.

I wax it every six months, and the pockets hold all sorts of useful things—a book for warm days when I want to lie on the deck of one of the boats, fishing lures if I want to try my hand at catching something—even though I never succeed—a knife, a protein bar.

“You are not coming with me, not-dog,” I mutter as I grab my ball cap. “Don’t make that face at me. Or what I assume is a face. You need a haircut. It’s criminal the way she’s let you go so long without being able to see.”

The dog makes a happy sound and slips around me into the sunshine. It meanders and shuffles along when I walk fast and bounds ahead when I slow down, following no discernible logic and existing solely to trip me up when it comes close.

It couldn’t be more like Emory if it tried.

The private dock is hidden in a cove at the bottom of a long set of steps. The ocean is gently rocking the boats tied up in the slips. Seagulls cry overhead. I take a deep inhale of salty air and push my wife from my thoughts. Being on the ocean or, barring that, near the ocean, settles me.

Tristan meets me at the dock, jogging down the stairs from the cliffs before he stops short and blinks at the animal.

“Thought you were running this morning.” I swing over the side of the forty-foot Beneteau and start pulling off the bumpers. She’s named Queensguard for the first whiskey my father distilled when he took over the company.

“Katie wanted to end early. Something about paparazzi at the gates.” At my frown, he waves a hand in the air and starts pulling off the lines. “I think she just needed an excuse to stop. Sienna flipped her on her back yesterday, and she’s hurting. I outpaced her today.” He grins.

Katie is basically family. She’s part-time bodyguard, part-time security.

Tristan is her full-time antagonist. They run together every morning and they’ve had a silent chess game going in the foyer of his house for years.

I think they’re at best of 277 games at this point.

She could, and does, regularly beat him up.

It keeps him humble, and she seems to be the only one capable of doing that.

I pull the cover off the wheel while Tristan starts the outboard motor. We’ll head into the channel and then raise the sails when we’re out of the harbor. We’ve done this thousands of times with Dad and hundreds of times now with just the two of us.

“You find anything on the Old Kingdom recipe yet?” I ask him.

Tristan is searching Dad’s papers for any mention of the whiskey.

“Not yet. I still have the papers from his study to go through. You remember anything else?”

“No.” I blow out a breath. “I can’t believe I forgot it.”

“Aiden, man—”

“I should remember how to make it.” I round on my brother.

“It was the last thing I did with Dad before he died. We went to the old distillery, and he walked me through the process. And yet, the only thing I remember is that we need to use water from the aquifer on the disputed land and nothing else. It’s like a black hole, Tristan.

Now all the barrels are gone and the stillhouse is empty.

If I could just fucking remember—god.” I spear a hand through my hair and tug on the strands like that will help me remember.

“All I remember from that week is the hospital.”

The crash, the call, the hospital smell.

I hear the beep of the heart monitor in my dreams.

Tristan’s face crumples. “Aiden, it’s okay. You’ll remember.”

I swallow and look away, letting my hands drop to my sides.

What if I don’t? What if this piece of family history is lost forever?

The last thing Dad cared about. In some ways, he loved the whiskey more than he loved his family.

Tristan thinks I don’t see it, but I do.

I love my father, but I know he was flawed.

I miss him, but I resent him for leaving.

“If we could just get a bottle of it,” he says, “I could reverse engineer it.”

“ If Grandfather would let you use the main stillhouse where we have the equipment.”

Tristan winces. “Yeah. If. I prepared the projections for the next meeting. Maybe we can get the rest of the family on board. Pressure Grandfather a little bit.”

I snort and start steering us into the channel. “They don’t care about the whiskey. They just like money. But yeah. Good idea.”

The longer we go without starting the distilling and aging process, the longer it’ll be before we have Old Kingdom. And with the last bottles gone, we desperately need to start. I need to be ready to make it as soon as I have access to the land.

Old Kingdom is our birthright.

Hundreds of years of Princes have made Old Kingdom whiskey. Whiskey for our weddings, whiskey at our family dinners, poured on our graves when we die and dabbed on our foreheads when we’re born. Made by mothers for their granddaughters and fathers for their sons. Made by my father for my siblings.

Made by me as soon as I can figure out this damn recipe.

The wind picks up as we start to clear the cliff edges that surround the harbor.

The sun is rising over the ocean, painting it in vivid pink and bruised purple.

The not-dog wriggles its way to the prow, where it rests its paws and plants its face in the wind.

Its tongue lolls out as the wind pushes the hair back from its face.

“Huh. Tristan, look. It is a dog. Look, it has eyes. And here I thought it was a demon sent by Emory to torture me.”

Tristan barks a laugh before raising the jib. “Saw you mixing it up with her yesterday,” he says idly.

I know he’s probing. Tristan likes to think he manages all of us, even though I’ve been watching out for him since he was a toddler and I was all of three.

“You think we’re ready for the limelight? There are some events coming up.”

Another laugh tears out of him. Tristan has a seemingly boundless well of good humor to go along with his endless scheming. “Is that a joke?”

I scowl at him. “We have to start somewhere.”

“Nowhere to go but up, I suppose,” he says cheerfully.

“That bad?”

“TMZ says you’re cheating on her.”

I groan. “Because I was approached while getting coffee by an old acquaintance from college who owns a winery. Grandfather probably bribed her to talk to me. I don’t even remember her liking me very much.”

Tristan’s grin is huge.

“It’s not funny.”