Chapter 1

Kenna

The air in the church is thick enough to choke on. It’s a cloying mix of lilies—so many lilies, their funereal scent is a physical weight—and the damp, ancient stone of St. Bartholomew’s. From my place at the lectern, the faces of the mourners blur into a sea of black, a somber oil painting of grief. My hands, clammy and cold, grip the polished wood until my knuckles are white.

This is all wrong. Alistair Croft, a man whose very essence was the scent of old paper, whiskey, and roaring fireplaces, would have hated this. He would have called it a “maudlin spectacle.” He would have wanted a raucous Irish wake, with glasses raised high and stories shouted over the din. Not this hushed, suffocating reverence.

My heart hammers against my ribs, a frantic bird trapped in a cage of bone. Alistair is gone. The thought is a simple, four-word sentence, yet my mind refuses to accept it. He was my mentor, my champion, the only father I ever knew. He found me, a lost girl scribbling stories in the margins of her foster-home textbooks, and he saw something in me. He didn’t just give me a future; he gave me a past I could be proud of, a legacy I could attach myself to. Now, that anchor is gone, and I am adrift in this sea of black.

I clear my throat, the sound unnaturally loud in the hallowed silence. My notes, the ones I spent all night writing and rewriting, feel like flimsy, useless things. The words on the page are black ink, but the memories are etched in my soul in vibrant color.

“Alistair Croft,” I begin, my voice trembling on the first word before I wrestle it into submission. “To the world, he was a literary giant. A recluse. A genius who built worlds with words. But to those of us who knew him… he was just Alistair.”

My eyes scan the pews. I see his editor from Bloomsbury, dabbing her eyes with a silk handkerchief. I see his agent, a man known for his ruthless negotiations, looking utterly broken. I see the faces of other writers he mentored, the ‘Croft Colony’ as the press cheekily called us. We were his real family. His chosen family.

And then I see him.

He’s standing in the back, near the heavy oak doors, as if poised for a quick escape. He isn’t part of the collective grief. He’s an island of cold, solitary anger in this ocean of sorrow. He isn’t crying. His face, a masterpiece of sharp angles and severe beauty, is a mask of impatient disdain.

I know, with a sureness that steals the air in my lungs, that this is Julian Croft. The estranged son. The venture capitalist. The ghost who haunted the edges of Alistair’s life, his name only ever spoken in hushed, pained tones.

Alistair had shown me a photo once. A younger Julian, maybe sixteen, with a rebellious smirk and the same impossibly sharp jawline. But the photograph did not do this man justice. The man standing before me is not a boy. He is a predator in a bespoke suit so perfectly tailored it looks like it was stitched directly onto his lean, athletic frame. The charcoal wool stretches across broad shoulders, tapering to a narrow waist. His dark brown hair is impeccably styled, not a strand daring to fall out of place. He is the physical embodiment of control.

My gaze travels over his face, cataloging the details. The strong, straight nose. The firm, unsmiling mouth that looks like it was carved from granite. And his eyes… they are the color of a stormy sky, a turbulent, intimidating gray. They are not Alistair’s warm, whiskey-brown eyes. They are the eyes of a man who assesses, who calculates, who dismisses. A faint, silvery scar cuts through his left eyebrow, a tiny flaw in his otherwise perfect, ruthless beauty that only makes him look more dangerous.

A jolt, hot and unwelcome, shoots through me. It’s a flicker of pure, carnal awareness that has no place here, in this sacred space, while I am mourning the man who saved me. It feels like a betrayal, a sacrilege. I hate him for it. I hate him for standing there, radiating judgment. I hate him for making me feel anything other than grief for his father.

I force my attention back to my notes, my grip on the lectern tightening. My voice, when I speak again, is stronger, laced with a new, defensive fire. I’m not just eulogizing Alistair anymore. I am defending him from the silent contempt of his son.

“People called him a recluse,” I say, my eyes finding Julian’s again, challenging him. “But he wasn’t hiding from the world. He was protecting his peace. He used to say, ‘Kenna, the world is loud. It screams for your attention. But the best stories, the ones that matter, they whisper. You have to be quiet to hear them.’”

I share the story of how he found my first manuscript in a slush pile, how he called me personally, his booming voice on the other end of the line making my foster mother think I was in trouble. I talk about late nights in his study, the smell of woodsmoke and leather, the way he’d push his spectacles up his nose and read my clumsy prose as if it were the most important text in the world.

“He didn’t just teach me how to write,” I say, my voice thick with emotion now. “He taught me how to be worthy of the stories I wanted to tell. He was a father to me, in every way that mattered.”

The words are a pointed dart, and I know, I know it hits its mark. I see a flicker of something in Julian’s stormy eyes—a flash of raw, unguarded pain—before it’s shuttered away, replaced by that infuriating mask of cold indifference. Our gazes lock across the cavernous church, and the air crackles. It’s a silent, instantaneous declaration of war. He sees a usurper, the girl who got the love he was denied. I see a bitter, ungrateful son who abandoned the man who, for all his faults, would have moved mountains for him.

I finish my eulogy, my words about his legacy and his immortality through his books hanging in the still, heavy air. The congregation dissolves into a chorus of soft, respectful sniffles. A few people even offer a muted, solemn applause. My legs feel like jelly as I step down from the lectern, my entire body trembling from the emotional exertion.

As I walk back to my seat in the front pew, I can feel his eyes on me. It’s not a look of admiration or respect. It’s a physical weight, a piercing gaze that feels like it’s peeling back my skin, layer by layer, searching for my weaknesses.

The service concludes in a blur of hymns and prayers. I am hugged, my hand is squeezed, condolences are whispered in my ear. But all I think about is the wake to follow. It won’t be a celebration of Alistair’s life. It will be a battlefield. And I have just met my enemy. He is more handsome, more formidable, and more infuriating than I could have ever imagined. And as I sit here, surrounded by sorrow, a traitorous part of me, a deep, dark, primal part, whispers that the war has already begun.