Page 132 of The Last De Loughrey Dynasty

CHAPTER FIFTY

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Cold water hitmy face and I inhaled sharply. “Fuck.”

I was a coward. A damn pathetic coward that’s unable to speak back to the man who raised him, with rage spilling from his fingertips as his fury rained down on me. Who made a little boy thank him for the way he’s been raised every time his educational methods showed efficiency.

Thank you for shaping me into a man who can’t feel because he once felt too much. And Kingstone men don’t feel. They don’t love or believe in something more powerful than the ways of money in this world.

Thank you for not making me weak.

Thank you, father. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

I threw my fist into the stone wall of the school’s public bathroom, my knuckles splitting on impact. No harm was done to the wall. The building was built more than three hundred years ago. The walls were robust enough to shield from the impact of a human fist. And I was aware of that. Blood was what I anticipated.

Burning physical pain had always been better than the blinding agony in my mind, causing me to lose control over mysenses. It was physical pain that I could control, so I stuck with it for the past six years of my life.

Watching the white scraped-open skin on my knuckles turn red, I calmed my racing heart. Perhaps this coping mechanism worked for now, but it wouldn’t change anything.

I was promised to marry a girl I did not know, neither loved. It was an arranged marriage to bind the Busch and Kingstone families. The girl I was promised to last summer was the daughter of a banker who owned half of the banks located in America.

Surely, I stated that I did not want to be a part of this. That I’m no man for marriage, nor do I want to marry right after college. But my father didn’t care, he tried to put into my head how important that was for our family. For our business.

We were already rich. This would just be the cherry on top of the iceberg.

I forgot about it, thinking my death would come in one way or another this year, but then I found Dorothee…

The bright star in my darkness.

And suddenly, I knew that I wouldn’t throw my life away just because my father forced me to. There was no way in hell that I’d marry another woman when my heart was all hers.

I built a plan in my mind to take Dorothee and run away with her after school, possibly college, and we’d build a quiet life away from all of this.

Everything would work out. I’d make it work out.

I just had to explain to Doe that I couldn’t let my father know of my plan; otherwise, he’d pull me off the school. I’ve ended up here to hide me until I get a hold of myself. Now that I’ve grown into the man he needs, he wouldn’t shy away from transferring me to another school for my last year if that meant I’d obey.

Taking one last look in the mirror, I straightened my clothes and used the napkin from my breast pocket to wrap it around my hand, hiding the blood beneath it.

I had to find Doe and explain it to her.

Eagerly, I stormed out of the bathroom, hurrying down the corridor toward the ballroom, when suddenly a door flew open and someone dragged me inside it.

“What the—?!” I cursed before I noticed Naomi in the dim light of the room. It was Chadwick’s office. I’d been in here only a few times, but it was almost obvious that it belonged to him by the tidy organisation of his books and the damn happy family portrait of him as a teenager with his parents hanging opposite the door.

I noticed Naomi’s heavy breathing, and concern grew inside me. “What’s going on?”

A struggling sound came from behind us and I spun around to see Asher bloody Kane tied to a chair with duct tape over his mouth.

My eyes widened in shock as I looked from our seized Professor to Mai and Jesse standing on either side of him.

“This was the first thing I came up with,” Jesse defended himself, scratching the back of his neck nervously.

“How did you even manage to do that?” Kane was almost twice the size of him. I could hardly imagine him allowing one of his students to tie him to a chair.

“He hit him over the head with a really heavy book,” Mai answered for Jesse, who simply nodded.

“It was a hardcover ofWar and Peace. Never thought this novel would happen to save my arse one day, but it surprisingly did.”

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