Page 86 of Filthy Rich

Kindness.

Loyalty.

Sacrifice.

I wanted it, and I was fascinated by it, but I never trusted it.

Until two days ago, I never felt like I fit in with my foster family. I wasn’t sure why. I thought it might have been because I still had a father. I told myself it was, like my dad always said, because the Fansees were unbearable do-gooders.

Victims.

I was born to be a warrior, a taker, not a patsy.

Imagine my surprise to discover that I really am the son of two infamous murderers. At least warriors and invaders like Vikings or Saracens were honest about their violent intentions and proclivities. They were raised in a culture that celebrated their barbarity.

No one celebrates murder.

There’s no narrative where I’m the child of anyone good.

After I manage to film the scene I agreed to do today, barely, I stumble back to my apartment. Blessedly, my dad—er, my uncle—is gone. I spend more than half of the nine hours I could have slept digging around for and reading articles on my parents.

My disgusting, horrible, awful parents.

They were every bit as terrible as my uncle described. In fact, I’d have said few people were as bad as my dad, but it turns out my dad was closer to the pope than he was to my real biological father.

And my crackpot mother might be worse yet.

She fell in love with him via email after he’d already been convicted.

No wonder I don’t fit in with the Fansees. No wonder helping my ‘dad’ came so easily to me. I was a monster all along, from the very most basic level of my DNA on both sides.

When Octavia calls the next morning, it wakes me up with just enough time I can shower before showing up for my scene. I look like death when I roll up, but the makeup people are miracle workers.

I should be relieved that I’m able to work, but I’m not. A Viking wouldn’t struggle with their true nature, so why should I? But that night, when I’m finally done, and Jane sends me home, I text Octavia.

Dinner?

She likes the text, so I tell her I’ll pick her up in twenty minutes.

Before I can leave, May jogs up, waving her arms. “Hey, any chance I can grab a ride?”

“Oh, shoot,” I say. “I’m about to go pick up Octavia, and I have a two -seater car.” I point.

“Where are you picking her up?”

I rattle off her hotel.

“That’s where they have me staying.” She beams. “If you can just drop me off there, that would be amazing.”

“Sure.”

I jerk my thumb at the passenger door. She must be able to read my mood, because she spends the whole ride texting on her phone, probably with her boyfriend.

My mind works frantically the entire ride. I’ve worked out one way out of this mess—one—but it’s a nasty one. Sadly, any way I look at it, this is the only way. When I get to the hotel, I wait for May to get out, and then I press my head against the steering wheel and think it all through one last time.

There’s a tapping on the glass.

I whip up my head, prepared to chew May out, but it’s not her.

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