The Prince

Søren loved him. Kingsley knew that now in his heart. And those mind games he played were just that—mere games. Søren punished him with silence even as he gave him his undivided attention. He insulted him before bestowing the most passionate of kisses. He said Kingsley meant nothing to him before spending half the night inside him. Søren loved him. Søren loved him. Søren loved him. The refrain in his heart matched the insistent beat of the music. No one could or would understand the love they had for each other or how they showed it. Only Søren, Kingsley and the music knew, and the music would never tell.

“Mon Dieu…” Marie-Laure breathed the words, her eyes trained on Søren with a blank, unblinking stare. Once more the fear returned to Kingsley’s heart.

No…not her, too. Anyone but his sister…

She pulled her hand from his and raised it in front of her. Kingsley’s eyes widened in fear as he saw the subtle tremor that had overtaken it.

“Mon Dieu,” she had whispered. My God.

Kingsley took her hand again and pulled it tight to his chest. He would hold her close and keep her safe from the love that he knew would enter her soul like a demon.

“Don’t be afraid.” Kingsley kissed the back of her hand and smiled at her—a false smile meant to break the spell of the music and the blond god who played it. “He does that to everyone.”

NORTH

The Present

Kingsley left the Rolls-Royce idling in front of his town house. Everyone knew of Kingsley Edge and his silver Rolls, which ferried him all over Manhattan. He needed anonymity today. So instead he returned to his house, changed into black jeans, a gray T-shirt and leather jacket, pulled on sunglasses and hid his long hair in a low ponytail. At the back of the town house was a garage that most of Manhattan assumed held only the Rolls-Royce and its twin brother. But at the back under a suede car cover sat a sleek black Jaguar with unregistered plates. Only in emergencies did Kingsley ever leave his home incognito. And this certainly qualified as an emergency.

He started the car and left the town house by the back streets, cursing Nora the entire way to Connecticut. Stupid girl. Foolish girl. Why did she have to live so far away? She could afford Manhattan or anywhere in the city. Why she had to buy a Tudor cottage in a bourgeois and pedestrian suburb was something he would never understand. Only a year into her career as a Dominatrix she’d saved up enough money to afford the down payment on her home. She’d paid it in cash, and moved out of his town house the first chance she could. In five years, Kingsley had been to her home only once. He’d nearly died of boredom just from the drive there alone. Standing in her living room, full of comfortable but unremarkable furniture, and bookcases stuffed with novels, he’d turned to her and asked only one question.

“Why?”

And she’d smiled and shrugged and sighed and laughed and shook her head and done everything she could to avoid answering him in words.

But he’d stared at her until the smile died and the laugh left her eyes. Those eyes of hers…if he had to guess, he would have said she’d stolen them from the devil himself.

“I like it here, King. I feel…human here. Normal.”

Kingsley had walked across the beige carpet toward her and taken her by the chin.

“You are the most famous Dominatrix in all the world, chérie. I made you a monster and a monster is what you are. Live here if you must, but remember that inside these walls you are Eleanor Schreiber. Nora Sutherlin does not live here.”

Her only response had been to return his stare with one as hard as his own, and that’s when Kingsley had realized the terrible truth—he hadn’t created Nora Sutherlin at all…he’d only unmasked her.

An hour passed and he finally reached Westport. Another fifteen minutes took him to Nora’s neighborhood. In front of her house sat a red Porsche—Griffin was still here. Griffin and no one else. Good. The boy hadn’t been so foolish as to call the police.

Kingsley didn’t knock, merely entered through the front door, and found the house as he remembered it—tame, safe, suburban, bourgeois.

“In the bedroom, King,” he heard Griffin call to him. Kingsley found the stairs and raced up them two at a time. At the end of the hallway he found Nora’s bedroom…

Or what was left of it.

“Shit…” Kingsley breathed, too shocked even for French.

“Yeah, that’s what I said.” Griffin stood at the edge of the room, staring at the carnage before them.

“Where is Michael?” Kingsley asked, pronouncing the name in the French manner, as Michelle, a habit he tried to break for the sake of Griffin and his boy.

“I got him out of here fast. Sent him to his mom’s house to stay the night. He almost puked when he saw the place.”

“I can sympathize.”

Kingsley swallowed hard as he studied the damage.

In the center of the room were the charred remains of what had once been the most fantasized about bed in the world. On top of the blackened ashes lay what appeared to be Nora’s entire wardrobe of Dominatrix clothing—every last piece slashed and desecrated.

Across the walls was splattered blood—animal blood, Kingsley guessed. Guessed and hoped. Bloody words, bloody handprints. Blood on bloodred walls. The pale carpet below their feet also carried bloodstains, bloody footprints. And bloody words.

“What does it mean, Kingsley?” Griffin asked, staring at the writing. “It’s French, right? My French is shit these days.”