6. Miles
Miles
SIX YEARS AGO…
Bam! Bang! Boom!
I jolted awake, heart racing, reliving the night’s events. Pops hit Vincent. Out of nowhere, he attacked him, and I didn’t get it.
I frantically searched for my ringing phone. It buzzed incessantly with texts from Serena, Erik, and countless unknowns.
“Miles!” Ma called from downstairs.
Without a second thought, I ripped the blankets off, ignoring the chill as I bolted out the door barefoot and shirtless. I sprinted down the long hall.
“Ma!”
A cacophony of sound—the urgent blare of sirens and a sea of shouting voices—suddenly surrounded me. I pushed myself faster, the marble cool beneath my feet as I spun to the top of the grand stairs.
My eyes fell upon the overwhelming number of police officers in our entryway, their faces grim and serious.
They had a grip on Pops. Dragging him out of the mansion.
“Lemme go! You don’t know what the hell you’re doing. This is my house!”
Spit flew from his mouth. His eyes were wild, bloodshot as he twisted and turned like a rabid animal in a cage. They were pulling him out the front door while Ma was screaming, trying to pull him back before more cops stepped between them to break them up.
Frozen on the stairs, I gripped the banister. My heart jackhammered. A metallic taste filled my mouth.
“This is a goddamn setup!” Pops bellowed. “It is!”
He thrashed once, hard enough to knock a vase from the entry table—it shattered like gunfire. I jumped into action.
“Wait!” I said.
Pops fought as they took him out of the front door, I pushed through the cops who were holding Ma back.
Outside, I wasn’t prepared. The morning sun was brutal, blinding. And standing just past the property gates—the press.
They were everywhere. Clustered just outside the wrought-iron gates, holding mics through the bars. Some had climbed onto car hoods for a better shot. Others hoisted mics on long poles, aiming them like spears toward the front steps.
“Omar! Is it true you’re doing drugs with the mayor?”
“Do you deny the possession charges?”
“Miles, did you know your father was using?”
I ignored them, and ran down the steps toward Pops. “Let him go!”
A cop stepped in my path, pressing a firm hand to my chest.
“Get off me—he didn’t do anything!”
That was a lie, and we all knew it.
Still, I surged forward. Another officer blocked me. My shoulder slammed into his, a searing pain shooting through my arm, and suddenly there were arms on me—strong arms that held me back, pinning me against him.
“Sir, stand down!”
“Back up—now!”
I pushed back at them. “I don’t give a fuck, let him go!”
Pops twisted in the officers’ grip, trying to look back at me. His robe had slipped entirely off one arm now, exposing the ink along his ribs and a welt blooming on his side from where they’d pinned him.
“Miles!” he barked. “Don’t you let them do this to me—don’t you fucking let them win!”
“Damn it, Serena.”
I stared at the mess of papers sprawled across my coffee table.
I tried not to think about the day when the cops came and dragged Pops out. That had been only the beginning of a long, long battle.
Legacy.
I didn’t know how I felt about the word. No. That was a lie. I knew how I felt about it.
I didn’t view it how the Kings did. To them, legacy was fixed and rigid: you inherit it, you uphold it, you don’t question it. My grandfather used to think that way before he died. Pops maybe felt that way at some point.
To me, it all felt like old, bittersweet memories and pain.
But underneath it, the burning sense of hope and reinvention. Legacy was both this giant to be slayed but as fragile as the falling snow.
But still in my thoughts of our legacy being up for debate…I couldn’t get Serena out of my mind.
I was distracted by her at the baby shower. I wasn’t thinking straight. It had always been like that with her.
Those same damn brown eyes, like pools of dark honey, looked right through me, and despite any walls I put up, it didn’t matter to her. She saw through the bullshit, and that terrified and excited me at the same time.
The Harrington estate, my only way out, was lost.
Fuck.
She must’ve been smiling when she signed that contract. Smug. Laughing all the way to the fucking bank.
I could have planned this better.
Despite the sting of my loss, I should have sat in my seat, but I couldn’t resist the pull to follow her. I was always trailing after Serena. I shouldn’t have watched her walk away, her curvy round ass in those slacks. Who made slacks sexy?
It was the way she carried herself, that effortless glide in her step, like she wasn’t walking but cutting through space, making room for herself whether people wanted to give it or not.
Serena King didn’t do soft. She didn’t do approachable.
It used to be a game to me, to see if I could break through her tough exterior—a dangerous game to play with my best friend’s little sister.
She wasn’t like the other girls in Lush. Hell, she wasn’t like anyone. You couldn’t charm her. Couldn’t flirt your way into her world. Never in my life in Lush did I have to… work.
It’d been easy being Erik King’s best friend.
He was the King. I was the Prince. Not too much expectation, just girls trying to get close to me or Erik, parties and bullshit. I could coast on my name, my face, the Whitmore legacy.
Serena was sharp, steel-edged, and disdainful looks. The opposite of me.
Every time she cut me down with one of those icy one-liners, it felt like a dare.
And I was never good at walking away from a dare.
But it wasn’t just her fire that got me. It was what she demanded of me—without ever saying it outright. She made me want to come correct. Every conversation was a test I didn’t know I was taking.
She’d ask things no one else did. Real questions. Why do you want the company? Where do you see yourself in ten years? What would you do with it if you weren’t trying to prove something to this town? What do you really want?
No one ever cared what I thought—just what I inherited .
And for the first time, I realized I wasn’t sure I knew either.
I told myself it was harmless. I was just teasing. Just flirting.
But it wasn’t harmless.
My fists curled as I leaned back, my eyes fixed on the ceiling.
The Sunny I remembered would’ve been in a pair of old jeans and a baggy Cranberries tee, hair sticking out in every direction because she didn’t care.
She used to push those too-big glasses up her nose and laugh at me for not knowing something simple.
“Damn it, Serena,” I muttered again, and I swiped the glass off the table, sending it shattering to the floor.
I needed to get my shit together. I was being too dramatic.
The estate was lost. Reggie was still in the hospital, his wife calling every other hour for updates Carlus and I didn’t have. I was back, scrambling for…what?
Is this the life you want to live, Miles?
Every day, fight after fight. It felt like going a hundred rounds with Mike Tyson, Floyd Mayweather, and Muhammad Ali back to back.
I kept telling myself that restoring Whitmore Ventures was the goal. The only goal. That if I could rebuild what my father broke, I could scrub the family name clean. That if I won, I’d finally be enough.
Maybe I wanted out after that.
But what the hell would I be without the Whitmore name? Without the fight?
No.
I couldn’t run. I couldn’t walk away. My legacy was here.
I was just a smooth-talking rich kid with a broken family and no real plan.
I leaned forward, elbows on my knees, rubbing at the tension clawing its way up my spine.
I should’ve stayed at the auction. I should’ve held my tongue. I should’ve been smarter.
I still had that number .
Wasn’t your life fucking ruined when you called before? The last time I’d called, our lives had already been destroyed, and it hadn’t been easy sweeping that under the rug. No. I wouldn’t call.
A knock at the front door startled me. I froze when I saw who was on the other side.
“Surprise, surprise.” Mayor Dante Castillo was leaning against my door frame.
What shit have I gotten into now?
“Look who left the marble throne for the slums. Whatever you think I did, I had a good reason for it.”
His expression didn’t budge.
“Unless,” I added, “you’re here to donate. In which case, I’m thrilled to accept money, favors, or women.”
“Evening, Miles. I hope I’m not catching you at a bad time,” Dante said, looking over my shoulder.
“What you want?” I narrowed my gaze on him, blocking him from entering as he stood straight. “We ain’t friends.”
“Aren’t you gonna let me in?”
We stared at each other before I stepped back, and Dante strolled in like he owned the place.
“Quite the mess you’ve got here,” he noted as glass crunched under his foot and he looked at me. “Thought you could afford a maid again.”
“I know about them wild-ass orgies you be throwing. Don’t let me start talking to folks. Wouldn’t look too good with reelection creeping up.”
Dante’s smile thinned. “I need humor like that on my team. You should come around city hall more.”
“My bad, homie, I don’t do politics,” I said with a smirk. “You want tea? Sparkling water? Maybe a lil’ foot rub?”
He grunted, looking around my house before making himself comfortable on the couch.
“Have you turned on the news yet?”
“You interrupted my evening to come over here to watch the news?”
“Turn on the damn TV, Miles,” Dante said, all the charm drained from his voice.
I flipped through a few channels before landing on a news station.
“Whitmore Ventures under fire with allegations of unsafe work conditions,” the news anchor announced.
My stomach fucking dropped.
The camera panned to my office building, a group of my guys standing out front. The anchor walked over to one of them and shoved the microphone in his face. “Can you describe the conditions at the site?”
“It’s dangerous. You don’t come home the same after a day on those sites. I saw people hurt—bad. But they told us to keep working anyway. There’s nothing they care about more than profit.”