1. Dan
DAN
“I don’t like the sound of this Operation Foxglove.” Neil paced up and down, as he always did when he was thinking. There was even a path worn into the Aubusson rug, fading the pattern in a distinct line. “I might have to talk to Mike Bellingham.”
At the mention of the Bellinghams, his lip curled, and I knew mine did too, because I could feel it.
Fucking Bellingham.
Here’s the thing. Our families were on opposite sides of the law—literally.
Harold Bellingham was a senior barrister specialising in commercial law with a practice he shared with his wife, Cressida, who was a renowned solicitor in demand all over the Home Counties.
Then there was Harold’s brother, Michael, aka Mike.
He’d followed the path of the law like the rest of the family, but he’d gone down a different route.
Mike was a sergeant in the local police force, and he was currently a part of the Operation Foxglove task force, a rural crime investigation spearheaded by his boss’s boss.
Our rivalry wasn’t even to do with the fact that we were on opposite sides of the law, not really.
It all stemmed from the case Harold had lost. He still held a grudge, but who fucking cared about that when my dad was gone for good?
I’d grown up knowing exactly what kind of family the Bellinghams were—callous, cold, and uncaring.
There was no empathy for the loss of my dad, only hatred that we’d denied Harold a win in court and had lost him a lucrative client in the process.
It was unfortunate, because while we were essentially rivals, Neil had an accord of sorts with Mike.
Basically, Neil fed him information that might help him out here and there, and in return, he redirected unwanted attention away from us.
But now we had a problem. A big one. Operation Foxglove were sniffing around my best friend’s family clinic.
“You already spoke to Mike,” my mum pointed out. She shuffled through the papers spread out on the huge mahogany desk, her lips pursed. “Hmm. Maybe… Don’t worry, I’ll come up with something.”
Watching her silhouette framed by the late-afternoon light spilling through the huge, lead-paned window, I could see her instantly calculating and discarding scenarios in her head.
I grinned. Rachel Hoyton was a force to be reckoned with.
Even before my dad’s death, back when I was just a toddler, she’d been heavily involved in the Hoyton Firm, and once he’d passed away, she’d stepped up her involvement.
Now, she pretty much ran the entire firm alongside my uncle Neil.
Neil’s son, my cousin, Stephen, was set to eventually inherit the firm, but he was currently away on business in Thailand, and we had no idea when he’d return.
“I’ll speak to him again,” Neil said. “There has to be something he wants. We have plenty of information.” He glanced over at me. “Can you try not to antagonise his only nephew for a couple of days while I set something up?”
I gasped. “How very dare you? That bellend is the one antagonising me, not the other way around.”
My mum and Neil both rolled their eyes, which was fucking rude in my humble opinion.
They knew first-hand that the rivalry between me and Lincoln bellend Bellingham was personal.
Yeah, there was the whole family thing, but also, he was a giant fucking wanker.
He’d gone to a posh private boarding school, where he was on the lacrosse team, and yeah, okay, the school wouldn’t accept me when I applied, so maybe I was bitter about that, but he acted as if I was too stupid to get in.
It wasn’t even about my brain capacity. It was the fact that the school didn’t want a member of a notorious crime family as a student. Simple as that.
Anyway, who wanted to play lacrosse? Not me.
So, back to my personal nemesis. On the occasions we’d been forced to interact over the years, he’d always acted exactly as you might imagine an arrogant little rich boy would—like a complete and utter asshole who liked to lord it over me.
Then he got into Whelford University, which was basically a smaller version of Oxford or Cambridge, and I was forced to study for my degree at Whelford’s rival uni, Cranham University.
Did I mention it was a former Victorian prison? Yeah. I wish I was joking. It was just about as bleak as you imagine.
And then there was the whole Cranham Kings–Whelford Flames hockey rivalry. Fun times.
“Daniel?”
I blinked, registering Neil’s hand waving in my face. “Yeah?”
“Zoning out thinking about Harold Bellingham’s son by any chance?”
“Fuck off.” When my mum laughed, I tutted, shaking my head disapprovingly. “Mother! You’re supposed to parent me. Tell me off for swearing.”
Her brows arched delicately. “Would you like me to ground you while I’m at it?”
“Can you ground your adult son?” I mused.
“She could. Our roof, our rules,” my uncle pointed out with a smirk, and I lifted my hands.
“On that note, I’m leaving. Let me know if you have any luck with the Bellinghams. I’ll see if I can do anything on my end.”
“Play nice with Lincoln until I’ve spoken to Mike, at least,” Neil warned me, and his suddenly serious expression wiped the smile from my face.
“Yeah, okay. I’ll try. It’s not my fault, really. He lives to antagonise me.” Crossing the room to the window, I hugged my mum, dipping down to press a kiss to her cheek. “Love you. I’ll be here for dinner on Sunday.”
“Love you too.” She drew back, eyeing me with amusement dancing in her gaze. “I wonder if Lincoln Bellingham thinks you live to antagonise him too?”
“Mum. I am perfect. You know this. I would never.”
Neil strolled over, clapping me on the back. “Perfection doesn’t exist. There’s always room for improvement. Go on. Back to the prison with you. Good luck in the next game.”
“Yeah, whatever. I’ll go and find some people who appreciate my perfection.”
That was a lie. As soon as Neil had mentioned Operation Foxglove, I knew what I had to do, and it involved coming into contact with the person I hated the most.
“Hoyton.”
“Bellingham.” My lip curled at the sight of my nemesis.
Fucking six-foot, tattooed, lacrosse-playing asshole.
Okay, former lacrosse player. Current ice hockey player and bane of my existence.
My gaze raked across his stupid head, taking in his deep brown tousled hair and hazel eyes before unwillingly dropping to his mouth and then his defined jaw, currently covered in a layer of dark stubble.
I hated that he was as good-looking as me.
Maybe even better, not that I’d ever admit that aloud.
It was yet another of the many, many reasons to loathe him.
“What the fuck are you doing here?”
“I ask myself the same question every time I’m in your vicinity,” I muttered, my heart rate picking up like it always did in his presence.
Fucking hell. He made me so angry. And if you knew me, you knew that I was generally a cheerful person.
So this was not normal for me, and it just made me resent him even more. How dare he drag me down to his level?
“There’s an easy solution to that. Fuck off back to your prison.”
I planted my hands in my pockets, affecting a casual pose as I leaned back against the side wall of the Whelford Uni library. “Nah, I think I’ll stay. Wanna give me a campus tour?”
“Fuck off and die.”
“I wish you would.”
He growled under his breath. Visibly exhaling, he met my gaze, his hazel eyes darkening as he stared me down. “What do you want? Stop fucking wasting my time and get to the point. I know you want to be here just about as much as I want you to be here.”
Well. He wasn’t wrong there.
“I want to know what you know about Operation Foxglove.”
His mouth flattened. “Nothing.”
Liar. Pushing off the wall, I stepped up to him, my chest brushing against his.
His breath stuttered, and satisfaction curled through me.
He liked to pretend he wasn’t intimidated by me, but we both knew the truth.
I got all up in his face, so close that I was actually breathing his air. Disgusting. “Try again.”
He shoved at me suddenly, sending me staggering backwards, and then he was up in my face, pinning me to the wall with his arm across my throat. What the hell? I stared at him, temporarily lost for words, and he smiled. It wasn’t a nice smile. It was the smile of an evil bastard.
“I don’t know anything. If this is something to do with my uncle, ask him. Leave me out of your criminal schemes. I don’t give a shit what trouble you’re involved in.”
With that, he straightened up, stepping away from me. With the pressure against my throat suddenly gone, I sucked in a shaky breath, rubbing my fingers over my neck. My skin was so hot.
“You could’ve crushed my windpipe.”
“Like you would’ve let me,” he bit out. “You’re so fucking dramatic. I don’t know how anyone can stand to be around you.”
“Because unlike you, I’m not a stuck-up bellend who thinks they’re better than everyone else.”
“No, you’re just a lowlife criminal and a mediocre hockey player.”
“Oh, fuck you. My stick skills are better than yours, and we both know it.”
“Keep telling yourself that. It doesn’t make it true.”
“You and I both know it’s true, lacrosse.”
“Fuck. Off.”
“Oh, did I hit a nerve? You were a mediocre lacrosse player at school, and now you’re a mediocre hockey player at uni. Maybe you should try running. You’d be good at that. Y’know, because you’re always running from the truth.”
Lincoln brought his hands together in a slow, obnoxious clap. “Great comeback.”
This absolute— Before I could reply, he spoke again.
“Listen. I know comprehension isn’t your strong suit—you didn’t get into Hatherley Hall or Whelford—so I’ll break it down into simple terms for you. I. Know. Nothing. About—”
My patience snapped, and I launched myself at him with a roar.
He was the same height as me and just as strong—maybe even a little stronger than me physically, given his extra few pounds of muscle mass, but I’d grown up fighting, and I knew a thing or two about taking people down.
My right hook connected with its target, Lincoln’s head snapping to the side before he lunged back at me with a jab straight into my flank.
I snarled, swinging my leg out in a roundhouse kick, but changed my trajectory at the last possible second when a streak of movement cut across my field of vision.
“Hey! You!”
Shit.
Campus security.
I flung myself away from Lincoln, darting down the side of the library. I couldn’t let myself be caught here in enemy territory. And I wasn’t even talking about Bellingham; I was talking about Whelford Uni in general.
When I’d successfully evaded security and made it to the quiet side street where I’d parked my Range Rover, I dug my keys out of my pocket, panting.
That had been a complete waste of my time.
And I didn’t have time to waste. We needed to steer this Operation Foxglove away from the Attwood clinic.
Bryan Attwood was a respectable businessman, but his side hustle as the doctor for several high-profile crime outfits was not something we needed getting out.
If he was investigated, all of us could be at risk.
Not to mention, he was the dad of one of my two best friends. Friends I’d do anything for. Anything, including getting answers out of my nemesis.
Maybe I needed to try another way. Talking to Lincoln didn’t work. Should I use violence, maybe? A little slice of my knife, and he’d offer up all the information I could ever want.
Nah. It couldn’t be that easy. He’d probably let himself bleed out, just to piss me off.
I’d have to think about it. But I knew something for a fact. One way or another, he was going to give me the information I needed, because there was no other choice. We’d been tangled together for two years now, ever since that fateful night.
Everything in my life had been going so well. Right up until Lincoln fucking Bellingham crashed my best friend’s eighteenth birthday celebrations…