Claimed by my Father’s Enemies (Claimed by… Reverse Harems #4)

1. PROLOGUE - WILLIAM

PROLOGUE - WILLIAM

The leather on the steering wheel is slick under my palms, cooled by the vents. I can still hear Charlotte's voice in my ears, which means she was alive when she called.

Mulholland curves left. I follow it.

Three months since they put him in the ground.

Ten years since he stopped functioning as a father.

After our mother's death, he collapsed. I was sixteen, working nights, making sure Charlotte had anything she needed, making sure the rent was paid, carrying everything he couldn't lift anymore. He never recovered. The doctors called it cirrhosis, but I know what really killed him. He missed my mother. It took him ten years, but he’s finally with her.

And now the only family I have left is Charlotte, twenty minutes away on a dark canyon road, crying so hard I couldn't get a full sentence out of her.

I press the accelerator.

My focus has been on the club that opens in nine days.

Every dollar I have is in it. Every hour.

Carter and I built this from the ground up, from bouncing doors at twenty to signing contracts at twenty-five, and I've been so focused on making it work that I let Charlotte slip.

I let the distance grow. Told myself she was fine, she was handling it, she didn't need me hovering.

I was wrong.

The headlights cut a narrow corridor through the canyon dark, catching scrub brush and rock face, the road ahead bending where I can't see, and I take the curve too fast.

My phone is on the passenger seat, where I throw it, trying to get to her as fast as I can.

Her voice is still there, trapped in the silence after she hung up.

Hysterical. The last time she sounded like that was at our mother's funeral, when she was six and didn't understand why everyone was dressed in black, crying, and I had to carry her out of the church because our father couldn't stand it.

I will not lose her.

That is the only thought that I can focus on. Everything else, the club, the money, the meetings I missed and the calls I didn't return, all of it compresses into background noise against the single fact that Charlotte called and said the word accident, and I am not there yet.

Then I see it.

Red and blue lights first, strobing against the canyon wall in a pattern that looks almost calm from a distance.

Then the cars. A police cruiser angled across the road, its headlights painting the scene in flat white.

And beyond it, pulled off the shoulder and resting nose-first against a eucalyptus trunk, is the Volvo.

The Volvo I bought her.

I put it on a credit line that I can’t barely afford because the safety ratings were the highest in its class and that mattered more than my bank account.

Its front end is folded in on itself, the hood buckled upward, both airbags visible through the shattered windshield like deflated lungs.

Glass everywhere, catching the strobing light in small sharp points across the asphalt.

I park. Hazards on. Engine off.

The night air hits me when I open the door, carrying the thick, chemical stench of burnt rubber and leaking oil with something metallic underneath.

I look around, assessing the situation.

Police near the Volvo. A BMW parked further up the shoulder, engine still running. And standing beside it, being held by a man I don't recognize, is Charlotte.

Alive. Safe.

A pressure releases in my chest, and for a moment I don't move because my legs aren't reliable.

I force myself to move. The gravel crunches under my shoes and Charlotte sees me before I reach her, the sound she makes is so small and so gutted that my stride breaks for half a step before I recover.

"William." She crashes into me. Her arms lock around my ribs with a force that doesn't match her size, and she's shaking, full-body, her face buried in my chest, saying only the same thing over and over.

"Sorry. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, I'm sorry."

I hold her tight enough that the shaking has something to push against. I let her cry for a while. Then I ease her back, keep my hands on her shoulders, and look.

Bruising on her left cheekbone. Abrasions across both hands, the kind the airbag powder leaves. A small cut near her hairline.

"It's just a car," I make my voice be as close to normal as possible, "Cars can be replaced. Are you hurt anywhere I can't see?"

She shakes her head, but the crying doesn't stop.

"Charlotte, look at me." I wait until she does. Her eyes are swollen, mascara tracked down both cheeks. "What happened?"

She opens her mouth. Closes it. Her gaze slides past me, toward the Volvo, toward the police lights, and lands somewhere to the left where I haven't looked yet.

I follow it.

Twenty feet away, a girl is standing on the roadside with two officers.

She's trying to walk a straight line. She's failing.

Her steps weave, her balance catches and corrects a beat too late, and even from here I can see the coordination is gone.

One of the officers writes something down.

The other watches with a bored expression on his face that conveys he has seen this situation one too many times.

Charlotte makes a low, wrecked sound.

The man who'd been holding her steps forward. Mid-twenties, nervous, shifting his weight between his feet. "I was driving behind them," he says. "Saw the car lose control and pulled over to help."

He glances at Charlotte. She glances back. Something passes between them that reads like embarrassment, or apology.

I look at Charlotte. "You were speeding."

"William, I—"

"She wasn't driving," the man says.

What the— "Who was?"

Charlotte's mouth presses into a thin line. Her fingers curl against the sleeves of her jacket, pulling the fabric over her knuckles, and she won't look at me.

"Charlotte. Who was driving your car?"

The silence that follows is very telling.

"Sienna Cross," she whispers.

Cross.

The name lands in my skull like a nail driven flush. Every muscle in my back seizes at once, and the rest of the night fades to noise.

Cross. The family that employed my parents until they were used up and discarded. The name my father whispered the week before he died, when the morphine loosened what ten years of silence had held, and I sat beside his bed and promised him I would make it right.

I try to control my anger. "I told you to stay away from that family."

"Will, it's not—"

"You told me you weren't friends anymore. You told me she snubbed you. Multiple times. That she thought she was too good for you."

Charlotte flinches. "You don't know—"

"I know she has an addiction problem." I lower my voice. "And I know you let a girl with that history drive your car. At two in the morning. On a road like this, while she was clearly out of her mind."

I look back at the girl.

She's stopped trying to walk the line. She's standing still now, her arms wrapped around herself, her face a mess of bruising, her eyes rimmed red and unfocused under the police lights. Unsteady. Small.

I don't care.

I walk toward her, each step measured and deliberate. The officers see me coming and one of them raises a hand but I'm already past him.

She looks up at me.

For a fraction of a second her expression registers something I almost recognize. Something like a flinch that precedes impact.

I dismiss it. It doesn't change anything.

"Sienna Cross." I say her name flat, like I'm reading charges. "I'm going to make sure you answer for this."

She doesn't respond. Her chin dips a fraction, her shoulders curling inward, and something in her posture folds in a way that is so practiced, so automatic, that it almost stops me.

Almost.

I step back. Square my shoulders. Fix my gaze on hers until she looks away first.

The canyon is silent except for the low idle of engines and the intermittent crackle of a police radio. The eucalyptus tree holds the Volvo. The air tastes like burnt rubber and something ruined.

I turn back to Charlotte.

Behind me, Sienna Cross stands perfectly still under the flashing lights, arms wrapped around herself, small and bruised.

She has no idea what's coming. She just made herself my problem.