Chapter 5
James threw a party on Dad’s boat yesterday. Ethan got drunk and fell into the water. Luckily there was someone sober enough to fish him out.
Message from Olivia to Henry
Henry
The highlight of every conversation with my dad was its end, but today, I didn’t feel my usual relief.
How could I organise the Pearl Gala with so little lead time?
I’d have to cram ten months’ work into three and grovel to suppliers, service providers, and sponsors, since we’d already called off our arrangements for December.
I could only hope our usual contractors still had capacity.
Bringing in anyone new on such short notice carried risks I’d rather avoid.
I reached into my coat pocket for my phone to text Rakesh the bad news so he could kiss his free time goodbye.
But my hand encountered an empty pocket.
I tried the other one but found only a packet of tissues and the little tin I always carried with me.
Confused, I patted down my suit and then my coat again.
I tried to remember when I’d last had my phone in my hand.
The call with my dad in the park. So where was it now?
The answer was as clear as it was unpleasant: I had lost it.
It must have fallen out of my pocket on the way back to the hotel.
Fuck.
Just what I needed. Could this day get any worse?
Probably not, but I didn’t want to tempt fate.
I really needed my phone back. My data was backed up in the cloud, but some of it was pretty sensitive.
I could only hope that whoever had found the phone was honest or that they couldn’t get past the screen lock.
I strode purposefully to my office, which was at the other end of the corridor.
It had once belonged to my grandfather, and I hadn’t found the time yet to decorate it to my liking.
The room was elegant but gloomy. Sometimes when I inhaled deeply, I thought I could still smell my grandfather’s stale cigar smoke.
The imposing chandelier that my great-grandfather had chosen still hung from the ceiling, and the walls were lined with glass cabinets full of old books with cracked leather bindings that probably hadn’t been touched in decades.
I tossed my coat onto the burgundy velvet sofa in the corner and slipped behind the desk to log into my laptop.
I opened the Find My app nervously and sighed with relief when I located my phone.
It was still in St. James’s Park, and it wasn’t moving.
I took the lift up to my apartment to get the key for my Bentley.
I’d usually walk to the park, but there was no time to lose.
I grabbed the key from the sideboard and headed straight back downstairs.
The doors of the lift were just about to close when my brother Ethan appeared from around the corner.
He was wearing a grey hoodie and dark jeans, and his dishevelled black hair stood on end.
I couldn’t tell if it was a carefully put-together look or if he’d just rolled out of bed.
“Wait,” he called when he spotted me.
I instinctively pressed the button, and the doors of the lift slid open again.
A moment later, I regretted my decision.
Ethan didn’t speed up but walked slowly, with all the arrogance of a man used to others waiting for him.
In the time it took for him to make his way down the corridor, I could have gone down and sent the lift back up again.
“Thanks,” he said when he finally reached me. At least he hadn’t entirely misplaced his manners.
I pressed the button for the first floor, and the doors slid shut. Ethan stood beside me, arms crossed in front of his chest. Although he was now twenty, it still surprised me that he was almost as tall as me.
“What happened to your eye?” I asked, not wanting to let on that my best friend Olivia had already told me about his wild night on the Asterdams’ boat.
Ethan refused to look at me, staring instead at the metal door in front of him, but he couldn’t hide the bruise standing out deep purple against his pale skin. “Nothing.”
“It doesn’t look like nothing to me.”
“It was an accident.”
“An accident involving you and a door, or you and a fist?”
“What do you care?” Ethan asked dismissively, and I couldn’t blame him.
We’d never been particularly close. Ethan had been a toddler when our parents had sent me to boarding school in Crawley.
Unlike Logan, who had followed shortly after, Ethan remained at home, spending the next few years with a private tutor, receiving more personalised support.
We’d only seen each other sporadically at the weekends.
By the time our parents had finally let him go to Crawley, I’d already started at Oxford.
We’d been living under the same roof again for just over a year now, but thanks to my new position at The Darlington, I hadn’t had much time to get to know this new, more adult version of Ethan.
He was rarely at home, spending most of his time with his friends or at clubs.
And when he was at the hotel, he was usually throwing parties here.
To my surprise, Ethan said, “It was Charles’s fist.”
“Charles Eddington?”
He nodded.
“I thought you were friends.”
“He gets aggressive when he drinks.” He shrugged and pulled something that looked suspiciously like a joint from his hoodie pocket. He looked at it with wonder, as if he’d forgotten he had it.
“Sounds like he should drink less. What are you doing here, anyway?” I asked. “Shouldn’t you be at a lecture?”
Ethan slipped the joint back into his pocket. “I wasn’t in the mood for uni.”
“Do Mum and Dad know you’re skiving?”
He finally raised his head and looked at me.
In that moment, he looked so much like our father that my blood ran cold.
It wasn’t just his dark hair, his high cheekbones, and the blue eyes we both had—it was the icy detachment in his expression.
“As if they’d care. Dad’s life is going to shit because he couldn’t keep his dick in his pants.
And Mum is probably on her third glass of merlot in some corner of the hotel, reading erotica and dreaming of getting a divorce. ”
“Ethan,” I warned.
“Henry,” he imitated me as he had done when we were kids, only without the trace of lightheartedness in his voice.
In that moment, the lift doors opened. Ethan made to dash out as if he couldn’t get away from me fast enough, but first, he turned to me: “Relax. And enjoy your luxurious life while you still can. I’ve read the indictment against Dad, and it doesn’t matter what his lawyers say. We’re fucked.”