19. Jamison #2
No indication of whether someone had died, betrayed us, or simply irritated him enough that he wanted witnesses.
I locked my phone, stood, and left Sienna’s unfinished apology sitting in my pocket.
Marcel was in a mood when I arrived at his office.
He stood at the windows, hands clasped behind his back, looking down over Harlan.
Harrison was already there. He sat sideways in one of the chairs. Flicking his lighter open and shut.
I closed the door behind me.
“What happened?”
Harrison glanced at me. “Hello to you too.”
“I wasn’t talking to you.”
Marcel did not turn from the window. “Kingston starts at Darlington this week.”
Our little brother had always been the sore point none of us touched unless we wanted the room to become dangerous.
There were things my brothers and I could discuss without flinching. Murder. Debt. Torture. Types of different torture. Territory disputes. Damius. Our parents, on good days, if the whiskey was controlled and no one said our mother’s name too low
Kingston was different.
Harrison’s posture shifted first. The lazy angle disappeared by half an inch.
I stayed by the door. Marcel finally turned. His face was empty in the way that meant the guilt was eating at him again.
“Darlington confirmed his intake packet this morning,” he said.
Darlington Academy.
Officially Darlington Sovereign Academy for Dynasty Heirs.
No one called it that unless they were opening ceremonies.
It was where dynasty children went when childhood stopped being useful. The academy took heirs and heiresses from every major bloodline and trained them to inherit without flinching. Law, etiquette, territory management, negotiation, surveillance, bloodline history, public optics, private violence.
A finishing house for monsters.
Every dynasty heir learned the pretty side first. How to stand in a room beneath chandeliers and make a threat sound like a toast. How to negotiate land rights over dinner.
How to smile beside a family they intended to bankrupt by winter.
How to marry for bloodline gain and call it duty.
How to speak to press. How to survive press.
How to hide weakness behind manners old enough to have their own legal protection.
That was dynasty training.
Crows got that too.
The world loved pretending we were only syndicate because it made them feel cleaner to hate us. But Crow blood was dynasty blood. Older than most of the families who whispered about us over champagne. Richer. Heavier. More violent, yes, but violence did not make us less legitimate.
So Crow heirs sat through the same lessons as everyone else. We learned old treaties, table rank, sovereign law, marriage weight, inheritance optics, public grief, funeral protocol, and how to accept an insult without reacting until the room was no longer full of witnesses.
Then the academy separated us. Behind locked doors the other bloodlines pretended not to know about. Crow heirs got the second education.
The real one.
Syndicate strategy.
Combat training.
Interrogation resistance.
Debt architecture.
Route control.
Hidden markets.
Port movement.
Territory punishment.
Casino laundering patterns.
Black convoy management.
Hostage extraction.
Blood oath enforcement.
The kind of lessons Darlington never printed on any public curriculum because the other dynasties liked using our world while calling it beneath them. That side was only for Crows. And not any polished little heir with a crest on his jacket.
Because other dynasties inherited houses.
Crows inherited cities.
We were expected to know how to sit at a sovereign table in the morning, break a syndicate corridor by afternoon, and attend a charity dinner that night without blood under our nails.
Darlington taught both halves of us.
Dynasty and syndicate.
A Crow heir who could not survive both was useless. A Crow heir who excelled at both became dangerous. That was where Kingston was going.
Our little brother, who had already survived too much family before the academy ever got its hands on him
Crow heirs entered Darlington and lived in Crow House, separate from the other dynasty houses because Crows had never been good at sharing walls with families who might later become enemies.
After academy, every Crow heir entered the four-year regional station. Four years in the city they were born to rule.
Learning the streets, the ledgers, the families, the old debts, the blood routes. Four years becoming useful to the region before inheriting any real authority.
Kingston’s birthright was Harlan.
Marcel walked to the desk and picked up a folder. He threw it onto the table. It slid toward me and stopped against my hand.
I opened it.
Kingston Crow.
Academy crest designation: Villain.
Primary residential branch: Crow House — Villain line.
Post-academy regional station: Villain.
Guardian authority: Nikolai Crow.
Secondary authority: Vincent Crow.
“Fuck,” Harrison said quietly.
“No.” Marcel’s voice cut through the room. “Do not start with me. He is Harlan.”
Harrison’s face hardened. “He is also a person.”
The only topic Harrison and Marcel could never touch cleanly. Kingston.
Harrison had hated what we did. He would hate it until one of us died, and maybe after.
Marcel looked at him. “Do not stand there and act as if I need reminding.”
“You do,” Harrison said.
“Harrison.”
“No. You called the meeting. We’re talking about it.”
I stepped away from the door and moved to the table.
“Both of you shut up for thirty seconds.”
Harrison looked at me. “He started it.”
“Christ,” I muttered. “We are not children.”
“No,” Harrison said, eyes hard. “We stopped being children when our parents were murdered.”
“Stop.” Marcel’s voice went low.
Harrison laughed. “Why? Because this is your deepest wound? It’s his too.” He pointed at me. “Mine too. Kingston’s most of all. So if we’re going to pretend this is only about a crest packet, I’d rather leave.”
Deep down, I had known this might happen. That was the part I hated most. The lack of shock about it. Because Kingston did not see Nikolai and Vince as cousins.
He saw them as brothers. Maybe more than brothers. Villain had raised him. We had visited. That was the ugliest truth in the room.
Marcel tapped the file once with two fingers. “Nikolai submitted the resignation without speaking to me.”
Harrison’s mouth twisted. “He has custody.”
“He had custody,” Marcel snapped. “That does not make him king of Kingston’s bloodline.”
“It made him the person packing his school trunks.”
Marcel stood.
I moved before he could step around the desk.
“Sit,” I said.
His gaze cut to me. I held it.
“Do not start a fight with Harrison over the one thing he was right about before either of us were.”
Harrison had been fourteen when our parents were murdered. He was fifteen when we gave Kingston up. He stood in the hall with red eyes and called us bastards.
I was seventeen at the murder. Eighteen when I backed Marcel’s call. Marcel was eighteen when our parents were killed. Nineteen when he made the decision that sat in his chest to this day.
I opened the file again because looking at paper was easier than looking at my brothers.
“Station after academy is listed as Villain.”
“Yes,” Marcel said.
Harrison frowned. “They already put his four-year station down?”
A crest was presentation. Symbolic, but not empty. A four-year station was training, with future authority.
If Kingston was stationed in Villain after Darlington, he would spend the first four years after academy learning Villain territory, customs, contracts, syndicate structure, and law.
Marcel paced and then pointed at it. “He should be learning Harlan customs debt codes, casino law, blood routes. Harlan families!”
I shut the file.
My mind betrayed me with the memory before I could stop it. The casino at family dinner. That was the part no one understood unless they were there. It had not happened with weapons already out and guards shouting.
Family dinner.
Our mother had worn cream. I'd hated that color for the rest of my life. Seven months pregnant. One hand resting on her stomach because the baby kicked whenever our father laughed too loudly.
Our father, had been at the head of the table teaching with Marcel about port staffing.
Harrison was feeding pieces of bread to a guard dog under the table.
I had been irritated about something stupid enough that I no longer remembered it.
Kingston had fallen asleep in our father’s office earlier, with a stuffed crow.
Mom was in the middle of discussing travel plans to go to Villain.
It had only been two weeks since our Aunt Abigail’s funeral.
Our father didn’t want her travelling pregnant.
He also wanted her to let the staff take down the baby shower decorations.
Two days before our Aunts death she hosted our Mother’s baby shower at the estate.
Our mother refused to let anyone decoration be taken down.
Then the doors opened.
I remembered the sound before the sight.
Cutlery striking plates.
A glass falling.
The first shot.
There were not many things I could not stomach.
I had walked through rooms where bodies had stopped looking like people. I had seen everything, and committed things just as awful.
But my mother—
Seven months pregnant. Cream dress turning red. One hand still trying to cover the baby as if she could protect it from bullets after they had already found her.
That image still lived behind my eyes.
My father crawled to her. Half his chest gone. Blood under his palms. Dragging himself across the polished floor because whatever was left of him knew only one thing.
Her.
He reached the hem of her dress. Touched it. Then they put the shotgun to his head. That sound never left the room.
Or for any of us.
And the next day, Harlan came for us.
Our parents were barely cold before the council placed ledgers into Marcel’s hands. Men twice his age called him head of Harlan while blood was still on the casino floor. They looked at an eighteen-year-old boy and saw a chair that needed filling before rivals smelled weakness.