Chapter 2
Chapter Two
REECE TURNER
Hordes of tourists roam the Southbank boardwalk, stopping traffic when they pose for selfies in front of the London Eye, Big Ben, or the glittering lights of One Whitehall Place. I can’t really blame them—the views are spectacular any time of day but particularly at night, when the castle-like Parliament building seems to float on the surface of the Thames. I’ve been here dozens of times, and it still catches my breath.
But that’s no excuse for blocking the Queen’s Walk for five minutes while videoing drunk friends as they teeter on the embankment wall by the river. A large blond man shoulders his way through the group, muttering in Polish and nearly sending one into the drink. I mentally applaud. The social media influencer wannabes swarm back into place before I can follow the Pole, and I grit my teeth as I attempt to thread my way through the throng.
Wow. When did I become an old man? Pretty soon, I’ll be yelling at people to get off my lawn. If I had a lawn. Which I don’t because, unlike the lush green of Britain, grass doesn’t grow well back home. This thought doesn’t improve my mental state—already grumpy from a delay on the Tube and missing the reception I promised to attend.
Still, I should be enjoying my visit to my mother’s native land. I suck in a deep breath and nearly choke on the vape smoke from another drunk tourist. My internal grumpy old man rears his grizzled head and growls at the kid who ignores me completely.
I love London, but I am grateful it’s only a visit. Unlike my parents, I couldn’t live here full time if they paid me. I need the clean air, the wide-open spaces— “Hey! That’s my foot you’re stepping on!”
“Sorry, geezer.”
I take a tight grip on my emotions. I have no doubt I could take the skinny kid in his designer jeans that are more hole than fabric, but I’m not a violent man. Even though sometimes I wish I could be. I soothe my withered, cranky soul by imagining the Rock taking on this whole pod of glossy posers, ripping the selfie sticks from their perfectly manicured hands and dumping the lot of them into the Thames. A tiny smile twitches across my face as my shoulders relax. Time to head home.
I stride across the Golden Jubilee Bridge, wondering again why I bothered coming down here. My parents brought me to London every year as a kid. We stayed with my grandad out near Notting Hill as the neighborhood transitioned from sketchy to cool, and he always brought me into town to see the sights. I have vague memories of the Eye being erected when I was a tiny child and later, stronger recollections of riding it with him.
But Grandad passed when I was nineteen, and I haven’t been back to central London in the seven years since. Now I remember why—I didn’t want to lose those precious memories to the current reality.
A train rattles by, slowing as it pulls into Charing Cross station. A few late-arriving tourists drag their suitcases along the pedestrian bridge, their tired faces lighting as they gaze at the massive, glittering wheel behind me, undoubtedly dreaming of the clean beds at their overpriced hotel beyond it.
Ahead, near the top of a glass elevator, a group of tough-looking young men encircle a pretty girl with green hair. She turns slowly, back straight, chin up, her nervous eyes darting between the boys. Their obviously suggestive comments send a blush across her cheek, but I’m too far away to hear what they said. She moves as if to push between two of them, but they close in, laughing, and block her escape. A pair of tourists give the group a wide berth as they hurry by. Dozens more pedestrians wander past, oblivious to the drama.
I pause a few meters away, trusting the eddying crowd to hide me from their notice as I assess the situation. The three young men wear spiked armbands, ratty T-shirts, and scuffed boots. They’re wiry and slightly unkempt, and two of them hold large cans of Carlsberg. Their thick accents and rough clothing give them a threatening appearance, but I doubt they’ll cause much trouble with this many witnesses. Not to mention the CCTV cameras all over the city.
I stride up, realizing as I approach that I know this girl. Not personally—but I recognize her face from my little sister’s social media. This woman is Karola Andela Louisa, disgraced princess from the tiny city-state of Freiberg. My sister Katie is obsessed with her social media channels—her art, her clothes, her hair, her travels. I’ve seen more pictures of this former royal than any twenty-six-year-old American male should have to endure.
The fact that I recognize her on a random bridge in London should be proof of that. And even though I have zero interest in the royals of Great Britian, and even less in those of a miniscule city-state on the edge of Eastern Europe, I’m compelled to help any woman being harassed by a bunch of wannabe thugs.
Straightening to my full height, I pull back my shoulders, push out my chest, and reach for my deepest, most menacing growl. I kick the back of one of the idiot’s shoes as I come to a stop right behind him. He spins, but whatever he was going to say dies in his throat when he has to look up six inches to my face. I wait until I have the attention of all three hooligans, narrow my eyes, and utter one word. “No.”