It was technically true. I wasn’t exactly practicing, but I’d become a surgeon at a private institution overseas—one of the youngest in my class. I thrived in that environment. The structure, the silence, the adrenaline rush of that razor-thin line between life and death. Put me in an ER at a hospital and I’d relish in the control and precision under tight timelines. The pressure. The thrill. Saving a life or watching someone die out was a rush.
“A doctor among other things, Ms. Darling.” Right out of med school, I contemplated if it would be enough. A fresh clean slate, a wife that strengthened the syndicate’s ties, and a newborn.
But my wife had left Franny and me.
Then, the order of Paradise Grove was disrupted. Of the syndicate I’d been raised and bred in.
I was a Diamond always in the end. A part of an elite society hidden behind country clubs and contracts. Billionaire ties and businesses. Men and women who controlled policy with the same ease they controlled people. They sat at the table with governors, rewrote city maps, buried bodies with clean hands, and decided which businesses rose and which burned.
The Diamond Syndicate didn’t run just Paradise Grove—we shaped the country from behind silk curtains and blood-soaked ledgers that we deemed necessary.
When my father disrupted my home and my paradise, he put my daughter’s life in danger, and in turn, I took his.
I didn’t ask for power, but I took it if need be.
Ruthlessly. Coldly. And without remorse.
“Please say you’ll stay. Just for a bit.” That little girl knew how to get what she wanted.
Mia looked at me, and that’s when I saw her hate for me butlove for my daughter. “Your father and I will have to discuss some things, but—”
“But you’ll stay?” Franny smiled big and patted Mia’s hand before turning to me with a look of victory. My child negotiated Ms. Darling perfectly into her assembled trap.
“Of course I’ll stay …”
“Heart-in-pinkie promise?” my daughter asked as if it meant something.
They both puckered their lips and kissed their pinkies before hooking them. “Heart-in-pinkie promise. I’ll stay, Franny.” She glanced at me in resignation. “But just for a little while.”
My daughter’s face lit up, and that’s when I knew: Ms. Darling would be staying with us for much longer than she thought.
Jameson
“SO, WE’RE KEEPING HER?” Hades’s voice cut through the soft music playing as I stepped into my study. He didn’t even look up from the ice he was swirling in his drink, having no opinion one way or the other. His cool gray eyes were focused on the whiskey, unreadable like always.
Across from him, my brother Callahan lounged like he owned the damn place even though his estate was further south in Paradise Grove. One arm was draped across the back of my leather couch and the other tossed a stress ball in the air. His polished wing-tipped shoes rested on my hand-carved coffee table. “Of course we have to keep her. She witnessed a shoot-out.”
“Not the end of the world. She’s under an NDA and contract,” Archer reminded him, like he wanted to give her a way out.Fucker.
Hades took a sip of his drink before murmuring, “Could have just done the same to her as you did most everyone else.” He knew it was the cleanest of scenarios.
Archer glared at him. “She’s been the teacher to Fran Bran all month.”
“What’s a month?” Cal scoffed.
“Fran likes her,” Archer threw back, and I couldn’t argue with that. None of these guys could. Fran was our one and only princess between all of us. She’d weaseled her way into all of their hearts with none of them having kids yet.
Cal sighed and squeezed the ball in his fist, assessing the situation. “You really don’t think she’ll talk?”
Archer’s dark brows were furrowed in concern as he swirled his own tumbler, leaning against the fireplace. “Don’t think so. She’s sweet on the kids, doesn’t want to cause any harm.”
“Doesn’t mean shit when she’s offered a mint to give a story.” Cal shook his head, throwing the stress ball up again. Leave it to my brother to be concerned about our image. “Plus, I saw her. Mia Darling in a sundress on the top of academy hill, her pretty brown curls blowing in the wind telling her story to the news? Yeah, she’s the kind of beautiful people sit up and listen to.”
Cal was right. I saw the way Archer looked at her. How every one of the men at the academy had eyed her up at least once, their features softening for the girl.
Mia Darling was flawless. Her skin color was warm and tan, her curls that grew past her shoulders were loose just enough that I could thread them around my fingers. Her lips were pink and plump and her eyes the color of whiskey that warmed a man’s stomach. And that’s where I tried to keep my gaze rather than letting it travel down the curves of her body.
“What in God’s name are you worried about the news for? Not one outlet is going to push a narrative of our syndicate being painted in a bad light anyway.” I swiped Cal’s feet off my table.
