PROLOGUE

Royce

My friends call me Rolly. Granted, I used to be chubby when I was a kid, but I grew out of that around ten. The reason it started is because I come from a long line of rich assholes. The Davenport name is known all over New York, and my father is no exception. I went to one of the most expensive private schools in the state, and when I showed up with the name Royce, it wasn’t hard to connect the dots to Rolls Royce. Rolls turned into Rolly, and that was that. It stuck from day one, and though most of the kids I grew up with ended up being douchebags, a couple of them were ride or die.

My two buddies and I got out of college and started up a consultancy firm. We used the money we made from hustling. The only things we wouldn’t do to make it was sell drugs or ask our parents for it. My buddies, Ezra and Donovan, came from the same background as me, and the three of us agreed we wanted to be our own men. It sucked living in a four hundred square foot studio with two mattresses pushed together and a bathroom with no door. But we made it big in less than five years.

I wanted to make my own contacts, and when I met Henry Osbourne at a charity function last year, I knew that working with him would benefit the both of us. What I didn’t know was that the day he asked me to come take a look at his departments was the day she would walk into my life.

Pandora was unlike any woman I’d ever seen. Her red hair was pulled back from her face, and her dark blue eyes were rimmed with black eyeliner. It made her look intimidating. And sexy as fuck. She was petite, but I got the impression from her stance—and from her handshake—that she could take me down in the blink of an eye. God, she had no idea how much I wanted her to try.

They say that like recognizes like, and the day I looked into her deep blues, I met my other half. She was my equal in every way—possibly even better than I’m willing to admit. I had to have her. Plain and simple. Too bad it wasn’t that easy.