PROLOGUE

 

Brummell-Marcombe Manor

Wiltshire, England

April 1997

 

The nape of Quent’s neck prickled and he turned to see his father standing in the doorway, holding a riding crop in his left hand. He slapped it against his trousered thigh, and the sound settled in the room, ominous and full of promise.

“You thought it would be amusing,” Parris Fielding said, stepping over the threshold into Quent’s spacious bedroom. Slap. “Trying to show me up.”

Though his palms dampened, Quent remained still. Seventeen years old, he was taller than his father, broader, stronger…but Fielding held the crop. 

The backs of his thighs still bore the welts from last time.

Quent knew better than to defend himself from—or even try to comprehend—whatever sin his father attributed to him today. There was nothing he could say. He curled his fingers into his palms and wondered if it would be this time. If Fielding would finally kill him.

Slap.

He’d come close three years ago. Close enough that Quent had been in hospital for a week from a “ski accident.”

It had indeed been a ski pole that had inflicted the injuries. But Quent hadn’t been holding it.

Quent’s mother, Starla Tamrit-Brummell Fielding, had deigned to visit once, flying in from Venice where she was filming on location. And then back the same day.

Parris Fielding, however, had been there every day. For hours. Updating the media with bloodshot eyes, reluctantly allowing photo ops of his disheveled self arriving and leaving the hospital. Shielding his face as if to keep the press from seeing his grief and worry.

He’d even, famously, postponed an important Brummell Industries board meeting so that he could remain at his only son’s bedside.

Slap.

Quent lifted his chin, allowing the hatred he felt for the man who’d given him life to show in his eyes. Three more months and he’d be eighteen…and free.

Would he live that long?

Fielding stepped closer and in spite of himself, Quent’s heartrate picked up. 

“Maybe this time I’ll mark up your pretty face,” he said. His eyes danced with dark fury, and Quent saw the dull sheen on his high forehead. Other than that, he looked as if he’d just stepped out of the board room—every hair in place, his slacks creased and his shirt tucked in.

No, his father didn’t drink to excess. Didn’t use. His vice was the liberal employment of his hands and fists…and, as his son had grown taller and stronger, he’d supplemented them with riding crops, belts, and ski poles. And, once, a nine iron.

Someday, Quent feared, he’d resort to his hunting rifle. Or the pistol in his office. But then, Fielding’s amusement would be over much too quickly.

Slap. 

Fielding strolled casually to the French doors that opened onto a vast balcony, flung wide to the fresh spring breeze. He closed them with a quiet click before turning back to his son. He wasn’t breathing hard, and every hair was still in place. Even in the midst of his most furious of attacks, he remained well-pressed and neat.

Slap.

Quent swallowed and thought about running. His muscles bunched beneath his skin, his stomach tightened and began to churn. But in the end, he didn’t. He knew it would only be worse if he did.

And that, as vast as the Brummell-Marcombe estate was, there would be no escape from his father. 

Not until he was eighteen.

Three more bloody months.

The crop sliced through the air, whipping past Quent’s ear and onto his shoulder. He felt the sting through the t-shirt he wore, and before he could gather a breath, it came again as Fielding pivoted, this time cutting across his back. And then again. And again.

He staggered, felt the burning in his back, the warm drip of blood. He raised his hand to ward off the next blow. But instead, Quent felt the sting down along his right arm and onto his belly and couldn’t hold back a groan of pain. Fielding’s face was drawn and dark, furious. His eyes, flat and cold and intense.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                

“Pledging money to UNICEF, ” he spat. Whip. “Half a million pounds!”

Half a million pounds from Quent’s own trust fund…twice as much as his father had offered the same charity…and barely a drop in the bucket of the Brummell-Fielding trillions.

Quent swiped a bleeding hand over his face just as the crop slashed his thigh, and then his hip. He twisted and turned, trying to avoid the pummeling that only became worse as Fielding became more incensed.

Sweat and pain blinded him, fear and anger drove him, and he stumbled toward the bag of golf clubs in the corner. Quent knocked into it as he dodged another blow, this time the crop slicing along his left arm. Tumbling against the bag, he collapsed onto the rug in a dull clatter of metal clubs. He rolled away as Fielding came after him, faster and harder, and Quent’s fingers closed around a slender metal handle.

Cool and heavy in his grip.

He tightened his fingers, pulling it out, and tried to drag to his feet…but the crop came more quickly, and his father’s biting words, raving about being upstaged, followed.

The club, solid in his hands. Quent knew he could swing out, smash it into the monster who came at him…he could kill him.

He could stop him.