Ah, yes. His sister, home from uni. She’d tried to fuck him. What was he to do? Conall relaxed back onto the bed.
“We didn’t fuck, ya knob,” Conall told him. Actually, she’d given him a head job in the bathroom.
His friend looked prepared to hit him again, but when Conall leveled his eyes at him in warning, the other lad settled a bit.
It was true that Conall could have landed any girl at his friend’s party. He was the oldest son to one of Scotland’s wealthiest families—generations of men who pioneered the country’s finance and banking system. On the outside he was the handsome, well-educated, artistically talented son of a billionaire, while privately he nurtured his rebellious nature by living a double-life.
Conall McCray was never satisfied with the fake kind of respect money could buy. Watching his father kiss corporate arse made him ill. He learned in his hidden life that true power, control, and respect came from being feared. So he watched and learned, hoping that one day when he took his father’s place he’d be as powerful as he was rich. He craved control. Control of his life and circumstances. Control of how people viewed him.
Control to make the people he loved love him back.
An irritating, persistent string of knocking began on his mate’s front door. His friend growled and went to answer, allowing Conall to close his eyes and drift off again. Sure, his friend was angry, but he’d get over it, just like usual. He always let Conall do whatever he wanted.
Loud adult voices sounded from the hall, men, and then the trampling of hard footsteps down the hall into the bedroom. Conall sat up, ready to fight.
Two uniformed officers with pinched faces surveyed him.
“Conall McCray?”
“Aye. What do you want?” he asked. Had someone snitched on him about the drug sales? He’d gladly kick their arses. His father would get him out of any charges, but it was the bitching from his parents he hated. He wanted to punch something. Or someone.
“Lad, have you any clue what’s happened at your estate?”
A bitter heaviness settled itself low in Conall’s abdomen. “What are you on about?”
He stood now, wishing he wore something more than tight boxers. He grabbed for his shirt and pulled it on. The two men looked at him with pity.
“I’m sorry to tell you this,” one of them said softly. “But we must work quickly. Your parents have been murdered and your brother’s gone missing. We’re taking you into custody for your own protection. Do you ken what I’m telling you, son?”
Conall’s world tilted off its axis. He had a floating thought that if he could just reach his jeans and put them on, pretending he hadn’t just heard what he’d heard, it would all go away. But when he reached for the jeans he caught the ashen face of his best mate in the doorway, and the words hit home.
Graham, his wee ten-year-old brother, was out there somewhere with psychopaths. Graham, who Conall cannae have been bothered to give an ounce of attention to over the past year because he’d been too damn busy partying. Graham, with his mop of curls, who looked up to Conall like some sort of god.
Conall bent and spewed his sick on the carpets. He puked and gagged and heaved until his head cleared, then he tried to force his way out of the room. He had to find his brother.
Arms grabbed him. He managed a hit to one of their jaws and a kick to the knee. The men were shouting and cursing for him to stay still. Then a sting punctuated his shoulder. Conall felt the effects immediately, his legs going weak, and then blackness.
He came to that afternoon on a couch in a small office. He jolted upright, fighting the urge to be sick again. A man with a badge kneeled in front of him at eye-level. Two men with holstered guns stood behind him.
The man stared into his eyes. “We will find your brother.” He’d said the one thing that could keep Conall from jumping off the couch and fighting to get free. “But we need your cooperation. You are the heir to your father’s estate, but we are sending you into hiding. The estate and lands will be sold and liquidated, and put into a fund for when you become twenty-two. This was your father’s wish, stated in his will as to what should happen if his life was taken by force. Do you understand?”
Conall swallowed bile and nodded. He understood he was homeless. Without a family. Or money.
“I have an aunt,” Conall told him.
The man’s eyes were sad. “She’s a bit shaken by all that’s happened, and she prefers to distance herself from the events.”
So his one living relative wouldn’t take him in? His own mother’s sister? Fucking cow.
“Where am I to stay?” he asked.
“We’re working to find you a home, but your life will be much different now. Whoever takes you in is not likely to be wealthy. This will help to keep you out of the public eye and under the radar. Your name will change. From now on you’re Colin Douglas. You’ll be homeschooled—”