Dirty Wicked Prince (Court Legacy Book 1)

Sloane

The drive back home didn’t take long despite the fact my brother and I lived out in the boonies. Trailer parks most definitely used to be the norm for us, so pulling my father’s busted Chevelle up to gates that required a key code entry was different, to say the least.

I tapped in the code I had written on the back of my hand, still trying to not be freaked out by that. Wrought-iron gates opened to me like I was royalty, and I simply shook my head, taking the paved path up to the garage. When the sun was up, a wide overlook of the city could be seen from my brother’s and my new house. We were stationed up on a hill and literally lived out in the middle of nowhere. I hadn’t complained because what was there to complain about?

We lived like royalty.

The house on the hill sparkled, all glass walls and modern like something out of a design catalog. The home was all hard angles and polished uppitiness, definitely not my style or Bru’s. In this case, we hadn’t had a choice. This was our digs.

This was home.

I kept trying to associate that term with myself, home and this town, but I kept having a hell of a time. I’d lived in several “homes” over the years, never having stayed at any of them longer than it took the time to unpack. My brother and I were always on the move, so there hadn’t been a point.

My hand worked the steering wheel as I advanced toward the garage. It was motion-activated to my ride, so I hadn’t even had to touch anything before pulling in.

That was another mind fuck I had to push out of my mind, and I got myself and my groceries out of the car. The new digs definitely had all the modern amenities, but what it hadn’t had was actual food that two teenagers could eat without gagging. The fridge had been stocked with nothing but cardboard and health food when we’d arrived, and I supposed I’d have to have a talk with our guardian about it.

Then again, I obviously took care of things tonight, and I found my brother right where I left him.

“You get the milk?” he asked from his place on the couch, a flat screen about the size of the wall sat in front of him. My brother, Bruno, was playing a game system that hadn’t even been released yet, video games included, and I’d been given an entire room for my art stuff. Really, it was completely over the top, but again, I hadn’t complained. It would be both ungrateful and rude to the person who’d provided it.

I tossed my seventeen-year-old brother the half gallon I got him, cookies too, and he caught both with an ease like he actually played sports. He’d always been built to do such things. He’d just never had the opportunity. My father stressed relying on books and school to get us by.

He had stressed.

Like a savage, Bru ripped off the lid of the milk, then proceeded to down the half gallon right in front of me. We looked absolutely nothing alike. My brother couldn’t hold a tan for anything, and I was naturally golden. Besides our heights being similar (crazy since I was a chick), I couldn’t pass for this kid’s sister any more than he could pass for my brother. My hair was even darker than his chestnut brown.

And I had manners.

“Use a fucking cup,” I growled, heading to the kitchen. I dropped the bags of groceries off, then managed to find a drinking glass amongst the many pearl white cabinets. Those cabinets had been filled as well, crystal dishes Bru would make sure to take out with his butterfingers. I returned with the glass, but by then, he’d already drunk the thing down to half. I sneered. “You’re a pig.”

“And you took forever.” He had a milk mustache when he brought the carton away. He wiped his upper lip clean. “Weren’t you just going down the street?”

“Just down the street” was like five miles from our house on the hill. I knocked his head forward, and he didn’t fight because he knew, despite being slightly bigger than me, I could handle my own. I had in the past. I shrugged. “Ran into a little trouble. Took me a second to get back.”

That was putting it lightly considering I had to stop a near assault, and when I plopped on the sofa lounge, the look of concern on my kid brother’s face was evident.

“What kind?” He put down his controller and everything. Apparently, this conversation was legit serious. The controller hadn’t left his hands since he started playing two days ago. “You weren’t fighting, were you?”

Despite what my brother may think, I didn’t fight just to fucking fight. I fought when people messed with me, completely different. I rolled my eyes. “I wasn’t fighting. But I did have to stop an assault.”

“What the fuck?”

“Wasn’t me. Relax.” I tossed a pillow at him. “Some woman was running and this tool thought he could handle her.” I reached for one of his cookies. “I used dad’s bat. Took care of it.”

Leaning back, I popped my leg up on the couch arm. Despite my reassurances, though, my brother didn’t seem any more at ease.

He worked the controller in his hands. “Okay. Well, I’m glad you’re okay,” he said lounging back. He shrugged before playing his game again. “But maybe we should call Callum.”

“Call him about what?” Callum was our guardian, a family friend that got us this place. He was a businessman, and Bru and I had never met him before circumstances occurred to bring him into our life. Circumstances surrounding our father.

We hadn’t even known he had a will.

But our dad had, which I supposed matched his paranoia. He had always seemed to be on all the time, anxious. He’d had a hard time keeping a job because of it, and we’d moved so many places. He had struggled a lot with his mental health before he’d died over the summer.

Like Bru knew I was thinking about him, what brought us here and our situation, my brother left me to my silence for a second. He still continued to play his video game but looked over at me more often than not.

“Maybe we should call him about security or something,” Bru said, shocking me. “He did say to call him if we needed anything.”

My father’s friend had been gracious to say the least. It’d been him to suggest us coming to Maywood Heights. He’d relocated us and everything.

“It’ll be great for a fresh start,” he’d said to us, the first time we’d met him at our dad’s funeral. Our father had died in a factory fire at his last job, a job he’d managed to hold on to for almost a year. Things had been getting better toward the end there. Bru and I had actually been able to settle down at a school. Stay for more than one term.

But then the fire.

Bru and I had struggled a lot with our father. We loved him, but my brother and I, i.e. me, had to be the parent a lot when our dad had hard times. He’d dealt a lot with depression too as well as anxiety, and most days I’d had to make sure he’d leave bed to get to his job. Not to mention my brother and I off to school.

I shook my head at the thoughts, those times severely hard. I’d had to step up from a really early age. Bru and I—most of the time—were just Bru and I with everything going on with our dad. Our mom had died when we were really little.

“What the fuck would we need security for?” I rolled my eyes. “It’s not like we’re the president’s kids.”

“Might as well be at that rich-ass school we’re about to go to,” he said, laughing. He wasn’t lying. I had looked at the brochures for the place, and it was pretty crazy. My brother and I had only gone to public schools coming up, so a place that looked more like a college campus than a high school in the brochure would certainly be different. Bru chuckled. “I’m just saying. Might as well. If we ask Callum, he’ll get us security.” He threw out a hand. “Wouldn’t put it past those other kids on campus to have the same. ‘Staff’ and shit.”

He air quoted, and I laughed.

“We don’t need to be milking this arrangement any more than we already have,” I said. Callum had been more than generous to us. Besides a place to live and a new school, he was covering all our essentials. Food. Clothing. Everything. It’d been more than lavish and more than we could ever have deserved. We’d literally come to this town with nothing. Our dad most certainly hadn’t been rich, and outside of a little savings and the Chevelle, he’d basically left us with nothing.

My brother and I would definitely have been out on the streets right now had Callum not come along with that will my father had created before his death. Or worse, in the system. Bru still was not yet eighteen and that, most certainly, would have been his reality. I had nothing either to take care of us with.

I tossed a pillow at my brother. “And you are milking things for all they’re worth.”

He’d put his grubby little hands on anything Callum had put in front of him. Hadn’t blinked an eye after finding out our new guardian was rich. All his video games and his closet full of designer labels told that.

Bru popped a big shoulder. “I’m just trying to move forward.” His gaze slid in my direction. “I don’t know. Maybe be normal instead of slumming it for once? If Callum’s offering it, I’m going to take it.”

And why not, right? Play pretend? I eased forward. “You do know this isn’t our money, right?” This was Callum’s money. Not ours and never would be. We hadn’t been well off before Dad died. Not by a long shot.

Bru knew that too, his jaw working. He’d had to sacrifice the nicer things in life just like me. We’d both worked jobs just to help Dad out when he’d been in between jobs. Bru huffed. “You’re not going to make me feel bad for moving on. Callum’s giving us an opportunity to live a normal life. Why not take it?”

“Newsflash, kid.” I stole his controller, and he raised his hands. I frowned. “This isn’t a normal life. It’s a privileged life and one that’s on borrowed time.”

Callum’s commitment to us was only as long as he was our guardian, or I guess Bru’s. At seventeen, Callum was his legal guardian, and I only didn’t fight my dad’s will on that because I had nothing. I couldn’t take care of my brother.

At least, not like this and all the stuff we had now.

Fact of the matter was, we were both still kids. Even with me being eighteen.

Bru ripped his controller away. “It may be borrowed time.” He leaned back, playing his game again. “But you’re not going to guilt me for not being the poor kid for once.” His jaw clenched. “We’re already going to be the new kids at school again.” He shook his head. “Well, at least I’ll have this.”

I chewed the inside of my cheek, watching him play. I’d checked his ass for less, but I couldn’t find it in me to do it this time. We had always been poor. We had always been different. We were always the new kids at the new school with a father who had a hard time providing for us. He’d actually only let us work jobs because we all had to in order to survive. Dad had been really anxious, didn’t like us going too far. Bru and I never even brought friends over. Mostly, because we moved so much due to Dad’s job situation and could never actually make any.

The pair of us had always been different like Bru said, and apparently, he was done being different.

I stood. “Don’t play video games too late.”

He smirked. “Yes, Mother.”

I threw a pillow at him again before heading up to my room. I got any pick in this glass house, but before I went to bed, I did one more thing. We had academy uniforms in our closet to wear at our new school, and I decided to stay up and iron them. I spent extra care on Bru’s.

I wanted him to have the best day.