Chapter Text
“You’re doing what?”
Mary’s chair screeched as it flew backwards. Disbelief and fury flared in her chest.
“Sit down, Mary,” her father said, eyes disapproving.
Mary didn’t sit. Her voice was icy. “What do you mean, when Stuart inherits?”
Her grandfather sat at the head of the table, a glass of Bordeaux at his fingertips. At nearly eighty years old, his hands shook, but his mind was still sharp as a knife’s edge. He eyed Mary with vague pity, like one might a stray dog.
“You know what it means, child.”
“I am eldest,” Mary said, voice rising. “I have been training for this my entire life.”
“You can’t really say you expected otherwise,” her father said.
She stared at him, open-mouthed. “Then why did you teach me?” she demanded. “All those years, working with you—and you would give your legacy to—to him.”
She gestured to Stuart. He blinked, affronted, but she didn’t give him the space to speak. “I have been working for my entire life, while he played and frittered away our money with his yachts, and toys—”
“Boys need to blow off some steam when they’re still young,” her grandfather said dismissively. “Stuart will perform just fine when the time comes.”
“You will, of course, be a valued adviser,” her father said. “But—"
“No,” Mary said. “I am not an adviser. I am the eldest—”
“Mary,” Stuart said, voice pacifying.
“Don’t,” Mary hissed.
Her brother stopped, shoulders sagging. “Mary…”
“You knew,” she realized. “You knew, this entire time.”
Stuart’s silence was confirmation enough. Rage whited out Mary’s vision. “And you said nothing?” she nearly shouted. “After everything I did, after all the work I put in—you get to lead, because what? Because you were born with a cock between your legs?”
“Mary,” her father said sharply. “That is enough.”
Mary’s chest heaved. Her breathing came sharp and fast, like she’d been in a fight. She didn’t take her eyes off Stuart. He met her gaze, expression sad, almost…pitying. She wanted to claw it off his face with her fingernails.
“Did you really expect anything else?” Stuart said quietly. “No woman has ever led the Hatford family. It’s not done.”
Mary couldn’t form words. She knew that, but—but she was supposed to be the first. She had always been her father’s favourite, always by his side, even as a child. She had always known, on some level that he would pick her.
Except—
When it had actually come to it, he hadn’t.
“Sit,” her grandfather said coldly. “You are making a fool of yourself.”
Her eyes cut over to him, then slid to his side, where her father sat. His expression was stoic, unreadable, but Mary felt it like a blow to a chest.
For a moment, she entertained a fantasy of storming out of the room. Leaving in a fiery flash, a parting shot tossed over her shoulder like a grenade.
But that was not the Hatford way. Mary brought herself under control with ruthless efficiency. Her hands trembled with contained rage as she lowered herself to her chair.
“This outburst is exactly the kind of emotional behaviour we’re talking about,” her grandfather said. “You’ll see. This is the best way.”
Mary raised her chin, casting her expression in cold, rigid stone. “You are making a mistake,” she said.
“I doubt that,” her grandfather said. “Now, where were we?”
The four of them paused, then looked down at the ground of the warehouse basement they were sitting in. The middle-aged man bound and gagged there quivered under the force of their concentrated gazes.
“Hm,” her grandfather said. “A pity. Henry, if you would?”
Mary’s father nodded, drew his gun, and shot the snitch in the head in one clean movement. The body slumped on the cement floor and two men hurried in from the sidelines to wrap and dispose of it.
“Excellent,” her grandfather said. “Now. Any other business?”
The Hatford men probably thought that was the end of it. There were, after all, few people who would challenge their edicts. It was insulting, honestly. Mary would have expected this blindness from Stuart, but her father should have seen it coming.
“How is America treating you?” her mother asked Stuart, sipping her wine. “You’ve been eating well?”
Stuart smiled, his crisp hair styled in gel spikes like he was trying to mimic a movie action hero. “America is lovely,” he said, then a rakish grin stole across his handsome face. “And you know how those Harvard girls love a British accent.”
Mary barely resisted the urge to roll her eyes all the way back in her head. Her mother pursed her lips in prim amusement before impaling a small portion of her steak on a fork. Her make-up was immaculate, as always. Edith Hatford had mastered this guise like no one else Mary had ever met. She wouldn’t look out of place at tea with the queen in her green blouse and pencil skirt, her hair swooped back into an elegant bun.
“I trust you’re not letting yourself be distracted from your studies,” her mother said, somehow weaving fondness and disapproval together like the finest lace.
“I would never,” Stuart said, dropping a wink toward their father. Mary ground her teeth so hard her ears popped. It didn’t matter how far Stuart’s grades fell; the Hatford fortune all but guaranteed that any bumps in the road would be paved over in gold.
“Do you think you’ll remain in America once you’re graduated?” their mother asked.
“Obviously not,” Mary said scathingly. “Can’t have such a prime specimen of humanity going to waste away from home.”
“Mary,” her grandfather said sharply.
Mary shot him a mocking smile. “Oh sorry, I must have been mistaking him for someone valuable. But I suppose he could come home and seduce girls. I’m sure it’s an important contribution.”
Stuart blew air out of his nose. “You are not still going on about this.”
“You are untrained and untested,” Mary said. “There is nothing you could do that I could not do ten times as well.”
“Mary,” her grandfather said disapprovingly.
“What? Should I pretend he’s competent just because the rest of you do?”
“This hysteria has gone on long enough,” her grandfather snapped. “Henry, control her.”
Mary tipped her chin up, glaring at her father. He met her gaze calmly. “Mary, we’ve talked about this. It has already been decided.”
“I don’t accept it,” she said. “The rest of you might be so blinded by tradition that you’d let that—” she gestured to her brother with a disdainful hand “—run wild, but you all know the truth—”
“Enough!” her grandfather snapped. “Maurice.”
His bodyguard stepped forward to remove her.
Mary leapt to her feet, grabbing her steak knife. She slammed it point first into the centre of the table.
“Mary,” her mother gasped.
“No,” Mary said, voice cold and hard. The blade wobbled back and forth, wedged deep into the oak tabletop. Maurice’s hand clamped on her shoulder, but none of them moved
“Fine,” Stuart said, getting to his feet. His eyes burned. “What would it take to prove myself to you?”
Mary paused a moment, then let a small, victorious smile spread across her face. A flash of nervousness shot through Stuart’s eyes. She wrenched the knife out of the table, shrugging off Maurice’s grip.
“Fight me.”
“This is ridiculous,” her grandfather said. “I will not allow such foolishness in my home.”
“Father—”
“Henry, no. Your fondness for the girl is what got us here. I refuse to watch my grandchildren make a spectacle of this family.”
“You sound worried, grandfather,” Mary said, without taking her eyes off Stuart. “You don’t think he could lose, do you?”
Her father cut her a sharp look, and she fell silent. He turned back to her grandfather. “She is out of turn, but she is not wrong,” he said. “Where’s the harm in letting them get it out of their system? They may even learn something.”
A scowl twisted her grandfather’s face for a moment before he got himself under control. He folded his hands in his lap, raising his chin. The silver in his hair glinted in the light. Despite his age, he carried himself like a king.
He held her father’s gaze for a long minute. Mary barely dared to breathe.
Finally, he spoke. “Maurice, clear the floor.”
Satisfaction tugged at the corner of Mary’s mouth. She picked up her napkin from the table and meticulously wiped the blade clean.
“If we do this,” Stuart said, grabbing his own knife and following suit. “If you lose, this is over. You won’t keep challenging me.”
He tried to inject certainty into his words, but his voice betrayed him with a wobble. Nerves made his hands unsteady. Mary doubted that he’d been keeping up his training in America; he, like so many stuffed-up princelings, relied on his bodyguards to do his fighting for him.
She dropped her napkin on her plate and met his gaze. “I’m not going to lose.”
She stepped back. The others got to their feet and Maurice grabbed the edge of the table, shoving it back a meter or two. The room was light and airy, a wall of frosted glass letting in the crisp spring sunlight.
Stuart faced off against her. She rolled her shoulders back, shifting the steak knife between her fingers to get a feel for it, studying Stuart critically. His dress pants were too fitted to move in easily, whereas her clothes were slim-cut but flexible. Stuart had grown lax.
He eyed her. “So—”
She attacked.
The accuracy of her assessment was immediately evident. She swung her knife and Stuart flinched backwards, his eyes squeezing shut for a microsecond before they shot open like a man slapped awake. She didn’t wait for him to get his feet under him; she slammed her left hand into his gut and ducked his wild swing, retreating out of his space before his knife could get near her.
Sweat beaded on Stuart’s brow, but he only looked a little winded; Mary’s left hook had never been strong.
She didn’t dare look to see how her grandfather was reacting to the opening salvo. She feinted forward and Stuart danced aside. He was clearly out of practice, but that was no reason to get cocky; though neither of the Hatford siblings would ever be tall, Stuart had more than four inches on her. He was that much bigger, that much stronger, just by default. And even if he hadn’t been training regularly, he had been trained.
She let him circle, waiting, then—
She rushed him. He yelped in shock and crashed backwards into their mother’s china cabinet.
The shattering of glass sounded like a falling chandelier. Their mother’s intake of breath was audible even over the sound of Stuart’s gasping.
He barely managed to get his arm up in time to block her knife. It scored a long line down his forearm, shredding his white button-up. Redness soaked through his sleeve.
Mary’s teeth bared in a grin, and she couldn’t resist a taunt. “That all you got, brother?”
Stuart snarled, throwing her back a step. She ducked his answering swing and twisted his blade aside with a quick flick of her wrist.
They broke apart, breathing heavily. A heady rush of victory flushed Mary’s body. Stuart was—slow.
His eyes went to her left and she sidestepped the lunge that followed almost idly. He flailed, off-balance, and Mary flipped her blade in her hand, gripped the front of his shirt, and punched him squarely in the nose.
Hot blood spurted out over her fist. Stuart choked, his hands going up instinctively in a warding gesture.
Mary hooked a knee behind his leg and jammed her palm against his shoulder, hard. He yelped and toppled backward, tripping over her leg.
To his credit, he half-caught himself. His knife clattered to the ground and shoved himself backward, out of Mary’s range.
She caught just a flicker in her peripherals, but her body reacted, lunging to intercept.
She wasn’t fast enough. A gun skidded across the floor into Stuart’s outstretched hand. He grabbed it blindly.
Mary froze. The gaping barrel of her grandfather’s Sterling revolver wavered in the air between them.
“Match—”
The word acted as a trigger. Mary hurled herself sideways, barrelling into Maurice’s solid form. His massive bulk barely shifted at the impact, but her fingers found his handgun and tore it free. She thumbed the safety off without looking and braced herself.
Silence fell.
Mary’s grip on Maurice’s handgun was too tight, but she couldn’t make her fingers loosen.
Stuart shifted. He eyed her warily as he slowly rose to his feet, not letting his aim shift for a moment.
“Put it down, Mary,” he said quietly.
A horrible clarity congealed in Mary’s lungs like treacle.
Stuart would never lower his own gun. He had no reason to; he won by default. If the fight came to a draw, he lost nothing. His forehead glistened along the sight of the barrel.
There was only one way that she won this fight. Her finger burned like her nerves had been dipped in acid. In her mind's eye, she watched the hammer drop; the jarring snap of flesh as a hole burrowed into Stuart’s forehead at eight hundred miles per hour. Hot blood rushed through her body, electric with possibility.
Her eyes crossed the table to where her father sat, face entirely neutral. In her mind, she heard the heavy smack Stuart’s body would make when it hit the floor.
She inhaled, met Stuart’s gaze.
And lowered the gun.
Like a held breath being released, everyone started to move at once. Her mother rushed to Stuart’s side, fussing over his wounded arm. Mary’s eyes floated across the table to her grandfather, still sitting as calm and cool as if he hadn’t rigged the game the second he realized Stuart would lose.
“You are despicable,” she said.
The room collectively froze once more.
Her grandfather regarded her for a moment, then rose to his feet. With immense dignity, he pointed at the floor in front of him.
Mary handed the gun back to Maurice and straightened her shirt. The six steps it took to stand in front of her grandfather echoed too loudly in the silent room.
She stopped before him, lifting her chin so she could look him directly in the eye. He studied her face for a long moment before backhanding her across the cheek.
Even knowing it was coming, the impact threw her into the wall. She pinched her eyes closed and swallowed the keen of pain that pressed at her throat.
One breath. Two. The stinging in her cheek didn’t relent, and when she put her fingers to her face they came away bloody.
She straightened, biting down every iota of pain and rage so she could look at her grandfather without flinching.
He waited until she was standing again. “If you ever,” he said coldly, “speak to me like that again, you will not live to regret it.”
Mary looked at his watery old eyes and believed him. She nodded, stiff-backed, and walked out of the room without looking back.
Mary was showered and dressed again by the time her father came for her. She sat on the window seat in her bedroom, one leg dangling. Droplets of water ran down her neck from her wet hair, soaking into the soft cotton of her t-shirt.
Her father’s familiar short rap on the door barely startled her. “Come in,” she called. The window was bright with lights. Even far on the outskirts of London, it never truly grew dark. The sky burned orange and red in the twilight.
Her father let himself in, closing the door behind him. She glanced at him to verify he was alone before returning to her contemplation of the skyline.
“You shouldn’t sit exposed like that,” Henry said quietly.
“Why?” she asked. “I’m not a target. Nobody would gain by my death.”
“Mary,” he said, a soft reprimand.
She stayed where she was, sliding her gaze over to meet his. There was no shame in them, nor any apology for forsaking her earlier. She hadn’t expected there to be, but it still stung.
She lifted her chin to appear unaffected, and finally slipped off the window seat. Her father followed her silently to the pair of armchairs by her cold fireplace. She pulled a bottle of brandy from the side cabinet and poured two glasses.
They settled in their familiar places. The brandy burned in Mary’s throat, the sharp tang clearing her sinuses.
“You can’t pretend to be surprised,” her father said. “You must have known he would never allow you to win.”
“Perhaps I thought reason would trump tradition, for once.”
“It is reason,” her father said. At her heated glare, he placed his drink on the side table and leaned forward. “It is.”
“I am ten times the man Stuart is,” Mary snapped.
“You could be a hundred times, and it wouldn’t matter. Our partners will never see it. They expect you to be small, and anything you do they will bend to make you fit that role.”
“I am—”
“I know, Mary. You don’t need to prove yourself to me.”
“If I can change your mind, I can change others.”
“Not enough. Not quickly. This is a man’s business. Let Stuart have the face of it. The people who matter will know who pulls his strings.”
A wave of hot rage rose in Mary’s throat. She forced it down and looked away, taking a long pull on her brandy. “You’re wrong,” she said. “With your backing, they’d learn to respect me long before I’d need to rule alone.”
Her father said nothing, but his skepticism was nearly tangible. Mary’s mouth twisted and she took another drink, finding the bottom of her glass altogether too near. She got up to refill it, leaning against the cabinet and regarding her father. He’d changed into casual clothes, though a trained eye would know that nothing he wore came cheap. Sitting, you couldn’t tell he had less than two inches of height on Mary. Stuart had gotten a little of their mother’s height, but Mary and Henry were Hatford’s through and through.
Mary sipped her drink. Her fingers drummed an unsteady beat on the counter behind her.
“And so I become Saul,” she said softly.
Her father’s head tipped back. “Ah.”
The silence hung between them like a shroud. Her uncle’s name was rarely invoked in their household, except when the family wasn’t listening.
“It’s not the same,” her father said eventually.
“No,” Mary said. “You had to kill him to take power. Stuart just had to be born.”
Her father swilled his glass, gaze contemplative. “Will you force him to kill you then, too?”
“Do I have to?” she challenged.
“No,” he said, deathly serious. “You can concede this peacefully. It does not have to end in blood.”
Mary’s nostrils flared. She pressed the glass against her lip to prevent anything from slipping out. The image of Stuart’s face lined up along the barrel of Maurice’s handgun swelled up in her mind.
She could’ve done it. Could Stuart?
She didn’t think so. Or perhaps—
He wouldn’t, because it wouldn’t ever occur to him that he’d have to. The respect and power she’d struggled and clawed for were his by default. He had never even questioned it.
For a blinding moment, she wished she’d done it. Splattered her brother’s brains across the dining room table. Shown them exactly which Hatford sibling had it in them.
“Saul forced my hand,” her father said, breaking her fantasy. “He was a bloody-minded brute, and he didn’t know how to accept he’d lost.”
“And if you hadn’t dealt with him, he would have inherited. He was allowed his birthright despite how unfit he was, and I am denied mine despite my fitness.”
“Mary—”
“Don’t,” Mary snapped.
Her father’s nostrils flared at her insolence, and she closed her eyes, inhaling deeply. The simmering rage in her core didn’t cool, but she leashed it, contained it, wrapped it up and soothed it with whispered promises.
Finally, she opened her eyes. Her father hadn’t moved, his hooded, disapproving gaze resting on her.
“You don’t have to worry,” she said tiredly. The brandy in her glass shimmered and she watched it until her hand steadied. “I will not kill my brother.”
Her chest caved in with the weight of her oath, but she held it in, savouring the bitter feeling.
She had faced her brother. She had considered doing it; she could’ve done it.
She had chosen not to. Despite everything, she loved him that much.
“He is a spoiled, entitled, insufferable ass,” she said. “He is frivolous and selfish and there are days when I wish he was never born. But as he is my brother, and my blood, I will never hurt him.”
She forced herself to meet her father’s gaze, letting him see her honesty. He studied her a moment longer before draining the last of his brandy and standing.
He paused by her side and placed a hand on her shoulder. His strong grip steadied her and she straightened a hair, letting herself soak up some of his implacable strength.
He left the room without another word. Mary waited until he had gone to finish her brandy and place the two used glasses on the sideboard for the maid to pick up. She locked the door and turned to face the empty room.
The thrum of her heartrate filled her ears. Her throat felt tight, as if she’d been running. She’d gotten away with the biggest lie she’d ever told, without ever saying a single untruth.
She was not going to kill Stuart. But there was, as they said, more than one way to skin a cat.