Page 1 of Merciless Heir

Chapter One

Kingston

I’m willing to do anything to get what I want.

What’s mine.

Including meeting some shady character to find my Sinclair jewel.

I push open the door to Fat Jim’s. It’s the kind of dive bar that should be filled with smoke and clandestine deals.

This place hasn’t been discovered by New York’s hipsters. It’s real. Old school. Dark red and scarred tables and seats in the hole in the wall on the edge of the city in the Lower East Side.

And I’m hoping my quarry tonight will be what I need.

For the past month, I’ve had people out looking for the final Sinclair jewel. The coveted tiara, something steeped in whispered lore, is missing. Something I’ve known since after my baby brother, hound dog of the boroughs, fell from grace and smack bang into love’s claw.

Love.

I don’t give a flying fuck about love.

There was a time, once, I thought myself in love. But that was back in the day when I believed in dreams more than cold, hard money.

That woman ripped me off and I narrowly avoided a life of pain and payments, thanks to my father.

No one else knows of that shameful period.

Apart from me, that is.

I wear it deep inside as a constant reminder of openness. Of naïve ways. The stupidity of the heart.

But I’m not here for love, I’m not here for sentiment—at least not mine. I’m here for what belongs rightfully to me.

All I want is the final Sinclair jewel and it’s gone.

There’s a lot tied up in that damned tiara, rumored to be worth a fortune. Rumored to be worth more than its monetary value.

I know how my brothers see it. They see it as a symbol for something intangible. Some goddamn beacon to love. But they’re happy. All three of them. All in love.

I don’t see it that way, not at fucking all.

No, I see it how it is.

I see the story about it, the fact the Sinclair jewels represent something to others. I see how they’ve upped their value because they’re old and bespoke and that makes them even more valuable on paper.

I want my hands on all of them. Though I don’t know how, since my brothers gave their pieces to their ladies. Still…there are ways, and some of those ways are more above board than others I’m not about to sink to. There are loans and exhibitions. And bringing all the pieces together is something that pushes our family name in a way advertising couldn’t do.

Yes, my Sinclair jewel is worth more. Just not the way the saps mean.

But it’s gone and soon I’ll be told that officially.

So, I’ve taken a sabbatical from my work to find it. Sabbatical for me, anyway.

I’m rich enough to step away whenever I feel like it. Although there is always more money to be made, so sabbatical from my real estate empire is more me stepping back and watching over others.

Some might say this is stupid, focusing on a trinket. And in a way it is.

I’ve got tangible things. Money. Power. An empire of my own. The only interest in Sinclair’s—the family’s very own empire that started our path to great wealth—I have is in what it can give me. The added shine, the deep roots some investors like.

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