Page 1 of The Sinner: James

JAMES

A NIGHT OF THE KINGS NOVEL

PROLOGUE

NIGHT OF THE KINGS

“To me, you were that special woman.

I loved you from the moment I laid my eyes on you. And I loved you despite all the people who came between us.

I was angry as hell because you chose to do what you did, but I knew I wasn’t any better, so my moral outrage was hardly justified.”

James

1

RAIN

Nobody knowswhere they come from.

Some people say they travel from afar, the other side of the hills, perhaps, where the wealthiest estates of the County share the beautiful scenery of Aspen and the well-guarded privacy of big money, but they could drive from farther away.

They arrive with the first signs of fall when days are still warm, and light looks like golden honey pouring slowly into a glass jar.

When the nights grow colder, and the gilded aspen leaves flutter under a blue, cerulean sky during the day.

When homes like Eve’s and mine smell like cinnamon apple pie, and smoke drifts from the piles of leaves burning outside.

They drive through town like living ghosts while we spend our evenings tucked under warm blankets, sipping tea, and eating cookies, spinning stories like this.

But some people swear they’ve seen them all year round, mainly at night, and almost never during the day, and that’s why it’s so hard to believe the legend.

As they sweep through town, the whispers become murmurs before turning into gossip, the stories, old and new, resurfacing, revived, spurring restlessness amongst the youngsters and skepticism amongst the older.

The men brush the idea off, huffing and puffing while turning a deaf ear to the women’s ramblings.

People often spot their cars or bikes, yet only a few lucky ones get to see them. And it’s certainly not us who just finished high school and live in a world of our own.

Women are the ones who mainly spread the rumors, but their stories should be taken with a grain of salt.

Regardless of what people say or don’t say, tales and mysteries abound.

My best friend, Eve, and I both love the legend, but unlike her, I refuse to admit it out loud.

Some say they’re usually headed west, outside town, where an old estate sprawls on land that stretches for miles with a thick forest in the background.

The road ends where their place, the notorious Dark House, rises next to a majestic lake, shrouded in mystery, just like them.

Tucked behind solitary trees with thick crowns and leafy branches pushing toward the sky, and a park with snaking alleys, wooden benches, flowering shrubs, chiseled lampposts, and a wall of bricks draped in perfumed, wild roses, the property––if we are to believe the story––belongs to them.

Neat footpaths cross the land, and an old abandoned tunnel rises in the woods behind the house.

Other than that…

Some people have spotted them at Red’s, the swanky private club downtown catering exclusively to an affluent clientele.

With dark walls, red stairs, and tinted windows, the opulent building has been dubbed ‘the playground’ of the wealthiest men in town, and perhaps the entire County, for a reason.

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