Dynasty (Boys of Winter 1)

“I told you,” Carver grunts from the driver’s seat, refusing to meet my stare. “The families are back in town.”

“Yeah, but …” I let my words trail off as pieces of the puzzle begin falling into place. “Do they all …?”

“Live here?” Grayson finishes for me. “Yes. There are seventeen homes on this street for the seventeen families of Dynasty.”

“But … how? How do you all live by one another while you’re all trying to kill each other?”

“It never used to be like that,” King explains. “Before it all became hostile, it was more like one big family, at least, that’s how my mom described it. There were apparently grand balls and parties. Now, everyone lives in private, and only returns for council meetings.”

Well, shit. It actually sounds like Dynasty might have been kind of cool back in the day, before my family was murdered and the dickhead half of the group decided that they wanted to rule the world and take over governments.

Carver continues down the road, and just before he reaches the main gate, he takes a sharp turn to the right and follows a small road around the first property. I stare in wonder. I don’t know if I’m imagining things or just unobservant, but I have never even noticed this road down here before. I figured it was just the one road.

The road is small and I realize that I never noticed it before because the majority of it is hidden behind the first property. My brows drop as I find a building at the end of the road that looks like a small warehouse.

Carver drives right up to it, and I watch as he rolls his window down, leaning out to enter a code. The warehouse door automatically rises, and Carver gently hits the gas and drives in.

I look around, but as it is, there’s really not much to look at. It’s just an empty warehouse. The automatic door starts closing, blocking out the sunlight as it goes, and making my heart race with anticipation. “Okay,” I say, glancing around at each of the guys. “What the hell is this?”

Not one of the assholes responds, and judging by the way they quickly glance at one another, I’d dare say that they’re nervous about this too.

The automatic door locks us into darkness, and without warning, the whole car jumps. My hands fly out and I grip Cruz and King on either side of me. “WHY THE FUCK IS THE CAR MOVING?”

Fucking silence.

The whole car starts sinking into the ground and it takes me far too long to realize that we’re on some kind of car elevator. It starts spinning us until we’re facing the direction we’d come in, and before I know it, we’re under the ground and the elevator is coming to a stop.

“What the ever-loving fuck is this?” I breathe in astonishment as I look out at the underground parking garage that lives just beneath our homes. Carver hits the gas and pulls into a spot. As he does, I realize that there are exactly sixteen other cars. Sixteen ridiculously expensive, once in a lifetime, fancy car show kinds of cars. Regular people like me can't even afford to look at cars like these. Though, I guess I’m not as regular as I’d always thought.

We all pile out, and as we walk to the exit of the parking garage, I notice the boys fall into formation around me, and we all walk in a diamond shape, the boys protecting me from whatever bullshit we’re about to find in there.

We make our way toward a door and I can’t help but look up at Cruz. “What is this?” I ask, knowing damn well that he’s not about to answer.

“You’ll see,” he tells me.

I resist rolling my eyes but my train of thought leaves me as we finally reach the door and Carver curls his fingers around the handle. He looks back at me with a knowing grin before slowly opening the door and letting the private parking garage flood with the clinical light from within. “Winter, this is Dynasty,” he says, waving his hand through the open door to invite me in. “Welcome home.”

I step through the door in silence, my eyes widening as I take in the impressive reception area with the word ‘DYNASTY’ in massive block letters across the wall. The room must be the size of just one of the properties above and something tells me that the hallways and doors leading off from here span the entire way back to my place, and probably lead halfway through the city.

I look around the reception area and note that it kinda looks like the lobby area of one of those huge skyrise buildings, just without the hundreds of busy nine-to-fivers rushing around. There’s a long desk with absolutely no one sitting behind it, and as we approach it, I notice a Dynasty Directory and scoff under my breath.