Ruthless Empire (Royal Elite 6)

“It’s Silver.” I wave at him as the car disappears around the corner. Papa said he’d pick me up later, even when I told him I could walk home.

The housekeeper, Isabel, lets me in with a huge smile on her face. She’s the only help Helen allows and she only comes twice a week. Isabel motions that Helen is in the kitchen.

I place a finger to my lips and tiptoe there, abandoning my backpack on the sofa.

Spending time with Helen is one of the highlights of my week. Papa has become busier with the party since he became a secretary of state. I participate in his meetings, but he barely has time for me — or for himself. It kills me to see him so alone and getting older by the day.

However, I’ve been spending most of my time with Mum and it’s hardly fun.

When I’m with Helen, we talk and bake — or more like, she bakes. I continue to suck at it. Yet Helen has never given up on me and keeps teaching me.

We meditate together and she still does my hair and tells me I’m the perfect daughter she never had. Maybe hearing those words my own mother rarely says to me is what keeps me coming back here.

It’s certainly not because of her arsehole son.

I hate Cole Nash.

I despise him from the bottom of my heart.

He’s levelled up from pulling my hair and taunting me to playing games. He loves those a lot — games, I mean. The belief that he has control over someone.

And he’s becoming popular, too — he and that other wanker, Aiden. I don’t know what girls see in them. They’re both yuck.

Xander and Ronan make sense. At least they’re charming.

Oh, wait. Everyone thinks Cole is charming as well. He smiles at them and offers to help with their homework, like he’s the prince from their favourite fairy tales.

Idiots.

They don’t know that everything is a game to Cole. If he compliments someone or acts nice to them, it’s usually because of a dare he has with Aiden on who gets whose favour.

While Aiden does it the brooding way, Cole charms himself into it. It’s about who wins, but it’s also about the process.

Cole thrives on games and he’s been playing them for years. He likes to think everyone is a piece on his chessboard and that he can control their fate.

Aiden likes playing the king who comes out a winner, but Cole strives to be the player who controls not only the king but also every piece on the board.

We mostly avoid each other. The more I see his true self, the more he sees mine. I hate that.

We can go days not speaking to each other, not even when Helen or Papa is around. Then he’ll come out of nowhere and provoke me — or challenge me. It can be as simple as a biology test, or a piano competition, or even who holds their breath underwater the longest.

I rise up to every one of them.

I’m Sebastian Que

ens and Cynthia Davis’s daughter and I’m as tenacious as my parents. No one gets past me.

No one.

He usually wins and laughs at me, though. I swear he only keeps being the first in class just to piss me off and call me Miss Number Two. Sometimes, even Aiden will push me off the second place simply to prove he can.

Both of them are major wankers.

They have football practice right now, which means I can spend time with his mother in peace.

Couldn’t she have a different son? Ronan or Xander would do. Hell, even Levi, Aiden’s cousin, would be fine.

It had to be the one I hate the most.