The Dirty Series 1(134)
“You look gorgeous,” my father says to me, and for the first time I notice how gray his hair is. I’ve insisted that they stay two months in Saintland—Angela and Thomas are still in college, so they’ll only stay about three more weeks—but a wave of gratitude sweeps over me. We all need this time together.
“Thanks, Dad.”
The music starts to swell, but my dad doesn’t react automatically. “Are you ready?”
That’s my dad, always checking first. If I told him right now that I wanted to call all of this off, he’d hold up the train of my dress while I ran.
But this? I’ve never been more ready for anything than I am to marry Alec.
“Yes. I’m ready.”
We take a step into the doorway. Across the great expanse of the cathedral, I see my prince standing with the priest at the altar wearing his traditional Saintlandian uniform. Even from here, I can see the wide grin on his face, the way he stands with his feet firmly planted, no sign of nervousness…yet.
I take a deep breath, and then I take the first step toward Alec. The rest of the world falls away, and it’s like we’re the only ones in the cathedral.
Smiling, I walk slowly, calmly, in measured steps, directly toward the only future I’ll ever need.
Dirty Rogue
A Bad Boy Billionaire Romance
Prologue
Ten years ago
The needle of the tattoo machine bites into the skin of my brother’s chest. I can hear its pulsing hum above the music echoing off the brightly painted walls of the shop. It’s some kind of pop-metal that was popular a couple years ago and has since fallen off the mainstream radar. My brother grins up at me from where he’s lying back in the chair, completely relaxed even though the entire process appears painful. “It’s not that bad.”
I roll my eyes. “It looks damn delightful.”
The tattoo artist, a young man with a serious expression, skin covered in tattoos, pauses to wipe some blood from his skin.
“You good?” he asks my brother.
“Yeah. Keep going.”
“Dad’s going to be pissed,” I say lamely. It’s the same argument I’ve been making since this morning, when my twin brother started pestering me about the tattoos—again—as we drove together in the Town Car on the way to our hometown of Dalton. It’s our eighteenth birthday.
“He won’t, and you know it,” my brother laughs.
He’s right in one sense. Dad won’t be upset with Chris, but he’ll find a way to make me feel like a goddamned idiot, one way or another. It’ll either be that I shouldn’t have gotten such a dumbass tattoo, or that I should have gone along with my brother’s idea. I can never tell with our dad. We just don’t get each other.
Stepping closer to the chair, I look at the way the design is coming together on his skin. As far as tattoos go, it’s pretty awesome—it’s a reproduction of the Pierce family crest, but with one small alteration. Instead of the falcon that appears in one tiny portion of the crest, there’s a C. You’d never notice it unless you knew it was there.
The benefit to having an identical twin is that if he’s the reckless one, you can stand back to see how things turn out before you jump in feet first.
And in my case, my brother is the reckless one.
I don’t fucking get it why everyone worships my brother, but that’s also probably why he’s our dad’s favorite. My dad was the king of his frat in college. He still loves to party, but now that he’s one of the richest men in New York, he doesn’t take it quite as far as he used to. Everyone loves him because he’s so much fun. It’s the same thing with Chris.
For such a “fun guy,” Dad can really be an asshole. As far as I know, not being the life of the party isn’t a crime.
I shove my hands into the pockets of my jeans. Not being at the top of my dad’s popularity list probably has to do with Mom. I’m too much like her.
But I’m not the one who divorced him.
“Come on, Eli. It’s going to be fucking awesome. Everyone’s going to love it.”
I smile in spite of myself. “If I wait, we can test it out.”
“Testing things out” is something you only get to do if you’re exact replicas of one another, which is exactly the case with my brother and me. The differences between us—at least physically—are so subtle, so tiny, that we’ve successfully tricked our parents on more than one occasion. Not many people are going to be looking for the pinprick of a mole that Chris has on his left ankle. We’re talking that miniscule level of shit. In every other way, looking at him is like me looking into a mirror.