Dark Legacy (House of Winterborne Book 1)
Page 1
Dark Legacy
(House of Winterborne Book 1)
Luanne Bennett
Copyright © 2020 Luanne Bennett
All rights reserved.
The Word Lounge, Atlanta, Georgia
No part of this book may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any written or electronic form without permission from the author, except for quotations and excerpts for articles or reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or events is entirely coincidental.
luannebennett.com
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Coming Soon!
Books by Luanne Bennett
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Chapter 1
The Hamptons, New York
Fall 2019
The wind picked up as the waves rolled over the sand, inching closer while the tide pulled higher. The temperature had dropped when the sun set, but Katherine Winterborne felt oddly warm standing naked on the beach, her fair skin glowing from the light of the moon, the doubt that she’d made the right decision no longer swaying her thoughts. She’d finally made peace with the gods.
It had only been a few minutes since she’d swallowed the potion that would allow her to walk into the ocean and never return, giving her dominion over her destiny before it manifested completely and destroyed the people she loved. But taking your life when you’re immortal is nearly impossible without the aid of dark magic. Without the potion, she would merely breathe in the sea and spend the evening trying to expel the salty water from her lungs. A curse or a blessing, depending on your intent, and her intent at that moment was to disappear under the waves and leave no trace of her indiscretions and the nightmare those flawed decisions had set in motion decades earlier.
A hazy feeling of warmth spread through her limbs as she walked toward a spot where the sea bled into the dunes. She dug her toes into the sand and glanced back at the house, thinking of her brother. He’d hate relinquishing control to his niece, but he’d eventually accept that although Morgan was young, she was the rightful successor to the House of Winterborne. Heir to the helm of an empire, her daughter would reluctantly accept her station and show them all the powerful witch inside that was already beginning to wake up. Then the clan would accept Morgan as their queen.
As Katherine’s symptoms had started to progress rapidly, she’d given her daughter more responsibilities within the company. But time was up. Morgan would be thrown into the lion’s den with only her birthright and intuition to guide her through a gauntlet of ambitious immortal men looking for the weak spot in their new leader, undoubtedly deeming her inadequate. The Elders would look for any opportunity to convert their matriarchy to a patriarchy. To give the power to a son. But not while Katherine still had the right to designate her daughter as her heir, her last declaration as the queen of Clan Winterborne.
Her thoughts were suddenly distracted as she tried to remember if she’d gotten rid of the evidence. Dark magic used to end a life was a high crime, even if it was your own. The stigma would leave a mark on the House of Winterborne and possibly give the Elders grounds to pronounce her unstable and incapable of appointing an heir. She relaxed when she remembered throwing the empty bottle into the ocean after drinking the powerful potion, before she sat on the beach and waited for it to enter her veins and render her mortal just long enough to drown. When the deed was done, the gods would carry her out to sea and pull her to the bottom of the ocean for eternity. The evidence would never be found. It was just a bottle of seawater if it washed up on the beach, and Katherine Winterborne would be one of the thousands to go missing in New York City every year.
But an immortal never really dies; an immortal transitions.
Katherine walked closer to the ocean and felt a cold wave roll over her feet and wash against her ankles. She looked down at the sea foam covering her toes and caught a terrifying glimpse of her cold skin. It had gone stark white and gave off a blue tone against the moonlight. Her veins pulsed beneath the surface, turning black before her eyes, and her breath grew heavy as a gnawing hunger in her throat reminded her of why she had to do this.
Looking back at the beautiful summerhouse for the last time, she followed the wave as it receded, her mind filled with random thoughts as she walked into the dark water until it reached her waist. Her hair floated up and fanned across the ocean surface as she continued deeper. Then she plunged beneath the waves and took a deep breath, sucking the water into her lungs. But instead of drowning her, the water seemed to oxygenate her blood.
The potion wasn’t working.
Suddenly her lungs began to burn. She panicked and tried to swim for the surface, but her limbs wouldn’t move. They were frozen. A few seconds passed, and her fear began to melt away as the haziness returned and a tingling sensation raced across her skin. The murky water had become crystal clear, giving her a view of her fingers as they began to dissolve into tiny particles, carried off by the ocean like dust disbursed to the wind. The sensation continued up her arms and across her shoulders, engulfing her until she couldn’t feel or hear anything but the cold water calling her deeper.
Katherine Winterborne’s secret had drifted with her out to sea.
Chapter 2
Manhattan
A Month Later
“Who is that?” I asked my brother, nodding to a man sitting on the other side of the room. He’d been staring at me since he walked in and took a seat, and it was making me uncomfortable.
With zero discretion, Michael turned to look at him.
“Don’t be so damn obvious,” I whispered, as if the man could hear me from across the room.
“Who cares. We get a free pass to act as uncouth as we want today.” He studied the man for a moment before shrugging. “He probably works for us.” Then he pointed to a guy leaning against the wall. “Tell you what. You find out who he is for me, and I’ll check out your stalker over there.”
My brother had a thing for blonds. The kind who were too good-looking. Pretty boys who were guaranteed to break your heart. Prospecting for his next distraction always took priority, even at our mother’s memorial service.
“Jesus, Michael. Not today.”
“Come on, Morgan. Mom would have hated this morbid shit. She would have preferred a party. In fact, I recall her saying, ‘When I die, I want my children to throw me a damn party.’”
“You’re right about that,” I said, envisioning the great Katherine Winterborne shaking her head from wherever she was. Funerals and memorial services were for the living, and she wouldn’t have wanted either.
My mother had disappeared a month earlier, and a weekend trip to the Hamptons had turned into a search party. She’d said she was going out to the beach house to unwind for a few d
ays, but when she never called me that first night and wouldn’t answer her phone, I knew something was wrong. To make matters worse, I hadn’t gone with her that time. I usually did, but on that particular weekend I’d already had plans. She also hadn’t asked me, which was odd, but it’d saved me from explaining that a night out with my best friend was more important than spending a weekend in the Hamptons with her.
God, I felt like shit.
“It wasn’t your fault,” Michael said, reading my mind as he always managed to do.
“Yes, it was. If I’d gone with her—”
“Yeah, and if I’d gone with her, or Ethan or Avery.” He let out a heavy sigh and lowered his voice. “For God’s sake, Morgan, our mother was one of the most powerful immortals in this city. You don’t really think whoever or whatever got to her could have been stopped by one of us? We don’t even know if she’s actually dead. They haven’t found a single strand of her hair, let alone a body.”
I tensed at the thought and stood up to head for the bar on the other side of the room. I wanted her back so bad I couldn’t breathe at times, but to suggest that she might not be dead was too much to consider. Did he think she just ran off and deserted her family? Of course she was dead. Every member of our clan had known the moment she took her last breath on this earth. We’d all felt it. Her energy had been ripped from each of us, leaving a hollow well in the center of our chests, tearing a gaping hole through the web of our universal bond. And the way the owls had screeched over Central Park at the exact moment that we all sat up in our beds and knew she was gone… It was awful, the sound they made.
The night we felt it, my brother Ethan had driven out to the island. I still resented him for not waking me up and taking me with him, and since we all lived under the same roof, he had no excuse. All he’d found when he arrived were her clothes on the beach and footsteps leading toward the water, not yet washed away by the tide. We believed she’d walked into the ocean and somehow drowned. How was still a mystery.
My clan owned an entire block on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. The Winterborne was a prewar apartment building named after our family. Most of us lived there, my sister being one of the few exceptions. Avery preferred to dwell like an “ordinary” New Yorker and lived in her own apartment on the Upper East Side. But she had no problem accepting an obscene salary as a regional director for the luxury real estate division of Winterborne Holdings.
I sagged with relief when I spotted Jules heading for me.
“Sorry I’m late.” She asked the bartender for a shot of Jameson and surveyed the room. “Couldn’t catch a cab to save my life. I was about to stand in the middle of Broadway and lift my skirt.”
“That would have been interesting,” I mumbled over the rim of my glass. “You should have called me. I could have sent a car.”
She glanced at the guests milling around the room with drinks in their hands and handkerchiefs to blot their teary eyes. “Looks like I missed most of the service.”
“Yeah. It’s about over. We had a pretty good turnout.”
We’d decided to have the memorial service in one of the large rooms at the auction house we owned and operated. Since our “religion” didn’t exactly involve worshipping a god in a church, the clan thought it would be best to hold it in a neutral location. It was really for the employees and shareholders though, and a high-profile family like ours had to put on a show for the media. But the real memorial service for Katherine Winterborne had already taken place in a chamber hidden deep within the walls of the Winterborne Building where we lived. The Elders had officiated the ritual that sent her spirit off to the gods, so now we were just going through the motions expected of a family who’d lost one of their own.
“How are you holding up?” Jules asked, downing her drink and holding her empty glass out to the bartender for a refill. “The bar was a great idea, by the way.”
“My mother wanted a party instead of a funeral or memorial service, so we compromised with an open bar.”
She raised her fresh drink in the air. “That’s Katherine. She’s the best.”
It didn’t bother me to hear my best friend speak of my mother in the present tense, but she got an awkward look on her face when she realized she’d done it.
“It’s fine, Jules. I’ll probably talk to her for months like she’s still in the room.”
Jules, short for Julia, and I had been fused at the hip since high school. She was the smartest girl I’d ever met, but she acted like she didn’t give a shit about anything. It turned out she was just bored. There wasn’t a class she couldn’t ace, but her parents refused to let her skip a couple of grades because they wanted her to be a “normal” child. The only reason she’d taken a liking to me was because she’d picked up on my talents. That girl had spotted me from a mile away and never flinched when I told her about my family’s unusual heritage. Winterbornes are immortals, and though my immortality was still five years away, I was a rare witch born to our line once in a blue moon. Not the kind that casts spells or stirs cauldrons—Winterborne witches are more subtle in our endeavors. Our powers are more practical, manifesting in autonomous ways, like the time I stopped a car from hitting me as I crossed Park Avenue after leaving school—with my bare hands. That was the day Jules decided we were to be friends for life.
“Have they named you yet?” Jules asked, referring to my impending “coronation” as we jokingly called it.
I’d known for some time that I was my mother’s successor. It was tradition for a female to head up the clan. Avery was the obvious choice, being the oldest daughter, but my mother had recognized my powers early on and made no apologies for choosing me as her successor over my sister. What was right for the Winterbornes was all that mattered to her, and Avery simply didn’t have what it took to lead the clan, nor did she have any desire to do so. Neither did I really, but it was my mother’s wish and I planned to honor it.
I groaned and took a sip of wine. “The council has called a meeting tomorrow morning to officially announce it. Ethan’s going to love that.”
“It’s not like he doesn’t know,” she said over the rim of her glass.
He did know, but the council formalizing it was another thing. Both he and my uncle Cabot would smile supportively, all the while thinking it was time to change tradition and let the men of the clan rule for once. I’d be seen as young and lacking the killer instincts of a true leader. My mother had been one of those killers. She’d been kind and loving, but she would cut you off at the knees if you threatened her clan or company. Obviously she’d seen those instincts in me, even if I didn’t.
Right on cue, Ethan came through the crowd and joined us at the bar. He ordered a double scotch and eyed Jules. “Nice dress, Jules.”
She leaned back against the bar and gave him a cocky grin. “Oh yeah? See something you like?”
“Watch out for the wolves,” he said, laughing as he grabbed his drink and made his way back toward his date on the other side of the room.
I watched Jules watching Ethan walk away. “You two need to just get it over with.”
She continued to watch him as he reached his date and ran his hand down her back. “Your brother’s good-looking, but sleeping with him would be so… wrong.”
“Yeah, I don’t think I’d ever look at you the same way again.” I snickered and looked around to see where Michael had gone. “Shit. Not again.”
“What?” She perked up and followed my gaze.
I downed the rest of my wine and nodded to the other side of the room. “You see that guy in the corner?”
“The tall one with black hair?”
“He keeps staring at me, and I’m about to go over there and ask him why.”
She huffed a laugh. “Have you looked in the mirror? Half the guys in the room are staring at you. Probably has a thing for redheads.”
“I doubt it,” I said, shaking my head. “He’s giving me the creeps. I don’t even think he was invited.”
; “You think he crashed the memorial service for the open bar?” She set her glass down and straightened up. “I’ll just go have a word with the man.”
“No,” I said, calling her off. “I have a better idea.”
Chapter 3
Jules filled a corn tortilla with steak and cheese and stuffed half of it in her mouth. “Damn, this is good,” she mumbled around her mouthful of food with a trail of green salsa running down her chin.
“That good, huh?”
“You kidding me? Best tacos in the city.”
The memorial service had ended, so I’d grabbed Jules and we’d slipped out the back entrance and headed down to the Village to get something to eat, leaving my stalker behind.
It was nice to get out for a few hours. I’d been sequestered in the house for weeks, grieving my mother, barely setting foot outside the walls of the Winterborne fortress. That would all change when I officially assumed my role not only as head of the clan but also as the future CEO of Winterborne Holdings. The clan owned one of the most prestigious auction houses in the world, along with a luxury real estate division. We brokered everything from fine art and antiquities to slick new penthouses around the globe. At twenty-five, I wasn’t anywhere near ready to take over the corporation, but I had several years to prepare myself, and I’d be lying if I said I was confident about leading a clan of immortals as of tomorrow morning.