Page 11 of Black Reign

Royal Oaks belongs to them now.

College is done as well.

My father forbade me from attending anywhere in the States.

Too ordinary.

Too visible.

Too much wasted time pretending to learn things I already knew.

Oxford was the compromise.

Prestigious enough to satisfy my mother.

European enough to satisfy my father.

Useful enough to hide what I was actually doing there.

I spent more time inside Blackwell facilities than classrooms.

More nights in Monaco, Zurich, Paris, Rome, and Geneva than in my Oxford rooms.

Surveillance contracts.

Acquisitions.

Security breaches.

Quiet problems handled quietly.

Meanwhile, everyone else stayed on the other side of the Atlantic building lives.

I FaceTimed.

I flew back when I could.

Stanford eventually became more of a second home than Newport.

Basketball games.

Parties.

The occasional catastrophe requiring me to appear in person because Haverhill or Drew had managed to create something technology alone couldn't fix.

I got to know both of them well.

Especially Kane.

Hard not to respect someone who fought that hard to build a life nobody handed him.

But it wasn't the same.

Leo and Vale are different.

Always will be.

We aren't brothers by blood.