Princess

Chapter 1: Money Makes Money

Damon

Whoever said being loved was better than being feared simply didn't have enough power.

I love being feared.

And I would never give it up for love.

Unless it was for the woman who hardly knew I existed, didn't care if I lived or died, and barely knew my name: Ariadne Ryder.

Ariadne

It took me six minutes to knock on the door.

I counted each tap of my sneakers against the marble floors, though it wasn't abnormal for me to feel quite so unsure in my own house. But the people who sat behind this door were no small deal. Albeit, I would imagine anyone would be in a constant fit of nerves entering any room in any home on Billionaire's Row: New York City's home for the insanely wealthy to work, play, and shop right alongside some of the most expensive residential real estate in the world.

We lived in One 57, known as "Billionaire Building", the 90-story tall skyscraper housing a delightful conglomeration of CEOs, hedge-fund managers, and even New York mafia. Dripping with wealth from every single corner, the building overflowed with enough money to solve world hunger in one apartment.

To clarify, Ryders owned three different apartments in One 57. A penthouse suite for Jackson Ryder, my father and CEO of Ryder Incorporated. And two separate apartments on lower floors for me and my brother Christian. It was my father's way of keeping us close to him and I didn't particularly get to refuse as he gifted me the apartment when I graduated medical school so I could complete my residency in New York.

Christian was being primed and prepped to take over at Ryder Inc.

I couldn't care less. I had no interest in the family business and passed off my father's occupation as a "businessman". The word infuriated him. He wasn't a businessman. Being a businessman didn't let you become the second richest family in America. There were certainly some dirty aspects to it.

Money made money.

Jackson Ryder came from it, made it, and passed it along. That was all I ever needed to know.

My family made money.

It probably helped that no one ever stood in my family's way. We were under Hale family protection and as long as that was true, no one dared to lay a finger on any of us.

Once again, I asked, if the money my family made was clean, why the fuck would we need to be under mob boss protection?

I should amend my words: the Hales weren't just a family. They were essentially a massive crime syndicate, a name that made the East Coast tremble. One of the two leading mob families in New York, the other being the Giovanni's.

No one crossed a Hale.

Anthony Hale was a modern day Don Corleone. Every single person of remote influence or power was in Hale's pocket and he liked it that way. The boss–he was literally called "The Boss"–struck fear into the hearts of everyone. Luckily for me, he was also on retainer for my father and his oldest friend.

So, the Boss I saw was a very different Boss from what New York's papers reported. He came to family dinners, bought me my first bike, and was often around the house. Not to mention, he had shown me more affection than my own father did in more than a few ways. You'd never know that he was vicious though, when you looked at him. With his jovial laugh and arm always thrown around his elegant wife, he was the perfect family man, showing up at charity events and fundraisers like it was his job. But everyone knew that if he showed up, it was business. It was intimidation. It was never pleasure.