The Rebel King (All the King's Men Duet #2) - Kennedy Ryan Page 0,64

a newsstand without seeing it. The promise of Owen’s campaign had garnered a lot of international attention and coverage, even at this early stage. It’s not every day the son of one of the most powerful men in the world runs for the most powerful job in the world.

Owen’s gone.

There’s nothing I can do to make this better. No lever I can pull. No one I can persuade or situation I can spin to fix things.

I don’t understand it. I couldn’t have forecast it. I’ve never lost a candidate. Not just any candidate, but a friend. It wasn’t even that long ago when he came asking for our help, and I assumed he was just another privileged white man expecting the best of everything to be handed to him on a silver platter.

But he wasn’t. He was so much more, so different, and my heart opened to him in ways I’d never anticipated. He would have changed the world, that elusive concept held together by the last shreds of idealism and hope. He would have achieved it. And I have no idea why now he’ll never get the chance. With all the technology at our disposal, with all the security cameras, bodyguards, precautions and protocols, we have no leads on who assassinated Owen. How is that even possible?

With Owen gone, our team is all out of jobs. Technically, Kimba and I aren’t, but most of them contract with campaigns. They have families and mortgages and lives to support. We usually have a few elections running at once, especially mid-terms, like Susan’s was in Denver, but we had never run a presidential campaign. It required all of our dedicated resources. We can float most of them for a little while, but people have already started accepting other offers since we’re so early in the campaign cycle, still nearly a year from the Iowa caucus. Plenty of time to land somewhere else.

My mind has been split for days, tuned into the stark reality of Owen’s death, but also managing the very real implications of it. Maxim and I have had nearly no time together. He’s been a rock for Millie and the twins, and for his mother.

I’m Mom’s favorite.

Owen said it, but both parents appear devastated.

Mrs. Cade sits on the front row, bracketed by the intimidating breadth of her son on one side and her husband on the other. I’ve known Warren Cade as long as I’ve known Maxim, since I was seventeen years old. For the first time, my heart softens toward him.

I’m seated on the opposite side of the church so I can see his profile. Pain has carved new lines alongside his mouth and bold nose, so like Maxim’s. I usually try to ignore their similarities, above and beneath the surface, but today it’s impossible. The same sorrow hovers over them. They both bend solicitously toward the small woman seated between them whose grief slumps her slight shoulders.

The priest closes his prayer book, having shared a few verses of comfort, and scans the crowd. The Dallas church is filled beyond capacity. Mourners line the streets outside. Millie has allowed the service to be broadcast, so large screens have been set up in nearby parks and all across the country. People are crowding around their TVs at home or huddling around their laptops. Some are watching on their phones. The response across the nation has only highlighted how beloved Owen was from his ten years of service in the senate and the impression he’d made in the few short months he’d been on the campaign trail.

“This is a difficult day for so many,” the priest says. “Most difficult for Owen’s family. His brother, Maxim, will now share a few words.”

Anxiety scatters briars in my belly. I didn’t know he would have to do this.

Maxim takes the stage, so handsome and proud, looking as impeccable as ever, but I know better. I sense the cracks, the lapses in his defenses. The only time I’ve ever seen him this emotionally vulnerable was by that river in Costa Rica, and not because he’d killed a man, but because he’d almost lost me. I want to cover him—to shield him from prying eyes. They haven’t earned the intimacy of Maxim’s pain, but it’s there for anyone looking closely enough to see.

“I made a really bad little brother,” Maxim says, managing to shape the grim line of his mouth into something approaching a smile. “Big brothers protect their little brothers when they get picked on,