The Gilded Cage by Lauren Smith Read Free Book Online Page A

matter, he let his emotions flood open through the narrow gate he usually kept tightly closed. Rage gathered inside him like a coming storm and he embraced the darkness. Whoever had killed Antonio would pay. He would finish the job his father had started.
    *  *  *
    “You’re not Fenn Smith. You’re Fenn Lockwood.”
    Fenn stared at the red-haired beauty. He dropped his hand from its possessive hold in her hair as a massive headache built up behind his eyes.
    “Lockwood?” he echoed. He’d never heard the name before…yet…the fine hairs on the back of his neck stood on end.
    “You were born on Long Island and lived there until you were eight years old,” Hayden continued. He met her gaze and was instantly swallowed by the rich cobalt blue. He’d never seen anyone with eyes that shade of blue except—
    More pain exploded in tiny bursts further back along his skull. He reached up and rubbed the back of his head absentmindedly. His fingers traced the small, faintly raised line of a scar, a boyhood injury falling from a tree. He didn’t remember falling. His father said it had been a nasty head wound, and he’d had a concussion.
    “No. I’m Fenn Smith. My father was Lewis Smith. I’ve lived here all my life.” His fingers threaded through Coda’s thick fur, the touch his only comfort in that moment.
    “Do you remember anything before you were eight?” Hayden asked patiently
    He wracked his brain, trying to think back. There was only blackness. “Do you remember anything before you were eight?” he shot back.
    Hayden’s sad little smile did something funny to his chest. He rubbed at it to soothe the ache.
    “I remember spilling my mother’s perfume all over the carpet by her vanity table. I was four and a half. I remember watching my brother cry when he thought no one was watching him. I can see him holding an old photograph of him and his three friends around a tent, camping out when they were six years old.” She reached into an almost invisible pocket in her dress and pulled out her cell phone. Tapping the screen a few times, she opened up a gallery of photos. Then she selected one and held her phone out to him.
    He didn’t want to take the phone, but his hand moved of its own accord. When he saw the screen his body went rigid. Four little boys, knobby-kneed and bright-eyed, were posing in front of a crudely constructed tent. Two boys stood to the left, one a dark-haired child, the other a red- haired boy. On the right of the photo, two golden-haired boys were grinning. One had his arm slung around the other boy’s shoulders. They were exact copies of each other.
    Twins . His heart squeezed in his chest to the point of pain.
    Hayden leaned over Coda and pointed to the twin on the far right.
    “That…is you.”
    “It’s not me. That’s not me.” His voice was hoarse and he couldn’t swallow. There were no photographs of him until after his father had died. The man hadn’t liked cameras much. But Fenn remembered what he’d looked like as a boy, a vague sense of self that right now was making him sick.
    “And here.” Hayden flicked a finger across the screen, showing a young man in his teens posing on a polo pony. Blond hair matted to his forehead with sweat, the young man was grinning like a fool.
    Fenn lifted his gaze from the screen and looked at his fridge, where a few snapshots were taped to the plastic surface. One of them was a picture from when he was seventeen, leaning back against a fence post, hat tipped back on his head. An identical grin stretched across his face.
    “No.” He denied it in a breathless whisper.
    “Yes.” Hayden flicked the screen again and one last picture appeared. A man in his early thirties in an expensive suit stood by the entrance to a massive mansion. A serious, almost haunted look in his eyes shadowed the casual smile on the man’s face.
    The man looked exactly like him. Except for the barest hint of a scar on his brow, Fenn would have thought the