Chapter 1
The smell of fresh pine and damp earth always grounded me. It was the scent of real work, of a life built with my own two hands. I stood in the parking lot of Miller’s Hardware on 4th Street, hoisting a fifty-pound bundle of untreated oak into the bed of my beat-up Ford F-150. My gray t-shirt was stained with sawdust, my jeans were faded at the knees, and my hands were rough and calloused. To anyone driving past, I was just Declan Mercer, a local carpenter finishing up a Saturday afternoon supply run.
That was exactly how I wanted it. I wiped the sweat from my forehead with the back of my arm. As I turned to secure the tailgate, I noticed Mrs. Gable two spots down. She was an eighty-year-old widow who lived at the end of our street, frail as a bird, currently losing a tug-of-war with a massive bag of garden topsoil hanging out of her sedan’s trunk.
I didn’t think twice. I jogged over, the gravel crunching under my steel-toed boots. "Let me get that for you, Mrs. Gable," I said, offering a warm smile as I gently took the heavy plastic bag from her trembling hands.
"Oh, Declan, sweetheart," she breathed a sigh of relief, leaning back against her car. "You shouldn't be helping an old woman like me. You should be at home with that beautiful wife of yours. How is Elodie doing? She must be due any day now."
"Eight months," I said, easily lifting the soil and situating it properly into the depths of her trunk so it wouldn't slide around. "We're just finishing up the nursery this weekend. That's what the oak is for. I'm building the crib."
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"You're a good man, Declan," she said softly, patting my dusty shoulder. "Your father would be incredibly proud of the life you've built."
My hand instinctively went to my chest, my thumb brushing against the outline of the silver pocket watch tucked into my shirt pocket. It was the only thing I owned that had belonged to my father. He had died when I was twelve, long before I understood the crushing weight of the Mercer family legacy. He had been a kind, quiet man who married into a dynasty of cutthroat billionaires. When he passed, my mother, Adelaide, ensured that his memory was erased from our massive estate. She wanted me molded into a ruthless corporate heir. Instead, the day I turned eighteen, I walked away. I took my father’s watch, left a billion-dollar trust fund behind, and never looked back. I learned a trade, bought a small house, and married Elodie. To my mother, my life was a humiliation. To me, it was salvation.
