The Family Game: A Novel

by Catherine Steadman

Genres: Women's Fiction; Psychological Thrillers

Synopsis

“A powerful family and a deadly game. Be prepared for a nail-biting, roller-coaster of a ride” (B. A. Paris, author of Behind Closed Doors), from the New York Times bestselling author of Something in the Water, Mr. Nobody, and The Disappearing Act

“The Holbecks are what you might come up with if you took the Roys from Succession and blended them with the Murdochs, the Macbeths, and the Borgias. . . . Let the fun begin!”—The New York Times Book Review (Editors’ Choice)

THE RULES
1. Listen carefully
2. Do your research
3. Trust no one
4. Run for your life

Harriet Reed, a novelist on the brink of literary stardom, is newly engaged to Edward Holbeck, the heir of an extremely powerful family. And even though Edward has long tried to severe ties with them, news of the couple’s upcoming marital bliss has the Holbecks inching back into their lives.

As Harriet is drawn into their lavish world, the family seems perfectly welcoming. So when Edward’s father, Robert, hands Harriet a tape of a book he’s been working on, she is desperate to listen.

But as she presses play, it’s clear that this isn’t just a novel. It’s a confession.

A confession to a grisly crime. A murder. And, suddenly, the game is in motion.

Feeling isolated and confused, Harriet must work out if this is part of a plan to test her loyalty or something far darker. What is it that Robert sees in her? Why give her the power to destroy everything?

This might be a game to the Holbeck family—but losing could still prove deadly.
 
READY OR NOT, HERE THEY COME . . .

Release date: October 18, 2022

Publisher: Ballantine Books

Print pages: 322

Sample

1 Fairytale of New York

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 21

Christmas lights twinkle in the rain as I duck down Fifth Avenue—reds, greens, and golds glimmering in reflection on puddles and glass as I dodge along the busy sidewalk, my phone pressed tight to my ear.

“And the good news is, it’s looking like we’re going to hit the million-copy sales mark by the end of this week! We did it, Harry!” my literary agent, Louisa, cheers on the phone. Her voice is as warm and close as if she were bundled up against the cold beside me in the sharp New York City chill. I try not to think of the three and a half thousand miles of distance between New York and London—between me and my old home and its soft, damp grayness—but every now and then the pangs of homesickness wake and stretch just beneath the surface of my new life. It’s been four months since I left England, and the pull of home is somehow stronger now that winter is setting in. New York can be cold in so many ways.

“For all intents and purposes,” she continues with glee, “here’s me saying you are now officially ‘a million-copy bestselling author.’ ” I can’t help but yelp with joy—a surreptitious half skip in the street. The news is incredible. My first novel, a runaway bestseller, has been on the charts since publication, but this new milestone isn’t something I could ever have dreamed of until now. New York swallows my ebullient energy greedily. I could probably lie down on the sidewalk and start screaming and the festive shoppers would just weave unfazed around me. It’s an oddly terrifying and yet reassuring thought.

“We’ll be getting another royalty payout from the publisher at the end of the quarter,” Louisa continues. “So Merry Christmas, everyone!”

It’s funny, it’s only November and yet it feels like Christmas is here already. I look up to the halos of light hanging above me, holiday decorations, sparkling from shop windows, strung in great swaths high over the main drag of Fifth. Everything seems to be moving so fast this year, a whirlwind, a whirlpool.

“How’s it going over there?” Louisa asks, snapping me back to reality. “Settled? Happy? Are you living love’s young dream?”

I let out a laugh of surprise because yes, as smug and as self-satisfied as it may sound, I really am. After so many years alone, after pushing relationships away, perhaps I’ve paid in full for my mistakes and I can put them to bed. Maybe I’m finally allowed a little happiness.

I shake off the dark thought and grasp back onto my new life with both hands. “Well, we’ve got furniture now at least. Not sure I’ve quite worked out the subway yet but I guess I’ll get there in the end. Or I guess I won’t,” I add jokingly.

The truth is, while I know I am beginning to get a feeling for New York City, I realize I am trying to settle into a city that does not settle itself. The crowds, noises, faces, people, that frenetic fight-or-flight energy. I suppose it’s only been four months—I know it can take a lifetime to become part of a city, to find your place. And the world I’ve landed into here, with Edward, the new circles I find myself moving in, his rarefied life, that is something else again.

“And how is your dreamboat, how is Ed?” she asks, as if reading my thoughts. I slip past a gaggle of tourists in front of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, its bells tolling anachronistically alongside towering glass and steel.

Louisa was with me the night I met Edward; I shiver at the memory of the look she gave me when I first brought him over to meet her. That silent swell of pride I felt to have my arm hooked through his, the pride anglers must feel cradling their outsized shimmering catches. Though I can only credit chance and timing with my iridescent prize. In fact, it would probably be more accurate to say Edward plucked me from the stream than the other way around.

I would be lying if I said Edward’s background, his habits, his rituals—so alien to me—hadn’t lent him a strange additional attraction. His world is different from mine, everything he does invested with the subtle shimmer of something gilded. Not that I knew who he was when he first spoke to me.

We met at my publisher’s annual Summer Gala in London, a lavish, star-studded party packed with bestselling authors, high-flying editors, and superagents. That year it was being held at the Natural History Museum, the vaulting Victorian architecture festooned with bright bursts of tropical flowers: orchids and heady-scented lilies. Waiters in white tie, ferrying champagne high above the heads of the mingling household names, debut authors, and reviewers. It was my first big author event, my book having only just come out the week before and exploding directly onto the Top Ten. I’d bought a ridiculously expensive emerald dress in celebration and then spent half the night trying not to spill booze and canapés down it. Nervous, and completely out of my depth, I let Louisa usher me from important contact to important contact until I finally managed to escape the madness for the relative calm of the loos. I am no shrinking violet but too much noise, too many faces, trigger old wounds and set my senses to a different frequency.

It was on the way back from the toilets, empty champagne glass in hand, that it happened. At first I thought it was nothing, just my heel snagging on something, causing a little stutter in my step. But the snag turned into a halt, a tug, and a hot blush rising as a glance back confirmed that my high heel was firmly wedged in one of the museum’s tiny, ornate floor vents. Victorian central heating.

I gave another tug and the heel seemed to loosen, but a few passing eyes found their way to me and I panicked. I tugged again, harder. And with a retrospectively impressive show of strength and an extremely loud metallic clatter I somehow managed to completely dislodge the 150-year-old wrought-iron grate from the stone floor, still attached to my Dior heel. The noise and spectacle now attracting the gaze of everyone in the vicinity.

With a deep desire not to prolong the experience but totally unsure what else to do, I hitched my dress and—drained white with shame—half lifted, half dragged the entire wrought-iron grate back toward its gaping floor hole. The grate clanked and banged as I tried to get it back in, all the time with my heel firmly attached. And that’s when he saved me, a firm hand on my back, that warm American accent, his voice low, reassuring, like home.

“Okay, okay. I see the problem.” His first words to me. And though, of course, he meant the problem with my shoe, and the grate—and that he could fix it—to this day I like to think he meant he saw the larger problem, with everything, with my past, with the holes in my life, and that he could fix those too. Listen, I’m no damsel in distress, trust me, I’ve survived a lot more than most, but you can’t underestimate the overwhelming power of someone swooping in to save you after a lifetime of having to save yourself.

Those eyes looking up at me, filled with such a disarming calm, with an inborn certainty that everything would all work out just great. The warmth of his skin against my bare shoulder blades. I did not have time to put up my usual barriers, to insulate myself or pull away from intimacy, because there I was, stuck.

He dropped down on one knee, like a proposal, like the prince in Cinderella, this impossibly handsome man, and as he gently wriggled my mangled shoe loose from the grate with my hands on his strong shoulders, I felt something inside me shift. A hope, long tamped down, flickered back to life in the darkness. And the rest is history.

Here I am a year-and-change later, having moved a continent and my entire life to be with him.

“Ed is doing great,” I answer, though we both know it’s an understatement. Ed’s start-up company turns over more money in a month than the literary agency Louisa works for does in a year. Edward is doing immeasurably well, but we’re British and we don’t talk about stuff like that. Besides, Louisa is well aware of who Edward is, the family he comes from. He’s a Holbeck and with a surname like that, even without family investment, success was almost inevitable. “I’m actually on my way to meet him now. He’s taking me skating.”

“Skating?” I hear the interest pique in her tone. She’s desperate to hear about him. About the Holbecks. Somehow I managed to bag one of America’s wealthiest bachelors without even trying and everyone wants to know how I did it, why I did it. But more important, they want to know: what are they like?

For that, of course, there is Google. And God knows I did a deep dive or ten in the weeks after meeting Edward. Generations of wealth, woven into the fabric of America since the Gilded Age, shipping, communications, and of course that ever-present shadow of questionable ethics. There is no end to the op-ed pieces on them, the gossip column space, the business section dealings with the Holbeck name, and yet the air of mystery they maintain around themselves means one can never quite be satisfied. They remain elusive, mercurial. That, with their presumably ruthless brand of magic, is a heady and alluring mix.

“He’s taking you skating? Like roller-skating?” Louisa asks, incredulous, though I doubt anything I told her about Edward would really surprise her.

“No,” I say. “No, he’s taking me ice-skating. It’s a family tradition, The Rink at Rockefeller Center, start of the season. He wants us to go together this year.”

“Oh my God, will his whole family be there?” Louisa erupts. She’s dying to hear more about them but I haven’t been able to furnish her with any more information than I’ve gleaned from the internet so far.

“No. Still haven’t met them. No family yet. Edward’s terrified they’ll scare me off.” I cringe as I say it; I know how it sounds. Millionaire playboy won’t introduce girlfriend to family. I’m aware I’ve moved my life for Edward and I haven’t even met his parents yet. But it isn’t like that. I see the look in his eyes when we talk about them. He has his reasons and the time will come. Besides, I didn’t just move over here for him. I’ve needed a fresh start for a long time now, and the success of the book and meeting Edward made that a very real possibility.

Funny, I always thought I’d end up over here. My mother was an American. Sometimes, if I close my eyes, in coffee shops and restaurants I can almost imagine her voice among the crowd, her round open vowel sounds all around me, the warmth of it, like the past.

It’s funny I don’t recall my dad’s voice at all, but I was only eleven when it happened. Twenty years of new experiences having scribbled over what was once so clear. Though I miss him just as much. It’s only natural to forget when remembering hurts so much.

Louisa chuckles. “I’m not surprised he’s wary. They sound terrifying. Well, you know what I mean, fascinating but…hive inducing.” Her tone becomes playful, confidential. “Although between you and me, bloody hell, I would definitely be willing to put in some awkward in-law hours if Simon had looked half as good in a suit as Edward does.” Louisa and Simon split up last year. He was pretty useless by all accounts, but her compliment stands.

And she’s right. I would be willing to put up with an awful lot to be with Edward.

“Oh, and how’s the new book coming?” she asks with a studied nonchalance that almost has me fooled. I’m three weeks past the deadline for my second book.

I shiver in the winter breeze, waiting for the crosswalk light to change. The truth is I haven’t been able to focus for about a month now. Even the thought of sitting down to finish drains me. The crosswalk pip-pips and I join the swarm of commuters flowing across Fifth.

“Harry?” Louisa’s voice drags me back to reality. “The book?”

“Sorry, yes. The book is coming,” I say, which is true. “I’m almost there,” I say, which is not true at all. “I just need—”

“—another month?” she interjects. She knows me too well.

“Um. Yes. That would…that would be great.”

“Okay. I’ll hold the publishers off one more month. Listen, the first book is still flying off the shelves so we’re in a good place. People will wait for the next. But you need to be honest with me about where we are, Harry. You’re definitely nearly there?”

The seriousness of her tone hits me hard. “Yes. Four weeks, probably less. I swear. First draft done.” As I say it, I realize it will be hard, but I can do it. I just need to break my funk.

My eyes catch the time blinking high on the side of an office building. I need to finish this call. Rockefeller Center is right ahead and Edward will be there waiting.

“Oh, and I forgot to say: the publishers want to have a meeting about the paperback edition this Wednesday afternoon. At their main office, does that work?”

Ahead the glittering frontage of Saks comes into view opposite the entrance to The Rink and I realize the rain has stopped.

After I agree to the time and hang up, I pop my phone on silent, pull off my winter hat, and shake out my hair, checking my reflection in a shop window. Edward and I have already been together just over a year, but I can’t imagine a time when I won’t still get those date-night nerves.

Tonight will be special, I feel it. I’m being introduced to a family tradition and God knows I could do with some of those. Orphans don’t tend to have many.

As I round the corner of Rockefeller Plaza, my breath catches, the scale of the Christmas decorations bringing me to a stuttering halt.

In front of me is a tunnel of pure light created by the forms of angels heralding, golden trumpets raised. Color, light, and warmth. And beyond them, the famous tree, rising up into the New York skyline. I’d read in the paper this morning that it’s over eighty feet tall, but standing beneath it now that number finally sinks in. It’s the largest Christmas tree I’ve ever seen. I stand slack-jawed as I stare up. Around me a few other kindred spirits look up transfixed as the rest of New York jostles past us. Eighteen thousand lights twinkle golden into the night air, thick with the scent of Nordic pine and the delicious aroma of Christmas treats wafting from the vendors dotted about the plaza.

A hand grasps my shoulder and I whip around to a familiar touch. Edward. Wrapped up warm against the chill in a cashmere scarf and coat, his hair tousled, his eyes smiling.

“You scared the shit out of me,” I lie, too embarrassed to say I would know the feel of him anywhere.

“Sorry,” he says with a smile. “I called your name but I guess you didn’t hear.” He nods up to the tree, slipping his arms around my waist as I lean back into him, his warmth against mine. “It’s really something, isn’t it?”

Beneath the lights of the tree, on the sunken ice-skating rink, we watch as people glide effortlessly across its pristine surface, bobble hats on, bundled in scarves. Amid the young, old New York is still present, an elderly man in a full suit and hat, two women of equally advanced years wrapped in thick furs, their hair set hard as rocks.

“I’m a terrible skater,” I warn Edward later as we fasten our skates and hobble out of the enclosure toward the ice.

“Lucky I’m here then.” He grins, pulling me tight. He backs out onto the ice first and offers me both his hands for stability. I take them, my breath held in concentration as he glides us out into the middle of the rink. It’s not that busy. A handful of new skaters slip and weave around us, and after a moment my muscles loosen into his rhythm, his movements reassuring and fluid. He was an athlete—I suppose he still is.

Christmas music blares merrily over the ice rink’s loudspeaker, and as a new song begins Edward loosens one of his hands from mine. “May I have this dance?” he intones, grinning as he slowly spins me. I realize the song they’re playing is “Fairytale of New York” by the Pogues—its craggy lilt kicking in as we slip and slide across the ice, grinning like idiots. One verse in and everyone on the ice is gliding in time with the jaunty tune as above us one of the more vocal market vendors starts to sing along with the lyrics, his accent an appropriate lilting Irish brogue. Other skaters instinctively join in, merrily blasting out the odd phrase, tongue firmly in cheek, but we’re all singing. And just for a microsecond New York is made of magic. I find myself thinking: God, I love Americans. British people just aren’t like this, our toes curl at the slightest inkling of real sentiment, and yet here I am, singing, dancing, on ice. Everyone’s caught in the moment as the song crescendos and we belt out the chorus. Edward releases my hand again and I wobble slightly as he swoops down in front of me, one wet knee on the rink. He’s got something in his hand and suddenly my stomach tightens with soul-capsizing embarrassment as I realize what it is.

Oh, please, no.

This is too much. He can’t be doing what I think he’s doing. I swallow hard. People are looking at us now, smiling at us, clapping for us, and I keep smiling because what the hell else can I do.

God knows I want him to ask, but this, here, is too much, too public. I feel my panic rise as he opens the box and starts to speak and suddenly the world around us fades away. I feel tears come and my voice catch and he’s taking off my glove and sliding a ring onto my finger. A small crowd has formed on the walkway above the rink and they’re cheering and whooping as the song ends and “Chapel of Love” blasts out into the chilly air around us. The lights twinkle in time as I struggle to take everything in.

Edward pulls me close. “I love you, Harry,” he whispers. And for a second nothing else matters, because when I look into his eyes, I know it’s true. This is him trying to give me new memories, strong, bold, undeniable memories. This is him sharing his life, his past, and his future with me. I touch his face, so handsome I often marvel at being allowed to. His lips are warm on mine and the city around us disappears. The sound of cheering muffled by his hands over my ears.

Later in the rink’s Christmas café, I inspect the ring on my cold-numbed finger while he fetches us hot toddies. ...