The Kingmaker

Book 1: All the King's Men

by Kennedy Ryan, Jo Raylan

Genres: Billionaires Romance; Multicultural & Interracial Romance; New Adult & College

Synopsis

Ambition. Passion. Betrayal.

Rita Award-winning author Kennedy Ryan delivers the epic first installment of the All the King's Men duet.

Raised to rule, bred to lead, and weaned on a diet of ruthless ambition.

In a world of haves and have-nots, my family has it all, and I want nothing to do with it.

My path takes me far from home and paints me as the black sheep. At odds with my father, I'm determined to build my own empire. I have rules, but Lennix Hunter is the exception to every one of them. From the moment we meet, something sparks between us. But my family stole from hers, and my father is the man she hates most. I lied to have her and will do anything to keep her. Though she tries to hate me, too, the inexorable pull between us will not be denied.

And neither will I.

Release date: May 23, 2023

Publisher: Scribechick Media, LLC

Print pages: 345

Sample

PROLOGUE

LENNIX

THIRTEEN YEARS OLD

My face remains unchanged in the mirror, but my eyes are older.

Older than the last time I stood in my bedroom with its pink canopy bed and the Princess Barbies shoved to the back of my closet. Posters of NSYNC and Britney Spears still plaster the walls, but right now I can’t recall one lyric. The songs of my forefathers and their fathers before them fill my head. Ancient songs with words only we know—the songs we had to reclaim—cling to my memory. They ring in my ears and hum through my blood. The ceremonial drum still beats in place of my heart. A woman’s spirit occupies this girl’s body with my barely budding breasts and baby-fat cheeks. I’m still only thirteen years old, but in the four days of my Sunrise Dance, the rite of passage that carried me from girl to woman, it feels like I’ve lived a lifetime.

I am not the same.

“How ya doing, kiddo?” my father asks as he and my mother walk into my bedroom. Seeing them together has been a rare occurrence lately. Actually, seeing them together has been rare for a long time.

“I’m fine.” I divide my smile between them into equal portions, like I do with holidays and my affection. Split right down the middle. “Tired.”

Mama sits on the bed and pushes my hair back with long, graceful fingers.

“The last few days have been hard for you,” she says, offering a rueful smile. “Not to mention the last year.”

We started planning the Sunrise Dance months ago. With enough food to feed everyone involved for days, gifts, getting the traditional dress made, and paying the medicine man and the ceremonial dancers, it’s a long process that is not only exhausting but expensive.

“I wouldn’t change a thing,” I reply. My knees ache from the kneeling, from dancing on my knees and on my feet. I danced and I sang for hours, led through the words by the medicine man. And the running. I’ve never run so much in my life, but when I ran in the four directions, I gathered the elements—earth, wind, fire, and air—to myself. I’ve absorbed them. They’re part of me and will guide me the rest of my days.

“I know you’re exhausted,” Mama says. “But are you up to seeing a few people? They’ve walked with you the last four days and are all so proud.”

Despite the fatigue, I smile. My friends and family rallied around me, not just during the last four days but for the months leading up to my Sunrise Dance. It is a huge deal, not only for me but for the entire community.

“Sure.” I run my hands over the supple buckskin of my ceremonial dress and moccasins. “Do I have time for a quick shower?”

The medicine man dusted my face with cattail pollen as part of the blessing near the end of the ceremony. Even though it was rinsed away, I still feel the traces of it and the last four days on my skin and in my hair.

“Of course,” my father says. There’s pride in his gray eyes. Though not Apache, he was involved with the ceremony and observed every step. As a professor of Native American Studies at Arizona State, though the traditions don’t belong to him, he understands and deeply respects them.

“Everyone’s eating out front and enjoying themselves,” Mama says. “They’ll keep while you get clean.”

My parents exchange a quick look, seeming to hesitate together. It catches my attention because they’re rarely in sync despite having once been passionately in love. My father had been a student studying reservation life. My mom lived on the rez in the same modest house we’re in right now. It was fireworks for a while. Long enough to make me.

Maybe the fireworks sputtered. Maybe my parents were too different, my mother wanting to remain on the reservation, connected to her tribe and this community. My father, a rising star in the department when he completed his doctorate, needed to be at the university. They drifted so far apart they broke. Now, I’m their only connection. Things haven’t been exactly contentious between them, but they have disagreed a lot lately, mostly about me.

“Today was a landmark for you,” Mama says carefully, again sharing that quick look with my father as if she needs reassurance. “You’re a woman now. The spirit of Changing Woman has made you strong.”

I nod. I’ve never been that religious. My mother doesn’t practice all the traditions, but today I did feel a surge of strength during the ceremony. Somehow I actually believe the spirit of the first woman empowered me. I still feel that zing along my nerves I couldn’t shake even after the ceremony ended.

“As you know,” my father takes up where my mother left off, “we’ve been discussing where you should attend school next year.”

“You know I love having you here on the rez and in our school,” Mama says. “Learning our traditions.”

“And you know that I want you to take advantage of every opportunity available to you,” Dad adds, his face schooled into a neutral expression. “Even if some of those take you beyond the reservation, like the private school near my house that I believe would stretch you—even better, prepare you for college and a scholarship.”

“She can go to college free based on federal funding for the tribes,” Mama reminds him. “She doesn’t need the private school for that.”

“Yes, but statistically only about 20 percent of Native students finish the first year of college,” Dad says, “Why not prepare Lennix for what lies beyond the reservation while still keeping her connected to her community? Can’t she be prepared for both worlds?”

It sounds reasonable.

And scary.

I’ve only ever attended the schools on our reservation. As empowered as I feel with Changing Woman’s strength, the prospect of something new still intimi

dates me. This conversation has been my life in many ways. Loved by them both and splitting my life between their two homes.

“There’s a lot to consider,” Mama says, a little impatience creeping into her low voice. “But the point is, we think you should make the decision.”

I look from my mother, who is an only slightly older version of me, to my father, whom I look nothing like except for my gray eyes. I carry them both in my heart, though, and I think my greatest fear is actually hurting one of them with my choices.

“We can discuss it more when I get back,” Mama says, running a soothing hand down my back. “I’m off to Seattle tomorrow. There’s a protest for that new oil pipeline they’re proposing. They’re so shortsighted. Money today won’t mean much when the water is polluted and the land is beyond repair.”

“So true,” Dad mutters. They are united in their love for me and, though he isn’t Native, their passion for tribal issues. “Just be careful.”

Some of the old affection I glimpsed between them when I was younger gathers in her eyes. “I’m always careful, Rand. You know that, but there is so much to do and no time to waste. Injustice doesn’t rest, and neither will I.”

I wish she would rest sometimes. There’s always a cause, a protest, a pipeline. Something that takes her away. I can’t complain, though. She’s the person I admire most in the world, and she wouldn’t be who she is without that passion for others.

“We’ll talk more about this when I get back from Seattle,” Mama says. “How’s that sound?”

I look between them and nod, a knot of dismay forming in my belly at the thought of displeasing one of them.

They leave me to shower and change, and when I go downstairs, my friends, family, and community overflow from our small living room. The joy on their faces is worth all I’ve endured the last four days. The Sunrise Dance is a celebration we were denied for years when the government outlawed it. We had to practice it and so many of our traditions in secret. We’ll never take it for granted again, the privilege of celebrating in the open. We owe it to ourselves, but it’s also an homage to all those who came before us. It’s a thread that ties us to them.

Mena Robinson, Mama’s best friend, stood as godmother to me during the ceremony, a role that strengthens our bond even more than before. She and Mama could be sisters in appearance but also in closeness.

“I’m so proud of you,” Mena whispers.

“Thank you for everything,” I tell her, tears in my eyes. For some reason, in her arms, surr

ounded by everyone who bore witness to my transition from girl to woman, the emotion of the last four days cascades over me.

“Mena, Lennix,” Mama calls, glowing and aiming her camera at us. “Smile!”

I grimace, so tired of pictures and of being the center of attention, but Mama takes many more photos. And she hovers, touching my hair, hugging me, forcing me to eat. Her love and pride wrap around me, almost smother me. By the end of the evening, I want to be in my bed and alone.

I should have made Mama take a dozen more pictures. I should have given her a thousand kisses. I should have slept at her feet.

I would have if I’d known I’d never see her again.

“A riot is the language of the unheard.”

—Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

 

Chapter 1

CHAPTER 1MAXIM

FOUR YEARS LATER

I am my father’s son.

I’m the spitting image of Warren Cade. Dark, russet-streaked hair with a slight wave just like his. Identical light-green eyes. Same wide stretch of back and shoulders. Toe to toe, nose to nose, we both stand six feet, three and a quarter inches. Notwithstanding the striking physical similarities, beneath our skin, inside our bones—we’re the same. Considering my father is one of the most ruthless sons of a bitch you’ll ever meet, that should scare me.

“Why am I here, Dad?” I sink into a buttery-leather seat on his company’s private jet. “What was so important you had to pull me off campus into this mile-high meeting?”

He glances up from the file on the table in front of him. “Would it kill you to spend a little time with your old man?”

It could kill us both if the last few years are any indication of how we’ll get along on this trip. Our clashes are epic. As a kid, I was my father’s shadow. “Hero worship” would be a mild term for the way I viewed him. We were inseparable, but as I got older and formed my own opinions, found my own will, the chasm between us grew wider. My father rules our family with the same iron fist with which he runs Cade Energy, the family business. When he tries to rule me…it doesn’t go as well.

“It’s an awkward time,” I reply with a shrug. “I’m finishing my thesis and—”

“Why you even wasted your time with that master’s program, I’ll never know.”

I bite back any reply to defend my decision. It made sense when I double majored in business and energy resources engineering for undergrad. That fell in line with his plan for me. Going on to pursue my master’s at Berkeley made no sense. According to his timetable, I should have been leading a division in our company by now.

“Let’s not go there,” I finally say, running an agitated hand through my hair, overlong and almost to my shoulders.

“You need a haircut,” Dad says abruptly, shifting his attention back to his file. “Like I was saying, you’ll be done with graduate school soon. Time to get back on track.”

“I am on track.” I clear my throat and don’t meet his eyes. “And I’m not sure what I’ll do next.”

A lie. I know exactly what I’ll do next. A PhD in climate science, but I’m in no mood to fight. I haven’t seen him in a long time. I’d rather talk about the Cowboys’ playoff hopes. The Longhorns. His golf swing. Anything other than my career—than our opposing views on what I should do.

Dad’s eyes snap up and narrow on my face. “What the hell do you mean you aren’t sure what you’ll do next? Now that Owen’s in the Senate, we need you running our West Coast office, Maxim. You know that.”

The note of pride in his voice when he mentions my older brother Owen grates a little. Pride hasn’t been in his voice for me in a long time. Disapproval. Disgust. Frustration. That’s all I’ve gotten since I told him I’d be going to Berkeley for my master’s instead of starting at Cade Energy.

“Dad, I don’t know that I’m…” I hesitate. The next words could set off a bomb I’m not sure we should detonate this high in the air. “Maybe I’m not the right fit for the job.”

“Not the right fit?” He flips the file closed and glares at me. “You’re a Cade. You were literally born for the job.”

“Let’s talk about this later.”

“No. Now. I want to know why the company four generations of Cades spent building from the ground isn’t good enough for you.”

“I didn’t say that. I’m just not sure I’m the best person to run a company producing oil and gas. I question the sustainability of fossil fuels as this country’s primary energy source. I believe we should be aggressively transitioning to clean energy—solar, wind, electric.”

Shocked silence follows my words that are essentially a rebel yell to one of America’s most powerful oil barons.

“What the ever-loving fuck are you talking about, boy?” he bellows, his voice bouncing off the walls, trapped in the luxurious cabin. “You’ll finish that damn useless master’s degree and start in our California office as soon as possible. I got no time for this wind and air and whatever tree-hugger horseshit nonsense they’ve been teaching you at Berkeley.”

“Nonsense is believing this planet will run forever on poison. If you’d just listen to my ideas about transitioning to clean energy—”

“Oil was clean enough when it was paying for your fancy education, huh? And your trips and cars and clothes. It wasn’t poison then, was it?”

“I wouldn’t expect you to notice, but I paid my own tuition,” I correct him softly.

Before he can verbally express the disdain on his face, a uniformed attendant peers through the curtain.

“We’re here, Mr. Cade,” she says.

When my father stands, his knee knocks the table. The file falls, spilling a flurry of papers onto the thick-pile carpet. I bend to retrieve them, stuffing a few back into the folder. Certain words blare from the top page.

Pipeline. Army Corps of Engineers. Ancestral burial grounds. Water rights. Environmental impact.

“Dad.” I force myself to look up from the page long enough to catch and hold his gaze. “Where are we, and what are we doing here?”

He doesn’t answer for a moment but extends his hand until I reluctantly give him the file.

“We’re in Arizona.” He grabs his suit jacket from a hook on the wall and slips it on. He’s still fit and trim, and that suit costs enough to take ten years off any man. “Laying a new gas pipeline, and let’s just say the, uh, natives are getting restless.” He smirks at his own joke but sobers wh

en he sees I’m not laughing.

“That memo referenced the Apache,” I say with a frown.

“Until you man up and actually run something in Cade Energy, that memo’s none of your damn business, but that’s why I’m here. If they think their little protest will stop my pipeline, they can think again.”

“We’re laying a pipeline that disturbs sacred burial grounds?” Outrage and anger almost choke me. Shame, too, that my name is attached to something so heinous. “Will this endanger their water supply?”

“We’re laying a natural gas pipeline that will transport half a million barrels a day and create thousands of jobs.”

“So no thought for the environmental impact?”

“What about the economic impact?” he counters harshly. “If you did something other than sit at a computer all day studying, you’d know what it’s like to be responsible for thousands of families. Thousands of livelihoods. To have shareholders demanding a profit. And they care even less about some river on a reservation than I do. It’s my job, Maxim.”

“Your job should also be ensuring that pipeline doesn’t contaminate other people’s water.”

“I don’t have time to argue with you.” He heads for the exit. “You can stay here while I handle this or get off for all I care. The worksite’s near a reservation, and according to our foreman, those Indian women got some of the best pu—”

“Stop.” I swallow my disgust and follow him down the short flight of steps lowered from the plane. “I don’t want to know what your foreman thinks about women.”

“Like you don’t get your dick wet,” he says, his voice caustic.

“Oh, I love women. Too much to disrespect them.”

“I should have known better than to send you to Berkeley,” Dad mutters, climbing into the back seat of the black Escalade that’s waiting for us. “Damn sissy school’s made you soft.”

“You didn’t send me anywhere.” I look out the window, watching the desert landscape rushing past as we leave the airfield. “And having actual principles isn’t the same as being soft.”

“You know what your problem is, Maxim?”

“I’m sure you’ll tell me.”

“You aren’t ruthless enough. You think your brother won that Senate seat worrying about some reservation water supply or burial ground?” Before I can reply, he charges on. “Damn right he didn’t. Politics requires balls of steel, and Owen’s got ’em.”

“Glad you’re pleased with one of us,” I say through tight lips.

“If you’re not a ‘fit’ for the family business and your delicate constitution isn’t suited to politics, what do you plan to do?”

He’s not ready to hear what I plan to do, and I’m not sure I want to tell him. I’ll let my actions

 speak for themselves. For me.

“How’s Mom?” I ask, shamelessly shifting conversational gears because this line of discussion is going nowhere.

His face softens, the hard planes yielding to what is maybe his one redeeming quality. He adores my mother. It may be the only undefiled thing left about him.

“She’s good.” He clears his throat and studies the passing landscape as I did, retreating to the scene beyond the window. “Misses you.”

“I’ll make sure to see her soon.”

“It hurt her when you didn’t come home for the holidays.”

“As much as seeing you and me at each other’s throats would have hurt her?”

I regret the words immediately. So much for redirecting our conversation. No matter what I do, it always comes back to this—to me not measuring up, me not pleasing my father, me failing. Him disappointed. Him leveraging money to twist my arm and trying to bend me to his will.

Well, I won’t be bent. If he thinks I’m not ruthless, he hasn’t been paying attention. Head-to-head, I’d bury my brother. Owen gobbled up every crumb our father dropped, leading him down the prescribed path. Balls of steel? Fuck that. My father practically bought Owen that seat in the Senate. If I want to make my own way, I’ll have to pay my own way.

And that’s fine with me.

“God, Maxim,” my father says, his voice low and loaded with frustration. “I thought this trip might…” He shakes his head, letting whatever he hoped for trail off with the unspoken words. “What happened to you? What happened to us, son? We used to hunt together.” He chuckles and flashes me a reminiscent grin. “Hell, you’re a crack shot. You can shoot the wings off a flea. And fly-fishing in Big Horn River.”

We cooked our haul over an open fire that night. I silently complete the memory, still tasting the fish and the laughter, the camaraderie that came so easily then.

“And remember that week we broke in Thunder?” he asks.

“That horse was half Arabian, half demon,” I recall with a short bark of laughter.

“He was no match for us, though. Between you and me, we broke him in.”

An image sears my mind. Thunder, with rolling eyes and a bucking back, his neighing a battle cry. We took turns, Dad and I, that week on our Montana ranch, riding the horse, bridling him, training and taming him until my father could lead him around a fenced circle by a rope, the horse’s spirit as subdued as his light trot.

Docile. Broken.

And that’s how my father wants me. Trotting obediently, my neck draped with the reins of his power.

“That horse was no match for the two of us. We can do anything together,” Dad continues. “Come run Cade Energy with me, Max.”

I almost fell for it. When his money doesn’t work, he employs his only other weapon: my love for him. He dangles his affection, his approval before me like ripe, low-hanging fruit. Just bite. A tempting trade. My will for his. Do what he says. Be who he wants and he’ll love me that way again. But I’ve seen too much—changed too much. Our eyes, hair, bones, and very natures may be the same, but I’ve spent years venturing beyond the safety of my father’s borders, and it has fleshed me out. It’s made a man of me, and the man I want to be is not my father.

I don’t respond but keep my gaze fixed through the tinted glass. I’m still formulating a response that won’t cause a back-seat battle when we pull up to the construction site.

A few hundred people crowd the plot of desert. Bulldozers and trucks loiter, impotent and silent, each with a dark-haired protester anchored to it. Their arms hook around the necks of the bulldozers, a cast plastering both arms in an unbroken loop. Some are chained to the trucks, impeding any forward movement. Protesters raise signs and link arms to form a line of bodies around the site. Media trucks topped with satellite dishes dot the scene, and well-groomed reporters stand nearby armed with their microphones. Police officers ring the area, sober sentinels with expressionless faces. I can’t tell if they’re here to protect or threaten. I guess it depends whose side you’re on.

“Dammit to hell,” my father mutters. “I need those trucks moving.”

A vaguely familiar man approaches the Escalade, irritation and anxiety twisting his expression. He stands outside the door, obviously waiting for my father to get out. Dad rolls the window down halfway, not bothering to so much as lean forward. Anger strikes out on the man’s face like a snake’s forked tongue before he gains control of it and steps closer to the window, his features falsely placid. He looks deferential for a man who barely deigns to acknowledge him.

“Mr. Cade,” he says, leaning close enough to the window to be heard.

“Beaumont,” Dad responds, his use of the man’s name jogging my memory. He’s a division leader I met at one of the company picnics held at our Dallas compound. “You said you had this situation under control. I’d hate to see what you consider a disaster. ...