The King's Lost Princess

Chapter 1 – The King of Shadows

New York

The first hit shook the chain.

The second made the ceiling vibrate.

By the fiftieth, the punching bag sounded like it was begging for mercy.

Inside the private gym of a Manhattan mansion that most of the world had only seen in rumors and drone shots, Kendrick Lee Peterson threw another punch that would’ve snapped bone if it had been human. His bare feet were planted firmly on the smooth black floor, his body moving with the lethal grace of someone who knew exactly how much damage he could cause—and was restraining himself anyway.

Sunlight poured in through the floor-to-ceiling windows, spilling across the polished equipment and the wall-length mirror that reflected every inch of his sweat-soaked, sculpted frame. His shoulders bunched, muscles flexing, the cords in his neck standing out as his knuckles cracked against leather again and again.

He’d been at this for over an hour.

Kendrick didn’t believe in wasted movements or wasted time.

If he was still punching, it meant his anger hadn’t run out yet.

And that was never a good sign for the person who caused it.

The door at the far end eased open with a soft hydraulic hiss.

Samson Moore stopped the moment he stepped in.

He didn’t call out immediately. Years spent at Kendrick’s side had taught him to read the air before he spoke. Right now, the air in the gym felt… wrong. Too thick. As if every particle in the room had soaked up the temper radiating off the man in the center.

Kendrick’s fists continued to slam into the bag in a vicious rhythm.

Thud. Thud. Thud.

Not fast, not frantic—controlled. Every punch was calculated, landing in almost the exact same spot, driving the leather deeper, forcing the chain to scream under the strain.

Sam swallowed.

He’d seen Kendrick ruthless. He’d seen him cold. He’d watched him hand competitors their own ruin while sipping coffee like nothing mattered.

But this version—the one trying not to explode—always made his spine go tight.

“Kendrick,” Sam said finally, voice low.

No response. The bag jerked violently.

“Kendrick,” he tried again, stepping closer. “He’s still alive.”

The punches stopped.

Silence snapped into place, sharp and sudden.

Then, with one last shove of his palm, Kendrick let the punching bag swing away from him. It thudded back against the chain, spun—and the other side became visible.

A man was tied there.

His head lolled, chin caked in blood. His shirt was torn, ribs badly bruised, face swollen. Rope bit into his wrists where they were bound behind the bag. Whoever he’d been before he met Kendrick, he was now just another cautionary tale.

Sam couldn’t stop the small gasp that escaped him. “s**t…”

Two bodyguards who had been standing just outside the door burst in on cue, as if they’d been waiting for Sam’s signal. They didn’t meet Kendrick’s eyes. No one did, not when he was like this.

“Take him to the private wing of the hospital,” Sam ordered quietly. “Lock ward. Twenty-four-hour security. No visitors.”

“Yes, sir.”

They lifted the unconscious man carefully and left, boots thudding against the floor. The door sealed shut. The sound of the chain creaking above the now-empty hook echoed in the huge room.

Only when they were alone did Sam turn back to his friend.

Kendrick was breathing hard, but not from exhaustion. His chest rose and fell slowly, like he was forcing his body to calm down because if he didn’t, he’d break something else.

Or someone else.

Sweat glistened on his skin, tracing a line down his temple, sliding along his jaw, disappearing at the base of his throat. His dark hair was damp, messy, strands sticking to his forehead. Clothes would have made him look dangerous; bare-chested like this, with his torso carved and defined and gleaming, he looked inhuman.

Not a businessman.

A weapon.

Sam walked toward him, heading to the small cabinet near the mirrored wall. He pulled out a white first-aid kit and flipped it open on the counter.

“You’re bleeding,” he said, voice steady.

“It’s not my blood that matters today,” Kendrick replied.

His voice wasn’t raised. It didn’t need to be. There was something far more chilling in the controlled levelness of it.

Sam grabbed disinfectant and clean gauze. “How many times have I told you we pay people for this kind of work?”

“They don’t do it right,” Kendrick said flatly.

Sam snorted. “You mean they don’t hit hard enough.”

Kendrick didn’t deny it.

He stepped over to the counter, picked up a bottle of water with his left hand, and twisted off the cap. The plastic crinkled under his grip. He drank half in a few swallows, then tipped the rest over his head.

The water ran over his hair, down his face, along his neck and chest. Droplets clung to his lashes. He shut his eyes for a heartbeat longer than necessary, as if maybe, just maybe, the water could cool something burning much deeper than his skin.

It never did.

“Give me your hand,” Sam ordered.

“It’s fine.”

“Kendrick.” Sam’s tone shifted, just slightly. There were very few people in the world who dared to use his full name instead of “Mr. Peterson” or “Sir.” Sam was one of them. “Hand.”

Kendrick looked at him then. For a second, Sam met those eyes and saw the full storm inside them, the barely leashed violence and the older, quieter hurt that had built the man standing in front of him.

Then Kendrick slowly lifted his right hand.

The knuckles were split, skin scraped down to raw flesh in a few places. Blood streaked his fingers, already drying dark against warm gold-brown skin.

Sam took it gently, more gently than anyone would expect in a house like this, and began to clean it.

“Do you want to tell me what he did?” Sam asked.

“He gambled with something that wasn’t his,” Kendrick said.

“Money?” Sam asked, though he already knew that wasn’t enough to trigger this much fury.

Kendrick’s jaw tightened. “The foundation’s food supply. One of the orphanages.”

Sam’s head snapped up. “What?”

“Cheap stock. Near expiry,” Kendrick went on, gaze fixed somewhere over Sam’s shoulder, as if he were replaying the details. “Thirty kids in the hospital. Vomiting. Fever. Organ strain in three cases.”

Sam’s stomach dropped. “s**t,” he whispered.

A memory flashed behind his eyes—so vivid it almost layered itself over the present.

Small metal dishes on stained floors.

Watery food that stank.

Children shivering in corners because they’d eaten or because they hadn’t.

Sam shook it off. The past could drown a man if he let it.

“The doctors?” he asked.

“Doing what they can,” Kendrick said. “I walked the entire ward. I know every name. Every bed.”

Of course he did.

Sam pressed the gauze a bit more firmly than needed.

“You went personally?”

Kendrick didn’t answer.

He didn’t have to.

Sam could picture it. The nurses straightened under his gaze. The parents and caretakers fall silent in the hallway. A legend in a black suit walking through rows of children hooked to IVs, his presence somehow making the chaos quieter and heavier at once.

“You could’ve killed him,” Sam said quietly.

Kendrick’s lips curled into something that wasn’t quite a smile. “He’s not dead yet.”

Sam finished wrapping the last knuckle and secured the bandage. He didn’t ask what “yet” meant. He didn’t need the details. Kendrick’s version of justice wasn’t the court’s version—especially not when it came to the foundation.

Most billionaires donated to charity because it was good PR.

Kendrick used his money to build a war.

A war against the kind of hell they’d both come from.

Sam closed the first-aid box. “The kids are stable,” he said, as if saying it aloud might convince the world to keep it that way. “Our hospitals are the best.”

“They’d better be,” Kendrick muttered.

There was a beat of silence, heavy but not uncomfortable.

Sam leaned back against the counter and watched his friend. Kendrick reached for a fresh towel hanging on the rack and rubbed it over his face, then the back of his neck, the motion brisk and controlled. He moved like a man who had no time to waste on softness, even in the way he dried his hair.

“You know they keep asking about you, right?” Sam said casually. “The kids.”

Kendrick paused.

Sam saw it—the almost imperceptible hesitation before the towel moved again.

“They don’t need to see me,” Kendrick said.

“They want to see you.”

“That’s different,” he replied. “And dangerous.”

Sam frowned. “Dangerous? You claimed half the world before you were thirty. What’s dangerous about a few kids wanting to show you their school drawings?”

Kendrick dropped the towel on the bench, his expression shuttering. “They get attached. They start seeing me as something I’m not.”

“What’s that?” Sam challenged. “Safe?”

Kendrick’s gaze hardened. “Permanent.”

The word hung between them.

Sam exhaled slowly. He knew better than to push too far when old ghosts were walking around the room. Kendrick’s past wasn’t a wound, exactly. Wounds healed. It was more like a scar burned into bone.

Still, childhood had a way of appearing whether you wanted it to or not.

“Do you remember the alley?” Sam asked quietly.

“No.” The answer was immediate.

“Liar.”

Kendrick shot him a look.

Sam smiled sadly. “I remember it perfectly.”

He’d been twelve and starving, clothes hanging off his too-thin frame, fingers numb from the cold. The other kids at the orphanage were just as hungry, but at least they didn’t know any better. Sam did. He remembered a time before he’d been dumped like trash on those concrete steps.

He’d gone out that day with a small pouch of crumpled cash—the money he’d collected from begging at traffic lights and outside restaurants. The deal was simple: bring it back to the caretaker, keep your teeth. Don’t bring enough, lose something.

He turned into the alley because it was a shortcut.

He should never have taken it.

Three older boys followed him in, their footsteps echoing off the brick walls. They blocked his path, laughing in that mean way that made the back of his neck prickle.

“Nice pouch, kid,” the tallest one had said, voice slick with greed.

They took the money, of course. But they didn’t leave. That wasn’t how these things went. Sam had clutched at the pouch, tried to bite, tried to fight, even though he was already shaking. He’d been thrown against a pile of trash, bones aching, head ringing from the hits.

He’d coughed blood and thought, This is it. This is how I go. Nobody will know. Nobody will care.

Then there had been a sound.

A long, violent wail of a siren, bouncing off the alley walls. Not from inside the alley—from just beyond the corner. The color drained from the thugs’ faces.

“Cops!” one spat, and they scattered like rats, bolting toward the opposite end.

Sam had been too stunned to move.

The siren had cut off abruptly.

A few seconds later, a boy about his age walked into view, holding a battered metal megaphone in one hand.

“You’re a terrible actor,” the boy had said, tilting his head. “Next time, try not to spit blood right before they run.”

Sam remembered blinking at him, too stupidly grateful to speak.

“You alive?” the boy had asked.

Sam had tried to nod. He wasn’t sure he’d managed it.

“Good.” The boy had paused. “You want to keep living?”

That had been the first time Sam heard the voice that would later order CEOs around like pawns.

He’d woken up in a hospital bed with clean sheets and a bandage on his head. The same boy sat in a chair beside him, reading something on a tablet.

“You’re awake,” the boy had said. “Here, drink.” He’d handed him a glass of warm water like they’d known each other forever.

“Who… who are you?” Sam had croaked.

“Kendrick Lee Peterson,” the boy had replied. “You?”

“Samson. Samson Moore.”

Kendrick had studied him for a long moment, eyes too sharp for a kid.

“You don’t have anywhere better to go, do you?”

Sam had swallowed. “No.”

“Then come with me.” Kendrick had stood. “I’m going to change things. You can help, if you want.”

“You’re joking,” Sam had whispered.

Kendrick had offered his hand. “I never joke about business. Or vengeance.”

Sam hadn’t known then what that really meant.

He did now.

Sam blinked himself back to the present as Kendrick walked away from the gym counter and grabbed his T-shirt from the bench.

“You pulled me out of hell that day,” Sam said, more to himself than to Kendrick. “Now you own the world. And you still think you’re the dangerous part.”

“I am,” Kendrick replied simply, tugging the shirt over his head. “Breakfast?”

The abrupt topic change made Sam snort. “Sure. Why not ruin some eggs while we’re at it?”

The dining room was as ridiculous as everything else in the mansion—long table, glittering crystal chandelier, floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the city. The table was already set when they arrived, a spread of food arranged like a hotel buffet: different breads, eggs, fruits, pancakes, cheeses, smoked salmon, three types of juice.

The chefs never really knew what Kendrick liked, because he didn’t have the kind of “favorites” normal people did. So they made everything.

He took a seat at the head of the table. Sam sat to his right, scrolling through his phone.

The staff stepped back against the walls automatically, heads slightly lowered. Kendrick glanced once at the excess of dishes, then started serving himself in small, efficient portions—one egg, a slice of toast, a handful of berries. Nothing indulgent.

“Eat,” he told Sam.

“Yes, Dad,” Sam muttered, pulling a plate closer.

They’d almost finished their first few bites when Sam cleared his throat.

“So,” he said lightly, “you’re a superstar again.”

Kendrick didn’t look up from his plate. “Be specific.”

Sam turned the phone screen toward him. A news alert flashed with his photo—sharp jaw, ice-blue eyes, suit that fit like sin.

“‘For the fifth consecutive year, Kendrick Lee Peterson has been voted World’s No.1 Businessman,’” Sam read dramatically. “Congratulations, you terrifying bastard.”

Kendrick didn’t even blink. “They could at least be original with the title.”

“You could at least show up to accept it,” Sam shot back. “There’s a party tonight. Manhattan Grand. World leaders, CEOs, royals, power brokers. The usual shiny crowd.”

“No,” Kendrick said instantly.

Sam expected that. “Leonardo Wilson will be there.”

That made Kendrick pause.

He set his fork down carefully. “Are you sure?”

“Confirmed list,” Sam said, tapping his phone. “He’s the guest of honor. European delegation.”

Leonardo Wilson. The name had weight. The unofficial king of European power circles. He ran companies, yes—but more importantly, he ran influence. Governments listened when he spoke. Old money families deferred when he walked into a room.

Kendrick had been targeting Europe for the last two years. Not publicly—the press had no clue—but every strategic move had been leading him there. There was only one man whose support could turn that expansion from ambitious to inevitable.

“Book the presidential suite at the Grand,” Kendrick said. “And the rooftop conference room for a private meeting after the party.”

Sam smirked. “I’ll take that as a yes, you’re attending.”

“We’re not wasting this opportunity,” Kendrick replied. “If he’s coming to my city, he’s not leaving without a conversation.”

Sam nodded. “Already on it. And the award ceremony?”

Kendrick took another sip of his tea. “If they insist on putting my name on a plaque, they can at least feed me while doing it.”

Sam grinned. “I’ll let them know you’re gracing them with your presence then.”

Kendrick’s gaze flicked up, sharp. “Don’t oversell it.”

“With your face?” Sam scoffed. “Impossible.”

After breakfast, they crossed the marble foyer toward the rooftop elevator. Outside, beyond the reinforced glass doors, Kendrick’s chopper was already visible—a matte black machine with sleek blades slicing slow circles through the air.

“Security detail’s doubled since last quarter,” Sam commented, noticing the additional guards stationed at the perimeter.

“We’ve made more enemies since last quarter,” Kendrick replied simply.

They stepped into the elevator. The doors glided shut. The quiet hum of ascent pressed lightly on their ears.

“Agenda for the day?” Kendrick asked.

“Board meeting at ten,” Sam said, checking his tablet. “Global quarterly briefing at eleven. Call with the Tokyo team at twelve-thirty. Silent investor lunch at one. Legal wants to review the mining acquisition—because apparently buying half a mountain upsets people—at three. And tonight, Grand Hotel.”

“And the kids?” Kendrick asked, almost as an afterthought.

“Hospital reports at two,” Sam answered. “The doctor will send the latest tests to your private email. I’ll print summaries.”

Kendrick gave a short nod.

The elevator opened onto the helipad. The rotor noise intensified, wind whipping across the roof, tugging at their clothes. Several guards stood in precise formation, scanning the surrounding buildings.

As they approached, one of the newer guards straightened a little too quickly and almost tripped on his own boots. His hand twitched like he wasn’t sure whether to salute or bow.

“Relax,” Sam murmured as they passed. “He doesn’t eat staff. Only executives.”

Kendrick boarded the chopper and buckled in. The pilot glanced back. “Destination, sir?”

“Headquarters,” Kendrick said. “Then set tonight’s route to the Grand once we’re done.”

“Yes, Mr. Peterson.”

The helicopter lifted off, Manhattan shrinking beneath them. From this height, the city looked almost tame. Tiny. Manageable. Like a model set, someone could rearrange if they had enough power.

Kendrick did.

Skyscrapers reflected the morning light in shards of silver and blue. Cars crawled like insects along narrow streets. The river sparkled in the distance.

It should have made him feel invincible.

Today, it didn’t.

Sam noticed the small line that had appeared between his brows, the way he was staring at the horizon instead of at his tablet.

“You’re quiet,” Sam said.

“I’m thinking,” Kendrick replied.

“About poisoned contracts and i***t suppliers who like gambling with kids’ lives?” Sam guessed.

“About patterns,” Kendrick said.

Sam frowned. “Patterns?”

“Security flagged two failed breaches into the foundation’s main system last week,” Kendrick said. “Then a contract slips through with loopholes big enough to bury a city in. Then thirty kids end up in our hospital. That’s not a coincidence.”

“You think someone’s targeting the foundation?” Sam asked.

“Yes,” Kendrick said simply.

“Any suspects?”

“Anyone who thinks I care more about money than about them.” A faint, cold smile ghosted over his lips. “Which is unfortunate for them.”

Sam felt that familiar flicker of both pride and unease. He’d seen Kendrick take apart corporations for less. If someone had decided to turn the foundation into a weapon against him…

They had no idea the war they’d just started.

The helicopter sliced through the sky, carrying them toward the tall glass tower that housed the heart of the Peterson empire.

Kendrick watched the tall lines of his headquarters come into view, its mirrored facade reflecting the city like a challenge.

He had built this.

From nothing.

From hunger and rage and a sheer refusal to die.

He had clawed his way to the top of a world that never wanted him in the first place.

And today, with a poisoned contract, a traitor, a global award he didn’t care about, and a European kingmaker waiting at a party he didn’t want to attend—it felt like the universe was aligning pieces on a board he couldn’t fully see yet.

He hated not seeing the whole board.

“Whatever this is,” Kendrick murmured, more to himself than to Sam, “it started before last night.”

Sam glanced at him. “You think it’s tied to the European expansion?”

“Maybe,” Kendrick said. “Or maybe we’ve outgrown the enemies we’re used to. Big enough game attracts bigger hunters.”

Sam gave a small, humorless laugh. “Then let them hunt.”

Kendrick’s eyes hardened, breathing evening out. The anger from the gym hadn’t vanished; it had just changed form—concentrated into something sharper.

“Let them try,” he corrected.

The chopper began its descent toward the rooftop of Peterson Global.

He had meetings, deals, and a conquest to prepare for.

He had children in hospital beds who would be visited again before the week was over.

He had a man named Leonardo Wilson to corner tonight.

What he didn’t know—what he couldn’t know yet—was that somewhere far from New York, in a quiet place hidden from the world, a girl with dark hair and a secret bloodline was about to have her entire life ripped away.

And that when she fell—bleeding, terrified, lost—she would crash directly into his.

The world knew him as the king of business.

She would know him as something else.

The only person standing between her…and the darkness hunting her.

Kendrick stepped out of the helicopter as it landed, a line of executives already waiting to greet him with bowed heads and prepared reports.

He didn’t slow his stride as he passed them.

The king of shadows walked into his tower, unaware that his carefully controlled empire was about to collide with a destiny he never asked for.

And somewhere, fate smiled.