Kingdom Duet
- its.brittanyb
- 11 minutes ago
- 11 min read
"I’m not protecting you because you’re a woman. I’m protecting you because you’re my woman.”
REVIEW
Would I read this again? Yes No Maybe
Spice Level Legend How spicy is this book?
Tropes | Trigger Warnings |
Enemies to lovers, Age gap, Dark romance, Forbidden romance, Forced proximity, "Touch her and die" | Violence, Murder, Death of a loved one, Mental illness, Mentions of rape, Serial killer |
SUMMARY
These are books 8 and 9 in the Rina Kent Universe. Most of these books can be read as standalone.
Jonathan King is an intimidating man. He is the owner of King Enterprises which basically runs the world. When he was 22, his mom, Anna, died. At the end of the funeral, Lord Sterling came (who had been harassing his dad and mom because his mom chose his dad over him) and taunted Jonathan, James (his brother, Levi’s dad), and their father, Gregory. Gregory ended up having a massive heart attack and died right there. Jonathan was already planning on ruining Sterlings life for the harassment before his mom died but now, he’s like game on motherfucker.
Jonathan succeeded. He grew King Enterprises, would take over smaller companies (either willingly or by force) and push out their current owners. He became one of the most powerful men in the UK. Another way he decided to ruin Sterling was to marry his daughter, Alicia. Alicia hated her dad, blamed her dad for her mom’s death, and was A-OK with helping Jonathan destroy him.
But getting his revenge on Sterling isn’t the only reason Johnny Boy married Alicia. Jonathan was best friends with Ethan Steel. At first, it was always a friendly rivalry between the two. They remained friends while trying to be the best. But as they each took control of their families' companies, the rivalry got worse. Jonathan and Ethan were always attracted to the same women, and apparently even shared them sometimes. One of the competitions was for each of them to find a mentally unstable woman, because apparently they are the most fun, and marry them. Ethan married Abigail, who ended up accidentally killing their son Eli, and then kidnapping children and torturing them. Jonathan married Alicia (two birds, one stone with that marriage). As their rivalry turned very unfriendly, Jonathan burnt down one of Ethan’s businesses. The arsonist was supposed to do it when no one was in there, but unfortunately, that didn’t happen. Ethan decided to retaliate by kidnapping Jonathan’s only son, Aiden. Abigail ended up torturing him, she shot Ethan, their daughter, Elsa, helped Aiden escape, only to be stuck in the same room with her mom. Angus, Ethan’s right hand man, got Ethan and Elsa out of the house, made sure Aiden got home, and then set the house on fire with Abigail inside (in his defense, she had shot herself so she wasn’t going to live anyways). While Aiden was missing, Alicia went searching for him, she ended up crashing her car into a tree and dying.
Switching gears, Alicia. She was the daughter of Lord Sterling and Lady Bridget Sterling. Bridget had an affair with Maxim Griffin from a different city and had a baby with him, Clarissa. Bridget dropped Clarissa off on Maxim’s doorstep and then, shortly afterwards, she killed herself. Maxim had been obsessed with Bridget and when she killed herself, he transferred that obsession to her look-a-like, Alicia. Alicia was 14 years older than Clarissa and when she found out about her, she made a point to try and get to know her even though Bridget had told her to stay away from Maxim and Clarissa. Clarissa and Alicia were close, Clarissa even came to Alicia and Jonathan’s wedding. She met Jonathan and thought he looked like a god.
The day Alicia died, Clarissa was 16. She had rode her bike out to the woods where Maxim had a hunting cabin. He always took her hunting and she thought he had gone off without her. They were super close, he was a good dad to her. She wanted to sneak up on him so she snuck through the woods. Her dad wasn’t hunting. He was dragging a dead girl out of his cabin towards a grave in the backyard. Clarissa was like WTF. She ran back through the woods and took off towards town on her bike. She was trying to call Alicia but she wasn’t answering. She had Jonathan’s number, which Alicia had said to use only for emergencies, and she’s like well this is an emergency. She called him and Jonathan, very bluntly, told her that Alicia had died, that day, in a car crash. Clarissa didn’t know what to do. She just discovered her dad is a murderer and now her only remaining family is dead. Clarissa might only be 16, but she knows she needs to do the right thing, so she heads to the police station to report a murder.
The trial was not fun for Clarissa. For some reason, the media decided she was an accomplice and not just an innocent, very alone, 16 year old child. The families of the victims were particularly cruel to her. After the trial, the government put her into Witness Protection, but she ended up running away before she turned 18. She had overheard the agents talking negatively towards her, about how they didn’t believe her either, and she just wanted out. She spent some years on the run and changed her name to Aurora Harper.
Fast forward to Aiden and Elsa’s wedding day. It’s been 11 years. She has had zero contact with Jonathan or Aiden even though AIden is her only living relative. But now, she’s at the wedding. She owns a business, H&H, that designs and makes fancy watches, but her accountant stole a bunch of money and ran off and now her business needs help. She isn’t there to ask Jonathan for help but to meet Ethan Steel. She somehow meets Angus and gets an invite to the wedding. At the wedding, Aiden comes up to her and is like “Mum?”. He has no idea that Clarissa existed so now seeing someone who looks a lot like his mom is throwing him. She’s like sorry, I don’t know what you’re talking about, and goes outside where she sees Ethan and Angus. Her and Ethan are talking when Jonathan comes up to her and he’s like well there you are. He remembers her and he has been looking for her for quite some time. He felt like he owed it to Alicia to keep an eye on her sister. Aurora leaves and hopes Jonathan just forgets that she exists.
She’s funny because he’s a King. He forgets nothing. He shows up at her business the next day and tells her and her partner (and BFF), Layla, that he now owns the majority of the stocks in the company since he bought out their silent partner. Which, obviously, is a good and a bad thing. Yes she wanted help but not from the Kings. Her and Jonathan make a deal that in 6 months, he will return the stocks to her and Layla. But in the meantime, she has to move in with him and basically be “his”. Jonathan doesn’t know why he wants her, yes she looks like his dead wife, but she acts nothing like her. And anyways, Jonathan loved his wife, because they got along and she birthed him Aiden, but they weren’t in love. Regardless, Aurora is like I have to do this for my company so whatever.
She moves in with him but has her own room on the second floor. On the third floor, where she is forbidden to go (so of course she goes there immediately), is his room and Alicia’s room. Aurora goes into Alicia’s room and sees that he has had his staff keep it maintained. It's clean, not dusty, but all of her stuff is still where she left it (like books on the bedside table). She starts looking at the books that Alicia had and notices that she had underlined certain words. She also wrote something about being someone’s muse. None of the circled or underlined words make any sense to Aurora and they kind of freaked her out because all of the books dealt with depression and death.
Jonathan doesn’t make a point to spend any time with or talk to Aurora. But every night, when they eat dinner, Jonathan makes her sit on his lap, and he finger bangs her while forcing her to eat her dinner. Now…that sounds weird I know. But - he noticed she was never eating so … he was just looking out for her? Aurora doesn’t know what to think because after she finishes (in more than one way), he just gets up and leaves the room.
To add to Aurora’s current problems, her dad, Maxim, is trying to get parole. His lawyer found her and keeps asking her for help. Why he thinks she will help since she is the one who turned him in is confusing to me.
Before she moved in with Jonathan, Aurora had gotten a package, some wooden box that had a flash drive in it. The flash drive had Alicia’s voice on it. Aurora occasionally goes back to her old flat to check the mail and tells her door guy to let her know if she gets any of these packages again. She gets at least 3. The last one tells her not to trust Jonathan because Jonathan has been poisoning Alicia and she thinks he is trying to kill her.
This, along with a confrontation with one of her dad’s victim's family members, causes Aurora to want to run and start over again. But again, she forgets that Jonathan is a King. You can’t run from them. Aurora goes back to the hunting cabin and is attacked by someone, but she can’t see their face. Jonathan shows up with his driver. His driver takes off after the attacker and Jonathan helps Aurora. Back at the house, Aurora refuses to tell Jonathan why she ran. He is also confused because they had been getting real chummy with each other and now she wants nothing to do with him again. She tries to escape so he needs up putting guards below her balcony and locking her in her room. Which doesn’t make her very happy. She finally tells him about the flash drives and Alicia’s warning. Jonathan asks her where these are, she says her car, and he sends Moses down to get them. But….there are no flash drives. When she calls her doorman, he has no idea what she is talking about. Aurora is like WTF is happening. Jonathan tells her that Alicia had similar things happen to her. She would be convinced that something had happened but there would be no proof of it. Aurora starts to second guess everything that has happened wondering if her mind is playing tricks on her. Jonathan is very understanding and vows that he won’t let her meet the same fate as Alicia.
Aurora doesn’t want to be crazy, she doesn’t want to lose her mind like her sister did, so she just tries to forget everything that happened. After living together for awhile (and the fingerbanging at meal times) Aurora tells Jonathan she wants more. She wants to have sex, then she wants to sleep in his room, she wants to kiss. They start growing closer and even gasp talking. She makes him go on dates with her and interact with her friend, Layla. At one point, she goes to Aiden’s house because she just needs to talk to him about Alicia. Jonathan ends up coming over to find her and they have dinner with Aiden. Jonathan and Aiden play chess. Aurora and Elsa get drunk. Then Jonathan and Aurora spend the night at his house. She encourages him to have family dinners (which they had had before, but it was awkward), and even invites Levi. Aurora starts developing feelings, and since we are also getting Jonathan’s POV we know he has the “She is Mine” feelings without him realizing that he means he loves her (again - he's a King, that explains everything).
Aurora receives another package at her work, but this time, it's her dad’s voice on the recording. She thinks she is hallucinating so she makes sure her assistant sees it. Maxim said he has also been receiving flash drives with Alicia’s voice on them so he wants to share one of his own with Aurora. His recording is of him and Alicia. He was there the day she died. He saw her wreck and tried to get her out of the car. But he couldn’t get her out before she died. Aurora goes to visit her dad in prison, for the first time ever, to ask him about the contents on the flash drive. Maxim says the night he met Bridget he thought he finally found his purpose. Before that, he had experimented with killing but was never fulfilled. When he met Bridget, she became his muse. He planned to kill her after fucking her, but he couldn’t. After Bridget had Aurora, and killed herself to get away from Maxim, he switched his obsession to Alicia. Alicia did believe she was being poisoned and believed it was Jonathan. But Maxim says he thinks the person who was poisoning her is also the one sending all these flash drives. But he won’t tell Aurora unless Aurora apologies for turning him in. She refuses and he says well, they’re after you now, because they want to hurt me through you. Aurora heads back to their house to have a conversation with Jonathan about what she has learned. Jonathan is also super pissed at her because she has been ignoring her all day so he’s headed home as well. But when she arrives, she is ambushed from behind.
After Jonathan rescued Aurora from her being attacked at the cabin, he has been looking for the person who did it. He talks to one of his buddies who suggests hiring a man by the name of Kyle Hunter (if you’ve read Legacy of Gods … this is Niko’s dad, who we know is a very talented sniper). It has taken a while, but as Jonathan is rushing home to yell at Aurora about ignoring him, he gets a phone call from Kyle. Kyle says that the threat is inside of Jonathan’s house, where Aurora currently is. When Jonathan arrives home, he finds Aurora tied up in the kitchen with a knife to her throat by Jonathan’s butler, Tom and his maid/house manager, Margot.
Why you may ask? Tom and Margot have been with Jonathan for YEARS. Margot basically raised Aiden after Alicia died. Well…they were this for the long haul. Tom’s mom, Margot’s sister, was the first victim of Aurora’s dad. They wanted revenge on Maxim but they couldn’t get to him since Aurora helped put him in prison. So they decided to make him suffer emotionally and kill the two things he loved - Alicia and Aurora. They got jobs working for Jonathan to get insider access to Alicia. They were doing things to her that made her think she was crazy. They drugged her a little bit a time, messed with her by playing audio and she thought she was hearing voices, they would move her stuff around or lose it and she would think she was doing it. Once Alicia was out of the picture, they were going to turn their attention to Aurora. But Aurora ran and they had no idea where she was. They stayed working for Jonathan because they figured she would eventually turn back up. They were the ones who were sending the flash drives, they took them out of her car so it seemed like she never had them. Now, they are going to record Tom killing her and make sure Maxim sees it. But before they can do that, Jonathan shows up, he tries to get them to stand down and stop holding a knife to Aurora’s throat but they will not be deterred. Unknown to them, there is a really talented sniper outside. Kyle takes Tom out, comes in to check out his handiwork, smiles about it, and leaves. Jonathan’s security removes Margot and calls the police.
Epilogue number 2 is set 3 years in the future. They are married and on the private island that Jonathan owns. Aiden and Elsa have had Eli already and Aurora is loving having a little one around since she is unable to have children of her own. Just like a King, Jonathan doesn’t like sharing her attention with anyone, even his own grandson, Eli.
