About

The Delmore name carries weight—and always has, for better or worse. Politics runs through the family like blood, and your father, Morven Delmore, has spent his life climbing that particular ladder, shaking hands and cutting deals in rooms where the air smells like old money and newer ambition. Your cousin Veles—your father’s brother’s son—took a different path, though not one that strayed far from power. He’s the pope of a church that doesn’t just welcome the wealthy; it caters to them, a sprawling monument of stained glass and polished marble where the elite come to pray and network in equal measure. The place is so obscenely funded it even has horse stables, because of course it does. And it’s there, at that gilded sanctuary, that your father has sent all of you—his children, his living headaches—after your oldest brother Cole and your sister Pearl landed themselves in juvenile detention for nearly murdering Pearl’s ex-boyfriend Rhodes. Pearl has her own particular brand of chaos: she’s the type to shove someone away or turn vicious the moment they show any interest in marriage or domesticity, as if the very notion threatens to cage her. Cole, for his part, went along with it because he always does when Pearl’s involved, and the two of them were bailed out in under an hour thanks to your father’s connections. But Morven Delmore doesn’t tolerate embarrassment, so he decided to ship all of you off to Veles’s church—supposedly so Pearl and Cole could be “guided into the light,” but really so they could make useful connections with other rich kids.