Hate That I Love You

Chapter 1

London's population is exactly 8 615 246, it's the largest and most populated city in Europe.

So, after all, it could be described as quite large.

It could be defined as a city that offers all its people their own spaces, allowing everyone to live quietly, in peace. Because, in the end, thousands of different cultures live in a city like London.

The whole world lives in London because you can come across all kinds of different people.

The world is beautiful because it is varied, one might say, right?

No, it couldn't be said. Or at least, the Styles and the Tomlinson's would never have uttered such a sentence because, well, for all its nice features, London, for them, was still too small.

Tomlinson Corporation and Styles Enterprise were two companies, which dealt with financial holding, which, with their families' history, were rivals.

Famous around the world for their outrageously high turnover, everyone, especially the residents of the Richmond neighbourhood, knew their relationship was fake and that they were rivals. Or rather, a real hatred flowed between them, hidden by false smiles and even more false statements in their interviews where the two owners always defined themselves as good friends and perfect neighbours. Yes, because the Styles and the Tomlinson's also lived a few meters away from each other.

Their immense difference could also be seen in observing their large mansions.

The Tomlinson's owned a sumptuous and trendy mansion, modern and avant-garde.

The humble Styles mansion, on the other hand, was old-fashioned, as much as it was real. The children of the streets of Richmond called it the Luthor Mansion, perhaps because it was very similar to the place where Superman's archenemy lived, in the Smallville series. Or maybe because their landlord was strict, rich, and ruthless like Lionel Luthor; parents preferred not to ask why their children had decided to name it that.

It was a feud, theirs, which had lasted for almost a century now and was handed down from generation to generation; probably no one by now remembered why those two families had started to compete in such a brutal way with each other, but now the war had been going on for too long to be able to end it.

Their families hated each other, their employees who work in their companies hated each other, the companies whose shares they owned hated each other.

To be clear, if one owned a percentage of the shares in Coca-cola, the other owned them in Pepsi.

They all knew the hatred they harboured against each other, yet between them, they continued to show the usual friendly smiles and fraternal hugs.

As in that moment, for example, when all the main owners of the company were sitting in the luxurious meeting room of the Styles Enterprise discussing business and the Styles and Tomlinson's were strictly seated at their respective table heads, flanked by their first-born males who, as expected, indeed, as it should be, they hated each other. The only substantial difference was that, well, they didn't like to hide it, in fact, they liked to give the media a topic to talk about.

The two, in fact, had always been the favorite topics of gossip that defined them as the hottest heiress of the moment. And, in short, who didn't love a bit of fame?

Louis Tomlinson, the oldest of all the sons of the great Mark Tomlinson, was twenty-five years old now and was the classic rich heiress who loved to have fun and make a bit of a stir for a ride. Styles would have called him spoiled, uninhibited, irresponsible, and talentless.

Harry Styles, Desmond Styles' only son as well as the youngest of his children, however, was twenty-three, an excellent graduate of the London School of Economy and most of all, with his head on his shoulders. The Tomlinson's would have called him a boring person. Louis would add that the boy simply had a pole stuck in his ass, and considering he was fiercely gay, he didn't even consider it too unlikely.