Total pages in book: 133
Estimated words: 128290 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 641(@200wpm)___ 513(@250wpm)___ 428(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 128290 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 641(@200wpm)___ 513(@250wpm)___ 428(@300wpm)
“Fine.”
He waits for more, as does my sister, but they’re not going to get it.
My father’s frown is all-telling. He can see right through me, as always, but he doesn’t demand to know what it is I’m not liking, and honestly, it’s kind of shocking. Even if he did, it wouldn’t matter. I’m not being beaten or starved. I’m not left out in the cold or passed around the guards as a plaything.
So yes, things are fine. I’m fine.
Same story, new view.
A knot forms in my throat, but I use the chardonnay to swallow past it.
“Are you coming back to Greyson Elite in the fall?” It’s my sister who asks this.
“I haven’t decided.” I shrug, looking out over the room as if I couldn’t care less when really, I don’t know what I’ll be allowed, or forced to do. Things with Enzo are complicated in a way I haven’t quite figured out yet.
He loves to remind me he owns me, but then sometimes there’s passion behind the possession. It’s confusing.
He is confusing.
“You should return. There is much training you could benefit from there, third years go into Assassin 101, and being the wife of a man like Enzo, you need knowledge in not only defense but offense.” My father studies my expression. “With Katana’s attendance, it should be no problem.”
Katana. Right.
He might make me go back to Greyson to help watch over his precious Katana.
I’d like to watch her drown in the underground pool.
“Greyson students live on campus, Dad. I doubt Enzo would be okay with that.”
“You would be surprised. Most men in his position want their wives away somewhere safe, being he’ll be gone more than he’ll be home,” he counters.
Will he be?
My eyes slide his way, white-hot jealousy coursing through me when I spot his hand on Katana’s bicep as he holds her close, whispering something in her ear as she stares down at his suit.
“Boston, there’s something we need to tell you.” My dad draws my attention back.
Rocklin stands straight and I narrow my eyes on the two.
“What?”
“Well, sweetheart, this isn’t the best place, but I don’t know when—”
“Kylo Greco is our brother. And Mother didn’t die randomly; she was poisoned and the man responsible is dead.” Rocklin drops her bombs nice and easy, without so much as a break in her perfect armor, just another example of why she was chosen as the Greyson girl over me.
Meanwhile, I have no words, the image of my mother’s lifeless body lying face down on her bed the morning I found her dead is all I see.
Poisoned.
How?
Why?
A million theories run through my head in seconds, but it takes only a single breath for the answer to slam into the forefront of my mind.
Power.
My mother lost her life in a power play that clearly didn’t work, because while broken on the inside, my father didn’t fall. In fact, he grew stronger after her death, colder. More detached.
It was only the last few years that the man I remembered from when we were little started to peek through the hardened mask he’s worn the last decade.
Rocklin steps closer. “I only found out the day Dad was superseded and there hasn’t been a moment to tell you yet.”
I look to my dad, at his stony face, and I do all I can to keep mine the same.
There’s nothing to be done about our mother; she died a long time ago, so I bury the ache threatening to take over and focus on the other part. “A brother.”
Our father has the decency to hang his head as it doesn’t have to be said he was unfaithful to the love of his life. Not when the youngest Greco is our age.
“It was my doing,” he states the obvious. “I needed an heir, and your mother couldn’t seem to give me one. It wasn’t until after I found out Kylo’s mother was with child that your mother and I got the news of you two.”
I nod, suddenly feeling sick and ready to vomit despite the lack of food in my stomach. Looking toward Rocklin, I try to make light of this as that’s what’s expected, for us to be accepting and emotionless at the drop of a dime. Or bomb, considering.
Poor Mom.
A slight tremble dares to appear over my lips, so I bite into my cheek, desperate to stop it. I’m already seen as the reckless daughter, known to react without thinking, so I should get an award for this because all I want to do is scream into the air and claw at my dad’s face a little. Just enough to sting.
I do neither, though, instead taking the opposite approach. “Too bad it wasn’t Damiano. At least he’s a badass,” I say of her right-hand man. Or he was before Bastian. Considering they used to fuck I’d say that’s likely changed.