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)
“Couldn’t have him telling people he came after you and lived to talk about it.”
Enzo grins. “Exactly.”
My laugh is low, and I shake my head. “So why did you go back to Costa Rica when I first came to stay here?”
“We got a tip that there were men who escaped alive, and they claimed my name was being mentioned among some cartels there. You and I had just signed our marriage contract and you only just arrived. I had many plans for us, Little Bride, but your safety was the most important. I couldn’t risk anyone showing up here knowing you were within my walls, so I went straight to the source only to find out there was no bad blood waiting for me there at all. I’m beginning to wonder if that wasn’t the entire purpose—driving a wedge between us when there was already a mountain we had to move.”
I chew on the inside of my cheek, deeper parts of me, parts I’ve never felt before softening, warming.
I didn’t know the knowledge of learning the truth about those first three months mattered to me anymore, but apparently it did as there is something happening right now that feels a lot like surrendering my all to the man before me.
Enzo is watching me closely, his expression one of tenderness, though there’s a small glimmer of delight in his eyes, as if he knows exactly what’s going on inside my mind.
I pinch my lips in a small smile, tipping my head. “So Katana is, what? The heir to her own empire that’s just waiting for her to take it over or…”
His eyes narrow playfully, like he doesn’t want to change the subject back, but rather focus on me and fillet me open right here so he can read my every thought. After a moment, his lips twitch and he sighs.
“Katana will remain Katana Fikile,” he explains. “She will be only as my little sister, until she’s had proper training at Greyson Elite. She knows nothing of this life and has only begun to understand the simplest of its ways. When the time comes, if it comes, we will reveal the truth, but not yet. She’ll lose everything if it gets out too soon because she’s too weak to be the leader she’s expected to be, and if she loses everything,” he pauses, holding my gaze, “it’s not only her that will fall, but the entire union as you know it.”
The union.
As I know it.
Not as he knows it…because he is not from one of the four families.
I am, though I’m not the chosen heir to represent our name or cardinal compass. Rocklin is.
And Delta.
And Bronx.
And…
“Holy shit,” I breathe. “Katana is the final Greyson girl.”
Chapter
Twenty-Four
Boston
I didn’t sleep, not for a single moment, and it didn’t help that Enzo went to play bad Batman in the middle of the night, leaving me to my thoughts with no possibility of distraction.
Katana Fikile is really Katana Henley, heir to the east and the completion of the cardinal compass that is the girls of Greyson. She’ll be at the prep school come fall, attending as nothing but a tadpole in a pond of sharks, swallowed and spit on over and over again with zero respect until she begins to earn it, inch by exhausting inch.
If she can even manage to do that, and based on what I know of how she was raised, I’m not convinced. The girl has likely never even seen an R-rated movie until she found the little bit of freedom the mansion has afforded her, so our little show in the kitchen yesterday may very well have melted her skin off from the heat of embarrassment alone.
She wouldn’t last five minutes at The Enterprise, and she’ll be expected to take charge of the girls there? Run an underground gambling ring full of girls in lingerie and spotlight stages?
There’s no fucking way.
She’ll be chewed up and spit out…probably by my twin.
Rocklin can’t stand weak women. To be a Greyson girl means to be the opposite, and the girls they bring into the life of scheming and underground, unsuspecting crime are no different.
I can’t allow Katana to step onto that campus as a Fikile and disgrace the name everyone in our world knows to fear. Her fault or not, Enzo will not suffer from her mishaps, nor will I.
Being a pretty, perfect little princess is a common role for daughters of powerful men, but even the prissiest of us are taught to protect ourselves.
Which is exactly why, at six in the morning, my hair is tied back in the tightest ponytail I could manage, and I’m dressed in spandex shorts and a sports bra, slipping through the door in my room that leads to hers.
I pause instantly, having expected it to simply open right next to her bed—or that must have been what I expected when I initially found out where it led, as an unexpected sense of confusion washes over me the second my eyes fall on the space. The space that is not her room, but more of a mini room that gaps from hers to ours, a giant screen taking up nearly the entire wall with a single chair across from it. Dozens upon dozens of small squares are lit up, the security camera feeds playing across them before a few split off to different views. I spot my old room instantly, noticing that every single corner of it is displayed on these screens and they don’t switch to another space. No, they stay as they are, not lapping a second of time.