Total pages in book: 166
Estimated words: 169305 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 847(@200wpm)___ 677(@250wpm)___ 564(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 169305 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 847(@200wpm)___ 677(@250wpm)___ 564(@300wpm)
He’d moaned about a headache before we even lifted a single weight.
“Oliver, put that thing away.” My lips curled into a sneer. “It’s dragging all over the floor.”
“By the way, Zachy, I hope you’re not dead set on a virgin for a bride, because I popped a few cherries last night.” Oliver ignored me, scratching the side of his ass. “Okay, fine. A whole bag of cherries. Those industrial ones you get at Costco.”
Romeo barked out a laugh. “When have you ever set foot inside a Costco?”
“Never, but I’ve heard stories. Who’d you end up choosing, and why do you have Oliver Twist’s shoe in your hand?” Ollie whipped his curly blond head, frowning at me. “Please tell me it’s kink-related. The only way anything about you would ever make sense to me is if you tell me right now that you have some kind of filthy feet kink.”
“Christ.” I scoffed, shaking my head.
“What? I’m not judging. We all know my relationship with dog leashes.”
“One cannot have a relationship with inanimate objects.” I said it slowly, hoping it’d seep into his skull but knowing it wouldn’t.
Ollie jerked a finger toward Rom. “Tell that to his wife and her fridge.”
Contrary to general belief, Ollie wasn’t an idiot. He just pretended to be one so he’d be spared all the expectations and obligations a man in his position usually had to endure.
It was actually a clever setup.
One I hadn’t thought of myself.
He would be the last bachelor standing out of us three, because he’d engineered his image so that nobody, alive or dead, wanted their daughter to date him, wealth and status be damned.
He was so thoroughly corrupted, so depraved, that most families would sooner accept a pet fish for a husband than Oliver von Bismarck.
He’d also quietly doubled his natural wealth through investments no one ever asked him about because they all assumed he shared a single brain cell with a discarded sperm.
In the thirty years I’d known him, he’d never broken a heart, never had to stammer his way out of ending a relationship, and never made a single business mistake while careful to appear as though he had no idea what he was doing and managed his achievements through sheer luck.
He cruised through life without being interrupted by pretending to be an idiot. Which was the most genius thing one could do.
I pushed my running pants down and dumped Octi’s shoe on a wooden bench. “It belongs to someone who trespassed here yesterday.”
Rom chuckled. “A hot nerd who came wearing lingerie and fed him a nice dose of his own bullshit. There’s only one problem—he doesn’t know her name.”
This was the least of my problems, actually.
Even if I could, indeed, consider someone as an actual wife, the little octopus definitely wasn’t prime material.
She was a liar, clearly below my station, and a blonde. My mother would never consider her for the position.
Even if she did, I wouldn’t.
She possessed none of the qualities that had made it to my list.
And yes, there was a list:
• Filthy rich.
• Open to a clinical arrangement.
• And above all—obedient.
I did not tolerate love.
Couldn’t stand romance.
Actively loathed homo sapiens.
And she was very human indeed. All messy flesh and blood. Hot temperament and even hotter body.
The cryochamber screen beeped three times, signaling it was ready.
“What’s the problem?” Ollie stuffed his giant feet into slippers, yanking the door to the walk-in cryotherapy room. White-blue smoke rolled out in thick waves, tumbling along the floor. “Just go through your guestlist.”
I followed him, teeth clenched. “If she were a part of the guestlist, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
I was not in a great mood.
I did not like to be outsmarted.
No, let me rephrase—I was not used to being outsmarted.
The child bride of Satan blew into my life like a tornado. Slipping into my castle, going through my shit, very nearly winning a Go game against me.
And then, to top all of that off, she’d run away cartoon character-style, climbing over my towering gate like a lizard.
Whoever she was, she wasn’t a cushioned heiress with extravagant dreams in her head and a black Amex in her vintage Birkin.
Rom entered the chamber last, closing the door behind him. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but Ollie is right.”
The digital clock above our heads began counting down from four minutes, white clouds of ice obscuring it for the most part. Both men shivered.
I, as always, felt nothing.
Rom rolled his neck, flexing his abs. “Even if she wasn’t on your guestlist, she came in with a guest. In their car. There is literally no other way to get past security. It’s too heavily guarded. And you have that shoe to go by.”
“It’s a common shoe,” I growled.
But it was not a common shoe size for a woman.
Size ten, narrowed trim.
She was tall. Sprightly. Almost androgynous in frame. An amorphous creature.