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“I know everything about you. I always did.”
“Why didn’t you say something?” I need to keep him talking. “Things could have been different between us.”
“Don’t flatter yourself. As much as my mother wanted me to put a ring on your finger, it was never going to happen,” he scoffs.
“What? Why would your mum want us to marry?” I’m puzzled. Something isn’t adding up here.
“To access your fortune, of course.”
“She’s mistaken. I don’t have a fortune for her - or you - to access. Besides, you hardly need it.”
“If only you knew,” he mocks.
“Enlighten me,” I say softly.
“I guess it doesn’t matter if you know now,” he says quietly.
My heart races; I don’t like the sound of that.
“Well, for starters, my family is poor as fuck. Absolutely brassic, broke. And you’re the heir to the Deighton fortune, so it would make sense for us to wed.”
Except, it didn’t make sense at all. My brow creases and I tell him, “I’m not the heir to the Deighton fortune.”
“But you’re Cordelia’s granddaughter and everyone knows she cut her own daughter off. With your twin sister’s death, it makes sense that you’re the sole heir.”
“I would have been, but she cut me off.”
“It doesn’t matter now anyway. I’m not going to marry you. I never was.”
“I think you’re forgetting that I have a say in this. I would never have married you, Charlie.”
“We have ways of making people do what we want.”
His words send a shudder of repulsion through me and I don’t doubt that he’s telling the truth. Hadn’t Cordelia tried to prove as much? Hasn’t Lizzie’s experience at West Prep irrevocably confirmed it?
“But why me? Why the Deighton fortune? There are richer society girls out there who would love to be your trophy wife, Charlie. They wouldn’t even mind your adultery,” I add bitterly.
“You really don’t know anything, do you?” he asks with such glee that it sends my stomach lurching.
“I guess not,” I reply quietly.
“Allow me to educate you,” is his slimy reply. He grins at me like this is the most fun he’s had in months. “My grandmother was a twin...I guess you’d know all about it, but it often skips a generation.” He pauses to give me a significant look, but of course this isn’t news to me. I nod, so that he’ll continue.
“Wow, you really are dumb aren’t you?” he sneers. “Cordelia! Cordelia is a fucking twin! My grandmother’s twin. And after being shafted out of the family fortune, we want it back!”
“I...I…I had no idea,” I stammer in disbelief. Cordelia has always been very closed off about the family. She always led me to believe that Lizzie and I - and now Phoenix and I - were all that she had left.
“Yeah, I gathered,” comes his snide reply.
I’m barely registering his words anyway. Cordelia drama is something I can live without. I just want to get this guy out of my house before Rebel gets here. He’ll kill him. And as much as I dislike Charlie, he doesn’t deserve to die.
I certainly don’t need any more blood on my conscience.
“What do you want from me, Charlie? You’ve already said you don’t want to marry me, so what now?”
“There’s a part of the family tree you’re just not getting, Raven.”
It’s his change of name that really throws me. There’s something dark about the way he says it this time. Sinister. Poignant.
