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He nods. “Yeah, what do you think of her?”
Honestly, I think she’s beautiful if not a bit impolite. “She’s okay.”
“Yeah, she’s beautiful, but her sister is more my type.”
“Sister?” I ask.
He nods toward a girl who’s standing with Bella. She has lighter, almost blonde hair that is naturally wavy and similarly beautiful features, but to me, she’s not a patch on Isabella. “Do you intend to go after her sister, then?”
Cathal shakes his head. “Rumor is she’s a bit of a handful. However, I’ll determine that for myself before I make any decisions.” The sister’s eyes move to us and she blushes instantly when she sees Cathal staring. “If you’d excuse me, I’ve got a girl to speak to.”
I nod in response and don’t say another word as he rises from his seat and walks over to talk to Nina Benedetto. The girl is a train wreck that I’d stay far away from if I were Cathal, but it would be pretty odd for me to warn against him approaching her when we hardly know each other.
Instead, I sit back and watch as he makes his way toward the two girls. Bella is my target, but I intend to remain impartial for now. It won’t do being overly forceful when it’s clear she’s not interested in getting married at all.
Her mother is obnoxiously loud and drunk as she laughs with one of the men intended, I assume, as a suitor for Bella. As I expected, her family is the worst sort of people. Despite harboring this hatred for them all these years, I’ve never met them.
Her brother, Cain, is gambling at a table near the back with a hooker on his lap. And her two younger sisters, Luciana and Maria, are both making fools of themselves, flirting with men when they’re both underage. My initial impression of them is that they’re immature, especially since they’re the heirs to the Benedetto family fortune.
One of the female servers approaches with a tray of canapes. “Would you like one?” she asks, leaning over and batting her eyelashes.
I smile. “I’d love one, thank you.”
“What are you doing over here on your own?”
I shrug. “Unfortunately, it appears the majority of attendees are male.”
“Perhaps I can keep you company.”
I arch a brow. “Are you allowed to, or will you get in trouble?”
“I won’t tell anyone if you don’t.”
I glance over at Bella, who is looking right at me as I flirt with the server. It makes sense to play on this and get her jealous. If she thinks I’m not that interested, it will only pique her interest more.
“Why the hell not?”
She sits down on the arm of my chair and places a hand on my shoulder. “I like your accent. Are you British?”
Bella’s expression turns furious as she tears her eyes off of me. I sense from our first encounter that she’s not going to be the kind of girl who falls at my feet easily. It makes the challenge all the more exciting.
The Benedetto family consists of the worst kind of people imaginable, and that has only been reaffirmed by this party and the way they act. Her mother is a drunk. Her father is a bore. And Three of her siblings are immature and stupid.
Isabella and Nina, I’m not sure what to make of yet. Other than Nina’s relatively secret troubles with depression, I wouldn’t know that she was anything but a normal twenty-three-year-old.
And Bella appears to have more sense than the rest of her family, but it changes nothing. Before long, I’ll ensure that she wants me so badly that she’ll be begging for me. And then, I’ll crush her along with the rest of her pathetic excuse of a family.
5
BELLA
Isiah Darcy.
He’s far more handsome than I ever could have imagined any of the suitors would be. The man is supposed to be here as a potential suitor, but he doesn’t want to pay any attention to me. Not that I want his attention. Actually, that’s a lie. I wouldn’t mind it. He’s by far the most attractive man in this room, and he’s talking to the second most attractive.
“It looks like someone has the hots for a certain British man,” Nina says, teasing me.
I narrow my eyes and force them away from him. “I don’t have the hots for him. But he refused to dance with me.”
