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Trust Willow to instinctively be drawn to the one person on that board I like least.
“Sophie Sutton,” she says out loud, reading from my notes. “Harvard law.” She turns back to me. “What’s she doing wasting her time being friends with you?”
Of course, Sophie Sutton would take a painful death over friendship with me, and that’s a sentiment I reciprocate. Sophie is that particular type of person I can’t stand: someone born in the dirt who acts like they were born in marble.
In Spearcrest, Sophie was desperate to forget she wasn’t one of us—academic overachiever, sycophantic prefect. I wanted nothing more than to remind her shewasn’t.
I wouldn’t even have wasted my energy on her if Evan didn’t love her so completely. But he did, and so I wasted quite a lot of energy tormenting them both. I got my face beaten to a pulp for it—it was worth it, though. That year, I never felt more alive than I did when Evan punched my face into a bloody mess.
“I wouldn’t quite call us friends,” I concede, glancing from Willow’s to Sophie’s frowning face. “Sutton and I are—very different people.”
“Oh, let me guess.” Willow throws me a nasty smirk. “She’s one of your army of bent lawyers? Paid and bought for?”
“Hardly.” Sophie’s probably the only lawyer I couldn’t buy, no matter how much money I threw at her. I shrug away the implied insult in Willow’s question. “She’s my friend’s girlfriend.”
“Which one?” Willow scans the board. “The Calvin Klein model or that hot little piece of ass with the pouty lips?”
I wheel my chair closer to see the pictures she’s pointing at. I roll my eyes.
“The Calvin Klein model,” I answer her drily. “His name is Evan, it says so right there.”
Evan Knight, the golden boy athlete. He was by far my most amusing friend. Torturing him came as easily as taking a toyfrom a weeping child, but I had a lot of fun doing so. Unlike me, Evan was always a creature led by emotion, and that made him oh so easy to manipulate.
“The hot little piece of ass,” I add with a grimace, “is Séverin Montcroix.”
Séverin Montcroix, the French aristocrat. He wore his heart on his sleeve like it was just another one of his collection of accessories. He was always so very transparent. A bleeding heart romantic who took himself for a great philanderer.
It’s a good thing his fiancée turned up to humble him; she saved me the trouble of doing so myself.
Willow, following my notes, moves from Séverin’s photograph to Anaïs Nishihara—the fiancée in question. The calm, measured, detached Nishihara heiress. Ironically, Séverin’s perfect match.
“Anaïs,” Willow says. “They look cute together. Like one of those couples that dance in the rain and do cute, quirky shit.” There’s an edge of mockery to her voice. “When do I get to meet them, then?”
“You don’t. They live abroad. France and Japan.”
I don’t bother keeping tabs on them as much as the others. Anaïs and Sev are disgustingly happy—I hate to see it, really. If I could, I would love to give them a good shake, just enough to trouble the crystal waters of their life. But Anaïs and Séverin are about as pure and wholesome as the driven snow—wholly impervious to blackmail.
“You might get to meet those two, though.” I point my chin in the direction of Zachary Blackwood’s and Theodora Dorokhova’s pictures. “Although I would avoid them if I were you.”
“How come?” Willow narrows her eyes, peering from Zachary’s photo to Theodora’s. “Are they dirty rich pervs like you?”
“Hah—quite the opposite.”
Bishop Blackwood and the impregnable Theodora Dorokhova. The fairy tale couple of Spearcrest, a love story made for poetry—an utter and complete bore.
Zachary and Theodora have never loved anybody but each other. They love each other perfectly and live a perfect life together. They’re going to have a perfect wedding, everyone will cry because they are so perfect together, and they’ll have a perfect marriage because Zachary is a superior communicator and Theodora’s exceptionally intelligent and they are both utterly devoted to one another. They’ll have perfect children that will look like heaven itself spat them forth from golden clouds.
In short, they are utterly, soul-crushingly dull.
“Oh!” Willow suddenly notices a photograph. “I’ve met this one!”
I peer over her shoulder.
“Zahara Blackwood.” I frown. “Where on earth did you meet Zahara Blackwood?”
The youngest daughter of the eminent Blackwood family isn’t likely to move in the same circles as a fatherless Greenleigh grifter.
Willow shrugs. “She came to my flat looking for her boyfriend.” She points at the picture of Iakov. “Him.”
